Spiritual War

➡ Paul, the voiceover for a ministry called Your Daily Bread, shares a message about spiritual warfare and the power of God’s love. He emphasizes that there is nothing to fear, even from the devil, because God is on our side and nothing can separate us from His love. Paul encourages listeners to stand firm in their faith, confident in God’s strength and protection. He also stresses the importance of living a holy life, being committed to the truth, and being bold in spiritual battles.
➡ In ancient battles, soldiers used large, oblong shields (thurion) for full protection. These shields, about four feet tall and two feet wide, were planted in the ground, allowing soldiers to hide behind them. This strategy was used in the initial phases of battle, providing a solid line of protection against enemy attacks. However, these shields were set aside during hand-to-hand combat, where smaller shields or swords were used instead.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pune at God Is Government, called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6.11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting the Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focus discussion will be spiritual war. Nothing to fear. You have nothing to fear.

People have asked me that through the years. Don’t you fear what the devil can do to you? No. Because I know who’s on my side and whose side I’m on. I have made peace with God. God is on my side with the full power that He brings to bear on behalf of His own in defending us. And that’s what we heard in the testimony a little earlier. Nothing is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ, right? Nothing, Romans 8. Nothing. In fact, that passage is so powerful it’s worth reading.

If God is for us, what’s the rest? Who’s going to spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all? How will He not also with Him freely give us all things? If He gave up His Son for us when we were sinners, what would He withhold from us now that we’re saints? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. Those are all things Paul personally experienced, and they didn’t separate him, no. Even when we were 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 am 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 realisation that gives us the security to hold our ground. I don’t feel like I need to become a monk. 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 and wound it and injure it and harm it somehow to push down the flesh, otherwise I’m going to end up in hell.

I am 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 that day, John 6. 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, in the confidence that God is on my side, and His strength is fully available to me.

We had a group of people come to this church years ago from another church, and I said what was it that brought you here? They said, we all visited this church on a Sunday when you preached that God is sovereign, and we never went back. Because up to that point, we lived under teaching that Satan was sovereign, and we could no longer stand the sovereignty of Satan idea. He’ll kill your children, He’ll give you diseases, He’ll fill your house with demons, and you’ve got to pray Him out of every room, and out of your baby’s crib, and on and on and on and on.

You’re not ready to engage in the war, if you’re not confident of the strength of the Lord. And if you don’t know it well, remember Judges 7, the host of Midian, came against God’s people, and Israel gathered an army of 32,000 total. And God said, I don’t need 32,000, just give me 300. Remember, just give me 300. And they won. And they won. We were all born in rebellion against God, but while we were enemies, God loved us. And while we were enemies, Christ died for us. And we have made peace with God, and God is on our side, and all the power is ours.

You know, I’ve taught the Christian’s armour for many, many years. It’s always new, it’s always fresh, and I always say different things. But I never come to this particular point, and I don’t think of an incident that happened when I was in junior high. And most of my junior high is long forgotten, only several things that I remember. One of them was, I was a preacher’s kid, and I wouldn’t dance, so I got an F in algebra. I’ll never forget that. That was not fair. It’s not worth telling you the story.

I had to take it all over again. I hated it both times. You know, it has to do with who’s behind you, right? Where your strength comes from. It’s so wonderful to know that you can go into this world. We can penetrate this world, folks. We don’t have to become monks. We don’t have to go hide somewhere to find safe ground. We can penetrate the world. We have to penetrate the world, don’t we? In that sense, it is we have to carry the gