02-12-26 Chapter 6:10-14 The Shoes of the Gospel of Peace and The Shield of Faith

➡ This Bible study focuses on the book of Ephesians, specifically the concept of the armor of God. The armor of God is not physical items, but a lifestyle that helps us resist evil. The study also discusses the idea that as we grow closer to Jesus Christ, we may face more challenges, but our faith and lifestyle can help us overcome them. The study also touches on current world events, suggesting that we are living in intense times, but our faith and lifestyle can help us navigate these challenges.
➡ The text discusses the spiritual battle between good and evil that believers face. It emphasizes the importance of renewing one’s mind and gaining knowledge and wisdom from scripture to ward off evil. The text also explains the concept of energy sources, suggesting that purity attracts goodness, while negativity attracts evil. Lastly, it assures believers that they are protected from demonic possession if they are truly saved and obedient to God’s teachings.
➡ This text discusses the spiritual battle faced by believers living in a world influenced by Satan. It emphasizes that Satan cannot possess us, but can influence us externally, appealing to our inherent weaknesses. The Holy Spirit, living within us, serves as our protector and guide, helping us resist these influences. However, we must actively choose to follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance and strive to understand and live according to Jesus Christ’s teachings, while acknowledging that we are still susceptible to sin due to our human nature.
➡ The text discusses how modern society, with its media and technology, has amplified the presence of evil and temptation, making it harder for individuals to live a virtuous life. It argues that Satan controls worldly systems, including false religions and the education system, which are used to manipulate and control people. The text emphasizes the importance of resisting these influences by focusing on spiritual growth and living according to God’s teachings. It suggests that triumph over these worldly temptations is possible through constant prayer, living in the spirit, and not allowing our human nature to control us.
➡ This text emphasizes the power of faith and the importance of maintaining spiritual strength to resist evil. It highlights that, according to the Bible, Jesus has already defeated Satan, giving believers the power to overcome evil. However, it’s crucial to stay alert, resist temptation, and not give evil any opportunity to enter one’s life. The text encourages living a life focused on spiritual growth, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide one’s actions, and surrendering control of one’s life to Christ.
➡ The text emphasizes the importance of aligning our thoughts and actions with the teachings of Christ, as described in the Bible. It encourages us to understand and embrace the truth, and to live a life of righteousness and holiness. The text uses the metaphor of a soldier putting on armor to illustrate the need for spiritual protection against evil. It concludes by urging us to resist sinful desires and to live a godly life, even in an ungodly world.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of knowing the truth and living by it, as well as the significance of righteousness and holiness. It also highlights the necessity of being prepared, using the metaphor of a soldier needing the right shoes for battle. The text suggests that just as a soldier needs proper footwear to stand firm and avoid traps, individuals need to equip themselves with the right knowledge and values to navigate life effectively.
➡ The text emphasizes the importance of understanding and accepting the gospel, which brings peace and strength in the face of life’s challenges. It highlights that being at peace with God means knowing that God is not our enemy but our protector and source of strength. The text also underscores the idea that we are invincible when we allow God to control our lives, and that nothing can separate us from God’s love. It concludes by stressing the security and confidence that comes from this understanding and acceptance of the gospel.
➡ The speaker discusses their faith, emphasizing their belief in God’s protection and power. They reference biblical texts and symbols, such as the armor of God and the tabernacle, to illustrate their points. The speaker also expresses gratitude for their faith and the teachings they’ve received, and prays for continued guidance and understanding. They end by affirming their fearlessness when living through God.

Welcome. This is our Thursday night Bible study or this is the, the study of a book of Ephesians. We were doing this in conjunction with. Oh, guys, by the way, we’ve hit over 5, 000 downloads already in the ministry. So just to let you guys know, a few administrative stuff, I got a few other things I’ll wait till the end and tell you. But I, I got an email today that, from the networks and we’re over 5,000 on, on all the platforms, so we’re growing. Anyway, this is our study on the book of Ephesians. We’re in the last leg of this.

We’re in the process of studying the armor of God. And this is the way it’s been taught, particularly in the pastoral realm, is, is really not the truth about what the, what this passage of Scripture is all about. And as you picked up from the last time that we were together a week and a half, two weeks ago, we understand now in looking at these, these pieces that what Paul was doing was using the Roman guard to explain to the people at that time what the armor of God is. And we learned last, last time we were together that these are not pieces of garments or, or elements of anything.

This is a lifestyle. Okay? This is your lifestyle. So this is the culmination of the application process of Ephesians 4, 5 and 6. And when Paul brings this armor into view for, for the, for the Gentile nation into the churches in Asia Minor, he uses the Roman guard because everybody could actually understand what he was saying. Because really you got to remember that the apostles had to use all kinds of analogy things to get the people to understand these new concepts called God’s Word. Okay, so, so we take this and, and we break it down by, by understanding the totality of, of what these scriptures are and how it relate back to the total Bible.

And what you find out is you don’t pick up a sword, you don’t put a helmet on the. This is lifestyle. This is your lifestyle. And you’re going to really see that tonight. And as we go through this and we’re going to talk about two more pieces of this armor which, which basically is the shoes of the Gospel of peace and the shield of faith. Now you should probably, probably get the second part pretty quickly. Shield of faith is, is the strengthening of your faith through your sanctification process. But the shoes of the Gospel of Peace, that might be a little bit more difficult to comprehend what that means for your lifestyle.

So let’s get started in this and we’re dealing with Ephesians chapter 6 and verses 10, all the way down to verses 18. That’s the, that is the passage of scripture that deals with Paul’s description of this armor. So I’m going to set, I’m going to set the stage here because I’m going to try to bring history in so you can see, you can actually have a, have a different type of understanding about what these two elements are. And then we’re going to bring it all back together and talk about the armor itself. So there was a time in the life of Martin Luther that he actually had a physical conflict.

To say, if you study Martin Luther’s life, you will, you will come to a point when he had a conflict with state. And it was so real that in his memoirs of his life, he said he picked the ink up off of his desk and threw it at it and it splattered against the wall and that that ink stain remained on that wall for many, many years to remind him of the reality of the conflict that he was, he was having. And that is exactly what scripture says. And the closer you get to the fellowship with Jesus Christ, the more you’re going to be attacked.

All right? And the level of your knowledge base and the wisdom, the higher you grow in Jesus Christ, the higher you get in, in Satan’s army of who’s going to come after you. All right? So it’s a two edged sword. Think about that. You grow in Christ and the more you grow, the more Satan wants to tear you down and he’s going to bring somebody equivalently at that level where you’re at and he’s going to attack you. And it’s when you process the application of Ephesians 4, 5 and 6 to a lifestyle that we’re describing for you and we’ll describe tonight in a few, few more, few more nights, then you’re able to take the totality of scripture and utilize it to ward off the evil that you’re being attacked from.

All right, that’s the Rama words. That’s the wrong. Okay, that is the speaking of the energy outside. And, and by the way, Misty was listening something today that was very interesting. There was. A lady and a man that were talking on a podcast about the plan. The plan, okay. And they identified that the plan, that the change that we’re going through in this world is the plan of Satan and that all of the evilness that have come into this world was Satan’s control. And they even went through, which I have done with you to some degree, but they have found over a thousand patents in the patent database placed there by the CIA.

And you know who controls the CIA? It’s beside. And under. Under keywords that you would not. If you did a word search, you would not find what the truth is of the patent. All right? And I’m just gonna. I’m just going to tell you one because I. You need to understand what Martin Luther went through. We’ve already. We’re going through it every day, and it’s growing in. In more intensity, okay? The pressure in this world, it’s like. It is like a pressure cooker right now, all right? And it’s, it’s, it’s. It is in such an intense environment that, that you just need to understand you’re gonna.

The more you know, the more you’re gonna persecute. So in one of these patents was called the Quinn. Quinn Towers. Quinn Towers. Not. You understand what I’m saying? Not twin, but Quinn Towers with a Q. And in those patents, it showed how they took down those buildings. Now, I have always, I have told you and I have taught you in the sub stack that we’re pure energy, right? And we talked about how all of this world is put together by what, electromagnetism. That’s, that is how we all have this skin. That’s how the gravity works. That’s how the firmament works.

Everything is done by energy sources created from electromagnetics. Well, that’s how they took the twin towers down. There was an electromagnetic stimulus that went through those towers, and it’s in the patents, by the way, and it’s called Quinn Towers. You want to go look that up, read it, whatever. But as you can see, we’re in this same place that everybody else has been in history, but it’s more prevalent because they’re trying to take over the world. They’re. This whole. This whole cabal issue that we have is they wanted to bring the end times faster. We’ve talked about this.

But God says it’s not the right timing. When it comes God’s timing to do that, everything that we have gone through, the world is going to go through again. All right? So if Christ decides to call the church tomorrow and begins the process of the great Tribulation, this world restarts from where we’ve tried to get rid of this evilness 10 years ago, okay? That’s what’s going to happen. So at some point in the future, everything that you’ve been exposed to will happen. It was just not the right timing. And it was really funny when it I just listened to a part of what Misty was listening to.

It’s real funny that they picked up on Isaiah 45 in this process and talking about Cyrus and what Cyrus was doing and warning the people and giving the people and, and I found it enlightenment to me because everything that I have taught you people are now picking up on in various ways. And it was unique to, to see how they had done it their own way of course. But to put. They put it together and it was all this is all done. Missy just text me and says they, they term this in the patterns the ground wave emergency system.

Okay, so, so it’s real guys. This is real. And your, your only way to deal with your life on a daily basis is through your lifestyle. You either allow it to come in or you block it. And the blocking factor is your offense. Okay, We’ve talked about that. You have to be on offense all the time. And the best offense, the best defense is an offense. And you still have to have all of your defensive tools, which is your lifestyle. You see how this comes together. All the tool sets that God gives you in this new covenant because he’s in control because of the spirit lives inside of us is through our lifestyle.

And, and your lifestyle is your defensive mechanism. What you do in your studying and your, your. The way that you think and act and all of this other stuff creates the offensive mechanisms that you can pull out at any moment and engage evil. That’s your mind. Okay? That’s reason why Paul says you need to have a renewed mind. Because if you don’t have the renewed mind, you’re not going to be able to ward off the evil because that is your offensive mechanism, your knowledge, your wisdom, understanding of scripture. Okay? So, so we are all engaged in a conflict with the enemy of God, the enemy of Christ, the enemy of our souls, the enemy of truth.

And this conflict is inevitable because we are part of, of the kingdom of God. Right? When you, when you are saved, you are saved into the kingdom of God, living the kingdom of heaven on this earth. Follow, I’m saying. So you’re living two realities. We’ve talked about that in the substack. You got two realities. You live in two dimensions. One’s a spiritual dimension, kingdom of God. One is a physical dimension, kingdom of heaven, all on this earth. Okay? So now you can put, you can put those scriptures together with your condition of dimensionality, okay? For, for understanding.

So we’re part of the kingdom of God as soon as we’re saved. And we are, we who are the slaves of Jesus Christ. We are then the soldiers of Christ, as it were, and the in. And we’re in the enemy territory. We’re citizens of heaven. Got to remember that salvation gives you citizenship to heaven, kingdom of God. And he gives you a passport. That passport is the knowledge base of how you live in the foreign territory of this earth in a fallen state. Okay, so Satan is the prince of the power of the air and the ruler of this world.

Now, Christ got victory over him. Victory for eternal life, not victory over your physical life. Say some people get confused with this. Some people think that because Christ got victory over Christ upon resurrection, that we don’t have any evil. No, we’re living in pure evil. And that will never change as long as you’re physically alive. Because we’re living in a world of a fallen state that is controlled by Lucifer himself. And being the prince of the power of the air, I want you to. I want you to think a little differently now about this energy source that is the negative energy to the positive energy of Jesus Christ.

If we’re pure energy, think about this. We’re pure energy, as we’ve learned in the substack, then the, the master that controls you is the master of your energy source. Okay? Remember, everything in the spiritual world is the same. The only difference between Lucifer’s evil system and God’s holy righteousness system is sin. Now, we’ve learned that you go, whatever you want to call it, some summons, we don’t like that word in holiness. But in essence, you request audience to whoever is your master, okay? And that master is your energy source. Now, Ephesians 4 says you need to be pure.

Why? Because energy attracts other energy. That’s how it works. That’s how physics works. And if your energy source is goodness and pure, you’re going to attract that, which means that you’re going to attach yourself more and more and more to Jesus Christ. If your energy source is not pure, okay, it’s been infiltrated, it has negative ions in it. Well, now you have an issue because you have, you have two sources of energy and the Bible says you can only have one. And if you got any part of your energy is negative, that’s what you’re going to attract.

That’s the lifestyle, okay? You see how, see what we’re talking about? We’re talking about a lifestyle with all of the applications that we’ve Learned in Ephesians 4 and 5, mainly. So Satan’s the prince of power of the air. He’s the ruler of the world and he he and his minions, his demons, which constitute a third of the angels, by the way, run their wicked anti God, antichrist, anti truth and anti life system through this world. As long as we are here, we are engaged in that battle. Now what’s the battle? It’s the battle of controlling your mind.

You don’t. You’re trying to remove all of the negativity out of your system of energy, okay, and allow the Holy Spirit to take charge of your life and control it with what? The good energy. So that’s why in verse 10, we read, finally, be strong in the Lord and in this and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Matter of fact, in Revelation, it tells you to know the Devil, you’re to know all about him because you need to own offense, be aware of how he’s going to attack you.

And if you don’t know the breadth and width and height and, and, and all of his deceptional processes, you. You can’t understand what’s coming at you until it’s already there. It’s your job in your relationship with Jesus Christ to utilize the tools that he’s giving you to ward that process off. As fast as your knowledge says that something’s going on, you don’t wait for it to get there. All right? If you’re. If you’re a halfback with a football and you’re doing an in sweep, you don’t cut back towards the line because you want to get hit.

You want to continue the end sweep to get close to the out of bounds line to get yardage, okay? It’s the same thing. You don’t want to wait on something to come at you. You want to cut it off at the pass. So it said, put on the floor, you may stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Put. For our struggle is not against what flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of darkness, against the spiritual forces of witnesses in heavenly places, all right? That’s the spiritual world. That is our.

That is our. That’s our enemy. Okay? You can’t. You can’t be attacked internally. But if you have the Holy Spirit that your. Your heart or it’s. That’s the temple, that’s God, your spirit. If you have received the Holy Spirit in salvation, you cannot be possessed in your spirit. All right? Now you can be possessed in your body and in your soul. Okay? That’s in the Gospels. It tells you you can do that, but you have to let it in. And if you, if you do this properly, you’re going to have all of your defensive mechanism in place, because that’s your regeneration.

Think about it. That’s your regeneration, your new person, all of these things. That’s the defense. And in your sanctification process, you’re putting into your mind the knowledge base for the offense. And now you have the tools to battle. And we learned last time that you have no choice of battling. You’re a soldier no matter what. So what we’re to do is to take up the full armor of God now, okay? In Paul’s vernacular, that means put on the whole suit that the, that the Roman soldier wore. We’re to take that whole thing. And so what Paul is using here is an analogy.

You’re to take everything that the Bible gives you, a regenerated person, obedient, because if you’re not obedient, you can’t have the other side. Okay? Obedience is the key. You’re regenerated, you’re obedient now. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re sanctified. And you’ve got now all the tool set, but you don’t have access to the tool set if you’re disobedient. All right? Doesn’t work that way. So we’re to resist everything in the evil day and having done everything, to stand firm in the Lord. So in the open opening, couple of messages in this process, the last two, at least, we address these verses and try to draw out some foundational understanding of the spiritual conflict in which we are engaged in constantly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 a year.

Okay? So you need to understand this, that if you are a believer, you house the temple of the Holy Spirit. Satan does not dwell within you. His spirit we had, at the time that we were born, salvation reversed. That process regenerated our system and sealed it. That means that basically nothing can get in. Your spirit is sealed. So Satan does not dwell in you because what scripture says, greater is he that is in you, that he’s in the world. And he. And he that is in you is what the Holy Spirit. So no Christian can be devil possessed or demon possessed.

And we’re, we’re talking about it other than for you to understand once you’re completely, once you are saved, truly saved, you’re protected. The only one that can prevent the protection mechanism from going into full action is you. Okay? And for knowledge base, we’re not talking about Demon possession, which can only occur in one who does not belong to God. So if you belong to God, you’re sealed in the spirit, okay? Because the Spirit dwells in you. And that means by that sealing process that Christ gave us, we cannot be demon possessed in our spirit. What we’re talking about is the battle that a spirit indwell child of God faces living in Satan’s world.

That’s what we’re talking about. And it isn’t what Satan does in us as if he lived there or what demons do in us as if they live there as well. It is what they do outside of us that ponders to the fallenness that is in us. All right, All right, I’m gonna try this analogy. You have the Holy Spirit inside of you. It’s the protector and you. And, and it’s the football. It is the football. And Satan wants that football. And he’s. He attacks you constantly to get access to. And your only defense to that is your regenerated process that produced the Holy Spirit.

And your obedience that gives you, gives you the ability to have the Holy Spirit control you, your protection mechanism. And through the protection mechanism you are doing what he told you to do. Being sanctified in Jesus Christ. Meaning you study and you understand who he is to make sure you understand who you are. And in that process, he gives you the knowledge, tools to go to battle. Because we’ve been redeemed, the process of redemption has started for us. Redemption does not fulfill its mission until we get our glorified body. But we’re redeemed in Christ, all right? Means that we’re inside of Christ.

He’s our protector, he’s our provider. He’s. That’s the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us. We’ve become regenerated, okay? We are new creatures, okay? We have different affections, different motivations now, different loves, different attachments. We value things completely opposite than the way we valued them before we came to Christ. Life is new for us. We are a new creation, however incarcerated in an undeemed flesh. You’re in prison. Why in the world do you think the Roman Empire called named the elements of your body cells? Ever think about that? Because the cell shows that you were trapped, okay? You’re in a jail cell.

You’re a slave. We still possess fallen personalities, right? We talked on, on the last two, two Tuesday nights about you cannot get rid of your past sinful sexual experiences. Matter of fact, every sin you’ve ever did is running on a truck on a highway of your life. You can Never get rid of it. It’s there. The question is, it’s what do you do with it? All right, if you’ve asked the forgiveness necessary for the sin, God’s already said, as long as you’re obedient to me, I forgive your sins as far as the east is from the west, okay? So.

And he forgets about it. That’s what scripture says. He forgets about it. And we are supposed to do the same. But we in our. In our flesh, nature keeps that stuff around in storage cabinets in our mind. They never go away. So we possess fallen propensities to the lust of our flesh, the lust of what we see and the pride of life. That’s what’s in. In us. What is in us is our fallenness. What is in us is sin. Now, you got to think about this. When the Holy Spirit comes into your heart and seals it, you know what? That’s the only place it’s at.

It’s not in your mind. It’s not in your cells. It’s not anywhere. Even though you get a regenerated body and you get all of this new stuff, your new DNA and all this other stuff that can only function if you allow the Holy Spirit to communicate with your change. If you prevent the Holy Spirit from talking to your new regenerated body through your physical mind control, what you’ve done is put a fence around your protectorate. Can’t do anything. You’re in control. Paul says in Romans 7, it is sin that is in me. This is why I’m still a wretched man.

This is why I don’t do what I ought to do. And I. And I. And what I do, I ought not to do, okay? That’s the nature. That is exactly what goes on in our life, okay? That’s the reason why the more you get sanctified in Christ and then you sin, the more grief it causes you because you now have an understanding as to what that sin can do. You’ve broken the chain. You’ve opened a door, okay? And now you know that you got to pay the price for that sin because you’re going to get judged for that sin.

You’re going to be held accountable for that sin. It is sin that’s in me. And it’s a principle still operating in me that wars against the law of God that now dominates my mind, my new creation. So what Paul is explaining here to you is that what you’re dealing with is the process of who controls your mind, Lifestyle. Everything begins with a single thought. If your lifestyle is not the correct lifestyle. You first place you go look is what you’re thinking about and then you look and say, okay, how did that get there? You begin to do a self what evaluation and you begin to look at your life and saying, what did I do to allow this to occur? Because sin can’t enter the picture unless you allow it to enter the picture.

Satan, who is outside of us, works the world system in such a way as to assault us at the points of our fallenness. What did I say? He knows you better than you know you. He knows how to take you down. Now it, it’s not all at once, as you can see. It’s a progressive over time. Satan’s a long term thinker. He just puts a little bit here and a little bit there and it allows you to come around and invite him in. See, because he can’t come in unless you invite him. So what he’s doing is he’s, he’s nibbling at you.

He’s got these imps that are just after you all the time, biting at your ankles, you know, tucking to your ear, whatever. And he’s just putting things in there, putting things in there. And all of a sudden he’s going to hit, he’s going to hit a level that sets a trigger off. And when that trigger goes off, that door’s open. And that’s what he does. We live in a hostile world. A world that is filled with, with manifest promotion of the lust of our flesh, lust of our eyes and what you’re prideful for. It wants to give you everything that your human nature wants to feed off of.

Because we live for pleasure, guys. I don’t care. I don’t care if you’re down in the dumps or you know, you’re depressed. You’re still living for pleasure. And that is what he uses. It dominates our culture in some ways more than ever, at least on the media front. You guys, when I say get off the blogs, don’t listen to mainstream media. The truth is the truth. You know what the truth is already is you know that basically that this is a scripted movie. And why frustrate yourself in putting that stuff in your mind? What does it do? It changes your mindset.

You now thinking of the things of this world and not things of the scripture. Think about everything that’s going on. All right? I’ve even thought about not posting anything, but I feel like, I feel like that if I don’t, you’re going to be caught off guard and I don’t want that all right. I want you to be completely aware of things going on that are impactful to this world Change. It isn’t that sinners are worse. Now we’re the same people, the God’s the same God, Lucifer’s the same Lucifer. Sin is still sin, goodness is still goodness.

But the problem about is is we’ve let the gods back in and they’ve come back in seven times harder as our Monday night classes have shown. Okay, so we’re dealing with more evil than the people of history. And we have to be on our game constantly to be able to combat that. See, Apostle Paul said this. Evil men grow worse and worse and worse and worse. Remember, let’s go back to the empires. When not one empire conquer. Let’s take Nimrod when on when Egyptians were conquered by the Medes and the Persians, you know, and then it went to the Greeks and whatever they.

Each one of those empires, the conquering empire had their own pagan worshiping, their rituals, their cultural aspects. And when they conquered another nation, they didn’t change the people in that nation to their paganism, they just embraced it. So you now you have two that are combating off of each other. Well, there’s six in history, okay. And the church becomes the seventh Roman Empire was the sixth empire. The disbanding of the Roman Empire to the church age. We’re in the seventh final dispensation period and we come seven. You like that? We come with. With seven times more evil.

So it isn’t so much that there have been, there never have been sinners before or there’s never been sin before. There’s always been sin. There always has been vileness, wretchedness, sin throughout all human history. But the exposure level because of letting the gods back in. Now we’re looking at media sources through television basically. It’s basically telling you a vision every time you turn darn thing on. Okay. As part of our human history, it’s beyond anything people in the past had to endure. You see, we’ve created the environment that makes it worse. All right? We’ve let the gods back in and we’ve created a.

We’ve created industries. Industries that make it more difficult for us. Think about it. I’m going to get to this in a minute, but I’m going to throw it out here. Sexual exploitation then was only when you’re able to go hook up with a prostitute. They didn’t have books, they’d have, you know what all of the, all of the porn books, the magazines, Hustle, you know, all of that stuff, they didn’t have it then. They didn’t have movie theaters that you could go in and see it on, you know, 65 foot wide screen. 100. You see? See, you know, they didn’t have that.

They didn’t have lustful books to read. Then we built. We built this society to give us more evil wine. It’s called pleasure, guys. You live a life for pleasure now. They had pleasure back then. They were wealthy then. They were able to do what they wanted to. But they did it in such a way that they didn’t build a culture like we’ve done. Yeah, Don, you’re right. We have normalized evil to everything we’ve done in life. We’ve normalized it. It’s so normalized that you don’t even think about it anymore. See, that’s. That’s the problem here, okay? Because you’ve allowed your mind to see so much when you see it again.

You don’t understand. Oh, that’s another entrapment for you. You’re past that. We’re complacent. See, it was impossible to have a full pornographic experience in your room at home back then. That was not possible before. It had direct access to something you hold in your hand. Telephone, wherever you are. Oh, and one of the other patents is mind controls for your cell phone. Part of their artificial intelligence strategy to take over this world is impossible to have the kind of sexual explosion on your mind that you get by looking at a 30 foot high screen, 65 foot wide, watching people committing immoral acts.

We have done it to ourselves. That’s what Satan does. Satan works the system. That’s the wicked side of it. The. The moral side of it. Deception. Deceptively moral side of it is in religion. Okay? We have this concept that we’ve talked about over and over and over again of this corporate church. And understanding. Nowhere in scripture does it talk about religion. Matter of fact, the translation of religion is legion. That’s the root word of it. Satan also operates all false religions in this world. Islam, Muslim brotherhood, Roman Catholic Church and its filtration to every church doctrine in this world.

So Satan operates false religions in the world. False forms of Christianity. He wears clerical garb. He runs certain seminaries, cemeteries and colleges that call themselves Christian and call themselves religious. Their indoctrination centers. He’s in charge of all that. You think God created the educational system? No. They didn’t have schools back then. Why do they create schools? Convenience. Of what? Taking charge of the nuclear family. Take the responsibility off of you. First step, second step was, oh, now we have them. Let’s make it a requirement that they have to participate in this educational system. They did that for a certain amount of years.

Now I got them. They can’t leave. Every child has to be educated. You know, that’s by law. Every child has to be educated. That’s not scripture. And then they said, now let’s take an indoctrinate them so that we get control of generations to come. And when we do that, then we can change the world. That’s exactly what they did in religious colleges and seminaries. It’s exactly what they did. The church. You can’t tell me a church out there that hires anybody that doesn’t have a degree in seminary. Where’s your credentials? Credentials of what? Did Christ call me? Oh, I don’t have credentials for that.

I just have my actions. I have what I understand God’s calling me to do. Did they have universities in the Old Testament? Yes, they did. You had a university in Alexandria. We had a university in Antioch. They had universities then. But they taught. They taught the law, they taught the scripture. When did philosophy come to play? Did you ever think about that? Do we base our whole education system on our system of learning? Matter of fact, English came from a philosopher. By the way, Where did that come. That’s all done by man. So Satan’s in charge of everything in this world.

Did you hear what I just said? Those of you who think that Christ is in charge of this world, you are sorely mistaken. The only thing Christ is in charge of is you. If you allow him to be in charge, That’s it. And he’s also in charge of all of the pornographic industry and every form of sin and the mixture and admixture in between all of that. He’s in charge of everything. So everything you do in this world, you’re doing it following Satan. You hearing me out? Everything you do is at a fallen state. And if you’re not thinking on the things above praying, what? Constantly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year? You’re not doing those obedient things.

How in the world do you think you’re doing on the scale of your battle? So this world system that assaults us with false religion and blatant sin and air and every everything that’s in the middle between all that, that’s the war, guys. That’s the war. The war for us is to walk worthy, recalling, walk in the spirit. That is what your defense. You’re a changed person, you’re, you’re through all of this application process of understanding how you’re supposed to live your life. And if you’re living your life obediently now, you have the right defense and the offense is your mind.

So the war is for us to walk in the spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh. In other words, don’t do anything in this world, don’t associate with this world, don’t love anything in this world. There are many verses that associate right with this in telling you things specifically not to do. The war for us is to live in the spirit and not in the flesh. In other words, you’re to live allowing the Holy Spirit to control you, understanding that your human nature is always going to be there, but you never allow your human nature to control you.

The war for us is to love what is right, holy and just and good, and not find our affections attached to what is evil. Because it is an alluring process that’s presented to us. That’s how Lucifer does. He lures you in little by little by little. And if you don’t see it coming, a switch is going to happen at one time and then you’re going to say, what in the world did I just do? Now, there’s a basic contrast between what God does and what Satan does that can be simply understood. All right, all taken from Scripture.

God reveals truth. What Satan conceals truth. God tells us the truth. Satan tells us lies. God gives us life. Satan takes our life. He has the power of death. God produces spiritual works. Satan produces fleshly works. See, now when the scripture talks about flesh and the mind, it’s talking about your physical ego, self controlling your physical mind. Why? Because everything begins with a thought. So you can’t have action without a thought. So that’s the process. When you understand biologically that that’s how this thing works, then you understand what the root is that you need to work on.

God brings along tests to make us mature. And Satan brings along temptations to destroy us. God sets us free. Satan imprisons us. And it goes on and on and on. And that’s the nature of the scriptures because why it’s telling us about the two systems. This system does this, this system does this, and which one are you going to operate by? What’s your energy source going to be? Who’s your master? Where’s your control points? And so we live in this world. And as I said, the world in which we live today has capabilities to assault us in ways that the worlds of the past didn’t have because we created it to do that.

So the question then comes to us is how do we deal with this and live a triumphal life? That’s really the bottom line question. How can we be born in this world, be saved and then live a triumphant life? How do we overcome these things? Now we got a whole lot of documentation out in the library about overcoming specific situational things in your life. But these things are all around us there. It’s in our face, in our minds. And, and because of that, we’re pondering on them to. To our remaining fallenness. You think about the. That which you think about, you’re gonna act, you’re not to think about things of this world.

You think about the things above. So if you’re, if you’re pondering this world, you’re pondering in such a way that that’s what’s going to happen is this world. So there are some things that we can. We’re going to talk about as very important elements to answer to the question how do we deal with this? One way is to remind yourself that in Hebrews 2:14 is true which says that Jesus came to render powerless the devil. He’s giving you the power to have dominion over him. Or in First John 3, 8 it says the son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil.

You got to recognize this, that Christ has already defeated Satan. He has van vanquished the foe. Satan is not the victor at all. But that victory is over eternal life, your home. The victory in this life is for you to control with your mind. Genesis 3:15 says it that when the seed of the woman came who was the Messiah, he would crush the serpent’s head. That’s why in Romans 16:20 it says that Satan will shortly be put under your feet. See, God’s given you the power through the Holy Spirit to walk on Satan. You have the ability to crush his head.

Select sin that remains in us. We no longer have to sin. We don’t have to lose. He’s not a foe who could overpower us. Why do we have issues is because we create the issues. I think that’s so important for you to get your arms around because there are people who still think that Satan has this kind of invincibly, that invincible ability to overcome. Overcome us overpowers God. And certainly if Satan can overpower God and God’s purposes, he can certainly overpower us. But that is not what the Bible teaches. At the cross he was rendered powerless.

His abilities are completely confined and limited by the sovereign purposes of God. He’s the victim, not the victor. And greater is he that is in you than he’s in the world. That’s first John 4. 4. Now the second thing to understand about this, not only that, the fact that Satan is a vanquished foe and you do not need to collapse under the weight of his efforts because you have what? A greater strength within you. It’s the power source of the Holy Spirit. Remember, you have all of the blessings that Christ, that God gave His Son, and all the power he gave His Son, because you possess the same spirit of His Son.

It’s a matter of what you manifesting that spirit into your life for its control to allow you to what, manifest all the blessings from heaven. Which means now you have all the tool sets. But secondly, after even saying that, you have to follow that up by saying you have to be alert to his efforts and resist them. This is what Revelation tells you. You’re to know your enemy. And a lot of you don’t even study your enemy. Matter of fact, some of you still think, oh, that’s mythology. Oh, I ran across a piece today of a A.

I forget if he’s a Ranger or seal or what, but he’s talking about a helicopter removing a nephilim from a cave. A 50 foot Nephilim weighing 1100 pound, Telling you this stuff is real and it’s here live and well, but it’s been underground. They didn’t need to come up the ground. Why? Because it already conquered you. Why did we have to go through this awakening process of getting you to understand historical truth so you could understand spiritual truth and get back to the knowledge of what’s being revealed to you. Right. What I’m going to post today on the other site was, oh, did you guys see the meat market? The human meat market? Orthodox Jews, Oregon harvesting and trafficking.

Rabbis. Think about that. First Peter 5. Be sober. In other words, get your priorities right. And in order for those priorities to be right, you must think straight. Be on the alert. This is your offense. Be on the alert. For the devil goes about like a roaring, lying, seeking whom he may devour. You have to be aware of what’s going on around you. And in James 4:7 it says, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Why? Because when you resist the devil, you put out God’s energy and he has to go. So while we understand he’s a vanquished foe, and that itself does not mean that he’s not going to have an impact on us, all right, he’s just been conquered.

We are. And if we are not alert, sober minded, straight thinking, thinking clearly, thinking biblically and doing everything we can to avoid this roaring line. In other words, you got to know your enemy, you got to know what’s coming, and you live your life on the offense. You can’t get there. What. Unless you have created the right defense, which is the obedience of your renewed body, your regeneration, being obedient to give you access to Jesus Christ so that he can become sanctified in him. And it’s that sanctification that gives you your offense. Now, bringing you down a little further.

And I might just get this in the foundational elements tonight. We’ll pick this up maybe next week. Depends on how far we get because. Or I’m taking my time in this because I want you to get it and put your. Get your arms around it because this is a way of life. It’s not something that, oh, this has happened to me. Here’s my tool, okay? You can’t go, oh, you know, I got hit on the side of the head today. You know, what do I do? I go get the Bible and I put it up here and I would heal you.

Understand what I’m saying? This is a lifestyle, so you have to grab it and understand as a lifestyle. So the third thing you need to realize is that you cannot give any room for his entry. You can’t open any door, not even a crack, because if he’s got a crack, it’s going to be open because he’s got the foothold, see? And. And if the crack is there, you don’t know about it. So how are you going to prevent that door from opening up anymore? You’re not on the offense. So Ephesians 4:27 says this. Do not give the devil an opportunity.

That’s part of your application. Ephesians 4. Do not give. Give the devil any opportunity. Don’t put yourself in a situation where you give him an opportunity. Yes, he is the victim, and he’s going to present himself that way. But you got to recognize that you have a greater power within you still. You have to think clearly, maintain spiritual priorities, be alert at all times, resisting him strong in the Christian faith, that is to say, the truth of sound doctrine and theology. Why did Paul write his 14 epistles the way he did? Because he wrote them to the church.

You have. The first half is doctrine and theology. This is the principles that you need to live by, guys. And, oh, Paul describes the devil’s process in those principles and then the last half of the epistle, his application on the principles he just talked about in the first half of the Epistle, You never give him room for him to have any entry. And the only way to do that is don’t give him an opportunity. And if you can’t, if you’re not, if you’re going to stop giving him an opportunity, it means you got to get yourself out of this world.

World. You have to put your mind in the spiritual world and allow that to control the physical world. Now let’s bring it down a little further. You need to be free from temptation, all right? Because the temptation is what Satan’s going to do to you to begin to open that little crack, which. Which is that. That imp eating at you all the time. And when that crack opens, you’re not going to know it. You’re not going to know it. Second Timothy 2:22 says this. Flee youthful lust and pursue righteousness. You have to run from the things that give Satan an opportunity.

Run from what? Television, books, theater, music, food. Okay? You have to do what your discernment that the Holy Spirit’s the only one can discern. By the way, you can’t do it. So you have to allow the Holy Spirit to discern through you. And as to what you need to be doing, That’s the other side. Bringing it down even a little further is to give control of your life to Christ. See, that’s the ultimate route. That’s the ultimate route. 2nd Corinthians 10:5 says, Bringing every thought captive to Christ. What did I just say? Every thought. Guys, you think about 10,000 plus thoughts a day.

A lot of them doesn’t register in your mind, but they register in your subconscious. And if you have no control over what you do, your subconscious mind is going to take hold. So you need to have. What did I. What did I say? I don’t know, a week or so ago. You need. And John brought this up, what he does at night, you know, in. In the last prayer before you go to sleep. Okay, because you want to ask God to put you in a rest state with his control. Why? Because you want your subconscious mind to be under his control.

It’s got to be captive to Christ. Your thoughts have to be captive to what Christmas operates them. First Corinthians 2:16 says, we have the mind of Christ. Right? We’ve already talked about that. You need to put. You need to think like God thinks. And he gives you his mind, new new body regeneration. He gives you the ability of a new Mind, but you have to build it. You have to build it. It’s a seed. You got to grow the seed. If you don’t grow the seed, you’re not going to have access. Think like Christ thinks. Or in Philippians 2, have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

It didn’t say Jesus Christ, it said Christ Jesus. Why? Because Christ is kingdom of God. Jesus is kingdom of heaven, earth. So Paul got what? The keys of the kingdom of God, which means that he brings heaven down to us, not the law. He brings Jesus Christ from the Holy Spirit to us to indwell in us, heaven to earth. So everything that Paul writes about, he uses Christ Jesus, not Jesus Christ. That’s different from Peter. Peter got the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And everything Peter writes about is Jesus Christ law to heaven. So those are things we should all be familiar with as Christians.

Hopefully, guys, we all should be familiar with those. Those are sort of the basics. Living a godly life in an ungodly world, right? Your t, your, your citizenship, your citizenship that basically living in a foreign state. But there’s another way to say all that. There’s another way to grab all of that and put it into a memorable format. And it’s this, Paul’s words. Put on the whole armor of God. That’s what he’s saying. Make your life God’s. Don’t forget to feed it, don’t forget to do the things to grow it. Put on the whole armor of God.

And that brings us now into what we’re going to look at and we’re going to start this. There’s no way in looking at the material I have. We’re going to finish it tonight. We’ll pick it up next week and finish it then. The armor of God is just another way to pull all of these components together in a memorable fashion. And Paul uses the mental image of a soldier because he’s talking to the church and he’s got to give them an example of what he’s talking about. So he uses the Roman soldier. Now we have the best outfitter army ever.

We have the best commander in chief. We have the most powerful force that ever walked on the earth. But if you go out without your armor, you’re going to be vulnerable. So you got to put on this armor and then you can handle every everything that the enemy brings. So let’s look again at the armor. Ephesians 6, the first thing we saw, and this will bring you down to verse 14 in the opening words, was stand firm. Stand firm. Now that’s what we’re talking about here. Standing firm under the assault of Satan in the world system.

How that having girded your loins with the truth. What’s the truth? Scripture, the belt of truth we talked about last time. Since Satan is a liar and the father of lies. So Scripture tells you, know your enemy, know your enemy, self assessment. White lies are still alive, guys. And if you lie, what have you just done? The truth is the truth is the truth. He tells you to speak the truth. Why do you lie? Why do you like? It is obvious that you must know the truth. Sanctification, guys, it’s obvious you have to go through sanctification, but that’s really not the main issue here.

The word Athea. Athea is used in the sense of truthfulness and commitment based on that truth or conviction tied to the truth. In other words, you’re putting Christ’s system inside of you. Did you hear what I just said? The spirit realm, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit lives inside of you. So what you you have is you have all of the power of heaven at your disposal. And you can’t use it if you don’t understand what it is or if it is even there. In other words, as a Christian, you must not only understand the truth, study to show yourself approved the truth, but you must fully embrace the truth obedience with the kind of conviction that makes you determined to go out and and to battle against all lies and deceptions.

You’re to be bold in confrontation of evil. You’re not to sit on a couch and you’re not to be timid and you don’t care whether the truth hurts or not. Your presentation needs to be humble and with love. That’s scripture. But you’re to be bold and attacking. In other words, you’re serious about the warfare. This is your commitment to your battle. Last time, remember I told you the first thing that a Roman soldier did, he wore a tunic. It was like a dress. He put a sash around it, his waist or a belt around his waist and pulled up the tunic inside so it became a mini tunic so he could move rapidly.

And he cinched the belt or sash down so it wouldn’t allow flying around of the tunic in the breeze when he was in a hand toand combat or he could run. It wasn’t loose there, no loose ends. All right, you should have no loose ends of the truth. You see this belt that Paul was talking about and the analogy he was making about the tunic to give make sure the tunic was Tucked in all the way that he had no loose ends so that it didn’t interfere with the battle. That was the analogy he was trying to make.

You should have no loose ends in your understanding of the truth. The belter what Righteousness. You should have no loose ends in understanding the truth. Peter says it the same way. Remember we talked about this. Gird up your loins first. Peter 1. Tie all the loose ends of your life together, square it up with what you know to be true and make a commitment to live according to the truth. That’s what they’re telling me. Lifestyle. That’s the start. That’s where everything starts. Because you can’t do this if you don’t know what it is you got to do.

That’s the reason why sanctification is a must reason why Christ says you need to be sanctified in Christ. Bottom line, you’re really not going to win the forays, the battle that, that, that come with Satan if you’re not committed to foreign. Let’s go back to Trump. Just a moment. You’re going to get so tired of winning that you’re going to tell me to stop. Okay, Think about it. God’s going to, if you do this, God is going to bless you so much you’re going to say, God, I can’t handle any more blessing. And I can tell you testimonies of people that live this way that talks to God just like that.

I, I can’t deal with any more of this. I, I, I don’t know what to do with all of this. God’s serious about it though. He gave you every blessing in heaven and he manifest, he manifests it to you. It’s in your inventory. It’s only you that can keep it from coming. The second thing that we talked about last time was the breastplate of righteousness. This is obvious. If you have an image of a soldier in ancient days, they had a breastplate. And I also said last time when we talked about this, that some preachers think that is the breastplate of the priest with all the 12 stone.

No, that’s not what this is all right, at all. To cover their vital organs. That’s why they wore the best plate. The breastplate that we must wear is that kind of righteousness. We’re not talking about forensic righteousness or imputed righteousness. We talked about that in, in detail in our last session. That comes to us from Christ, but that imparted righteousness, that personal holiness that protects us from sin. That’s what we’re Talking about the breastplate is holiness. Where do we get that? Ephesians 4. Humble lowliness, holiness, righteousness, on and on and on. Unless you walk in holiness on a daily basis, you’re in trouble.

Remember this is a lifestyle I mentioned last time. Romans chapter 13. It’s worthy of another mention here. And we’re going to start verse 11 which says, knowing that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep, for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. The night is almost gone, the day is at hand. Let us therefore lay aside the deeds of the darkness and put on the armor of light. What does that mean? It’s talking about your behavior. Don’t behave in a carousing, drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, sensual. Sensuality, strife and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Make no provisions for the flesh for its lust. That’s what it’s talking about. Make no provision for the flesh for its lust. In other words, you don’t think about your human nature, Therefore you don’t think about this world. See, first of all you got to know the truth because you can’t, you can’t operate in this world if you don’t know the truth because you’re going to operate as the world. I said you can’t operate in the world unless you know the truth. Because if you don’t know the truth, you’re operating as the world. Do you understand what I’m saying? The truth is your conviction, subconscious mind.

And you go out to battle and you have committed to living the truth. Secondly, you protect yourself by putting on holiness and righteousness. What does that look like? Well, he tells you what it doesn’t look like. Look like. Okay, remember we’re dealing with a law of duality. So if he tells you one way, you can, you can actually know what the other way is. He tells you what it shouldn’t look like. That’s probably the best way to do it anyway because now you can self assess yourself, all right? Sensuality and all those other things, sexual promiscuity, etc.

Etc. Etc. He also tells you what it doesn’t look like when, when he says put on the Lord Jesus Christ. You’re to put on Christ likeness, you’re to be like him. Well that’s a pretty hefty thing. You can just take down your self assessment and decide what is Christ like and what’s not. Pretty easy to do. Now that brings us to the two more that we’re going to get to. We’re going to just Set the motion. Tonight we’ll pick these up two more pieces of the armor. Look at verse 15 for the first one. After hearing shod your feet.

I’m sorry, after having shot your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Having shot your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Now I think in our society which we live in, in the United States particularly, because we would pretty much permeate the world and it’s probably in most other societies as well, even down to the time of our Lord’s life on earth, people understood the importance of having the right shoes, right? If you got a size 10ft, you’re not going to wear a size 8 shoe. The reverse, if you got a size 8 foot, you’re not going to put on a size 10 because you’re going to fall off.

You have to put on the right shoes. And particularly if you happen to be a soldier engaged in battle, Think about the Roman soldier, all right? He had to have the right shoes. He had to have the right shoes, as you learned, with nails in them or something to have him stand fast in the battle. Remember, they stuck in the ground like cleats. You have to have the right shoes. Now guys, I’ve never fought in a war. I’ve fought martial arts, but, but I want to be fluid. I don’t want to have my feet steadfast on, on a mat.

I don’t want to get, you know, kicked. I want to be able to move. So I’ve never fallen a war. The Lord has. Great has. Was gracious to me in that number one. I was the only male figure in my family. I happened to be the last namesake of our whole family at the time. And the, and the draft stopped my senior year in high school, so I had my, I was, I was number 63. I was gone and it stopped and. But with the rules of the draft, when I registered, they were going to take me anyway because they won’t take the last namesake of your family.

So. But while the military didn’t take me, sports did, by the way. I got to play some semi professional sport, mainly baseball. So I played in those sports and, and I did martial arts. And that’s about the closest thing that I came to any combat. As you know, martial arts can be mortal in some cases. I have vivid memories in some cases of some of those fights and wonder why in the world I ever did it. But I love the discipline of it and I find myself in certain situations going all the way right back to the training immediately if I, I Mean, it’s like, it’s, it’s rote memory in my cells, in my muscles.

It, it just, it’s there. So shoes are important. If they’re important in an athletic contest, they’re certain important in some kind of hand, mortal combat. If you’re a soldier, armies have been defeated for lack of shoes. Now have you ever read that in history, in any history book? Did you know armies were defeated because of lack of shoes? Even in America in the Revolutionary War. One of the greatest problems in our Revolutionary War when the Americans were trying to fight against the British, was they, they were barefoot because their shoes had worn out. They didn’t have multiple pair of shoes on the battlefield.

They didn’t have a replenishment. You went with the shoes that you’re wearing at home and when they wore out, you fought barefooted. That’s our history guys. You know an old adage, for the want of an L, the kingdom was lost. You know what that’s about? For the one of an ill, the shoe was lost. For the one of a shoe, the horse was lost. For the one of a horse, the soldier was lost. For the want of a soldier, the kingdom was lost. How you shot yourself is very important. The Romans understood that. The Romans understood that it is was essential to make sure that the soldier with everything else that he had, and particularly because he was carrying and wearing was relatively heavy, that he could stabilize himself with the right chair and remember now what we’re really talking about.

Let’s go back to 4 verse 14. It says in standing firm, slipping is not a good hand toand combat slipping. And guys, what did I say? There should be no, no loose ends of the truth because why you slip, You slip. In Roman times there are historical accounts of long marches. Well, that’s all. I mean they had, they had horses back then, but people, the, the army didn’t ride horses. They marched. The elites rode the horses. The Roman arming amazingly had long marches over terrible terrain. Wearing out the leather in their shoes, Roman historians tell us that took the toll in thousands and thousands of lives.

In the battle they wore out their shoes. Marching. Proper shoes were essential because if you’re not firm on the ground, it doesn’t matter what you do, Your whole body will be immediately debilitated and your shoes are the vital component for that. Now apply that to you. Now the Roman soldiers generally wore a very tough sandal. It was very, very tough leather with straps holding it for it on firmly. And they did. And, and what they did was they pounded nails from the Inside through the bottom, thick hob nails, studs like football cleats. And that gave them stability and the ability to stand firm in, in their footing.

And as they engaged in the fight to run up or down the hill without slipping and sliding. A familiar device in ancient warfare learning history was to place traps in the ground. IUDs today, I. Okay, These are precursors to the minds. Like I just said, we, we know about that, that we should because that’s what sends our people home. Messed up. People who cross minefields are blown up. Before there were mind fields in the ancient times, they would take sticks. You ever watch, I think Rambo, you know, you know, Rambo took and made sticks in the ground with sharp ends and put a, put a very thin layer of gray grass or weeds or, or, or leaves so that when you walked over it, the, the thing that was holding it up would break and you would fall in and fall on top of the sticks.

Kill yourself. In Vietnam, they made those and hung them trees. And when you walk by and you, you hit the trip switch, it would come flying down from the tree and yeah, piney sticks and, and, and kill you. The sticks would stick inside of you, kill you. Okay, that’s what you’re talking about. That process came from Rome. That’s what the Romans used to do. They would sharpen the points. They would bury them in the ground. And the points sticking up, invariably the point sticking up out of the ground would rip the foot the barefoot soldier, or penetrate readily to a weak piece of leather.

They were setting traps to remove you from the battlefield. These hidden traps were, were great dangers because if you had your foot injured, you’re done, you can’t do anything. So any slashes or bleeding infection arose meant debilitation. You were done with. And Paul uses a spiritual parallel to this very familiar part of the soldier’s uniform or armor. So he says in verse 15, your feet have your feet shod with a preparation of gospel of peace. The idea here is made ready, equipped, your feet are prepared the feeder be equipped for the battle like all other vital parts.

Now, through the years of, of churches, most commentators have said what this means is that you have a symbolic call to evangelism. Well, no, because basically we’re dealing with the understanding of a lifestyle. And evangelism is an element after you’ve got sanctified. So we’re dealing with something much different than evangelism. But they get it from an idea from Romans chapter 10:15. Blessed are the feet of those who preach the good news, which is a quote from Isaiah 52:7, by the way. But the Romans 10:15 verse is not a verse to explain what Paul is talking about in the first place.

That has nothing to do with warfare. Evangelism has nothing to do with warfare. We’re talking about you, only you. We’re talking about the application of the principle in Ephesians 4, 5, 6 to you as the individual. So it has nothing to do with warfare. That has nothing to do with shoes. Evangelism, by the way. That’s just saying that the people who hear the gospel will bless the people who brought it to them. That’s offerings. Paul is not talking about going anywhere. He’s not talking about traversing any place. He’s not talking about taking the gospel to anybody.

He’s talking about standing. Not going standing. Fast, steadfast. With what truth? Righteousness. Now shouting your feet with the gospel of peace. That’s what he’s talking about. He’s talking about you being steel. The issue is not evangelism. The issue is taking a firm stand in a battle against the devil as he assaults your life. It’s like 1 Corinthians 16:13. Stand fast in the faith. The idea here is that our feet need to be equipped to stand firmly when the attacking blows come. What is it that can allow the believer to stand unflinching, take his stand, never slip, never slide, never fall under attack? What is it? What is it that gives us our firm footing? It is having your feet prepared with the gospel of peace.

Now, what does the Gospel of peace mean? Well. Well, the gospel of peace is what? The gospel. When you understand the gospel, accept the gospel by faith. In the finished works of Jesus Christ, you have what? Peace. So it’s sometimes called the Gospel of Christ. It’s sometimes called the Gospel of God, like Romans 1. And here it’s called the Gospel of Peace. It’s talking about the same thing. It’s talking about your understanding of the gospel. The what? Scriptures. What is the gospel of peace? It is the good news that you have made peace with God. He’s in control.

You’re at peace with that. Now, that’s the theme of the opening verses of Romans 5. What did I say? Doctrine, theology had first half of every epistle application, last half. What Paul is saying is, I am now taking this. Remember, he’s talking to the church. I’m now taking this and moving it from an individual’s perspective into the church as a collective. Look at this. Romans 5, verse 1. Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. What does it mean to be at peace with God? It simply means that God is not our enemy, but God is our strength, our power source.

You’re at peace to know that he’s got your back. You’re at peace to know he’s protecting you. And you have peace to know that when you allow him to control your life, the temptation of sin basically almost goes away because the Holy Spirit is your discerner. That means that they see what’s coming at you and will discern the truth for you and notify your mind something’s up. They knock on that little brain and say, hey, pay attention, here we go. And it takes you right Back to Ephesians 6:10. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

It means he’s on your side. We stand firm because we know that we are, in reality, invincible. Did you hear what I just said? Reality, human nature. This world, this fallen state. You’re invincible. Why, she got the best commander in chief. You got the only power. You got the. The most power. Best power source in the. In the whole world. And if you’re obedient, in line to control you, you’re invincible. There’s nothing going to happen to you. Yeah, Satan will come at us, tempt us one way or the other. He knows your whole playbook. But when we are firm in the great truth that we are at peace with God, therefore God is on our side.

That’s what. That’s what was in Peter’s mind when he grabbed a sword in the garden and whacked off the first available ear and was going to go through the whole crowd. What made him feel so strong, this man who could so easily be a coward? Well, Jesus was standing beside him right there. And what had Jesus just done? He declared himself to his enemy. He identified himself. The entire crowd of hundreds of people fell over flat when he spoke his identity. That’s what happened when the Roman soldiers came up. Ask him if he was the Jesus from Nazareth.

When he declared his identity, everybody fell to the ground. Now, I want you to think about what scripture says. Christ says, you don’t. You shall know me. Every knee is going to bow to me. Who’s the greatest power source you want? We want the one that can still give you a lot of good, a lot of stuff. You see that from Hollywood. You can give you financial freedom, sort of, but it can give you your pleasure. And you want the power source that’s going to Give you the whole blessings from heaven that includes all those riches.

Your issue is obedience. See, you have what, nothing to fear. You know, Those of you been around me know, know a lot, a lot of ways. I. I’d like to talk about scripture a lot. You get me on other subjects and I pretty much am a quiet person. Just, you know, let the conversation go, see what, listen, see what happens. But I’ve been asked off and on through my years of study, do you fear what the devil can do to you? And my common answer is no. No, I don’t feel that at all, see, because I know who’s on my side and I know whose side I’m on.

I’ve made peace with God. When God is on my side, with the full power that he brings to bear on behalf of his own in defending us, I have no fear. Nothing is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ. Nothing. That’s Romans 8. Nothing. In fact, that passage is so powerful, it’s worth reading. If God is for us, what’s the rest? Who can be against us? Romans 8:31. Say, if he didn’t spare his own son, but delivered him up for all of us, how will not. How will he not also with him freely give us all things? Do you ever think about that? That’s the only way we get it.

If he gave up His Son for us when we were sinners, what would he withhold from us now that we’re saints? He gave us everything that he had in heaven before the foundation of the world. And he executed the plan through predestination and calling you to salvation, to allow you to regenerate yourself in order to obtain everything that he has given you before you were ever born. Who will separate us from the love of God? Well, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. Those are all things Paul personally experienced. And they didn’t separate him even when he were was put to death, as it were, all day long, even when we’re considered as sheep to be slaughtered in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us.

I’ll close this and I’ll pick it back up. I’m convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, or any other created thing is able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is this kind of revelation, realization that gives us the security to hold our ground. I don’t feel like I need to become a monk. I Loved having lunch with them. It was kind of cool. They have so many rituals. Unbelievable. I don’t feel like I need to have my eyes plucked out so I can’t see anything.

I don’t think I need to flagellate my body or wound it or injure it or harm it in any way to push down the flesh like you saw in whatever that movie was. Oh, the Tom Hanks movie of. Of whatever it was about the church guy took a. A belt and whipped his back for just because I don’t think I need to do that. I don’t think I need to do anything that I think where I’m going to end up in hell. I. I just don’t do that. I’m very secure in my salvation. I take the word of God at face value as the truth.

I know that whoever the father chooses, he gives to the son. Whoever he gives to the son, the Son receives. Whoever the son receives, the Son keeps and raises them all at the last day. The Da Vinci Code. Yep. John six says that I have no fear of that. Therefore I have no fear of Satan. I stand firm in the truth. I stand firm against the onslaught of Satan and the confidence that God is on my side and his strength is fully available to me. I think I have all the power that heaven has to offer.

And I think that power is available to me. At will. We’re going to stop here for time wise. We’ll pick it up next week and we’ll get into more detail. Any questions? Comments? Yes, Sam, A question on the shot. So that was basically badger made up of antelope skin and that covered the tabernacle as well. So that is covering our feet of protection walking on Satan’s planet or Earth. Yes. All right. It just goes back to what we studied back in Deuteronomy and Exodus. Jim. Right. The same thing that protected the tabernacle is the same thing that created shoes.

Now think about that. So one more. Was it Ezekiel? It was early on. Ezekiel. God explained a suit that we were supposed to wear with linen. Fine shots, all that. Is that the representation also of the armor? Armor of God. Old Testament language for the armor of God. All right, thank you. I’ll have to look and see what verse that was. I can’t remember. I think it was in chapter three. I’m trying to go through my head, but I could be wrong on that as well. But it’s early in Ezekiel. Anything else, guys? And let’s pray.

Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for another time in your word. More truth, more understanding, the conditioning of application of life’s principles that we need to follow. Number one, we want to thank you for giving unto Paul in such a manner that he could actually give them to us. And thank you for interpreting your words in languages, language that we can understand. Father, I thank you for the the time tonight, the visiting with the Holy Spirit and his family. I thank you for your son, the death of your son, the resurrection and ascension, because without that, this body system would not be complete and we wouldn’t have the ability to go home.

Father, be with us. Continue to work with us on sanctification. Continue to work with us on transfer of knowledge and wisdom and revelation. And may we ever look to you and understanding that we know we have no fear when we live our life through you, and we ask these things in your son’s name.
[tr:tra].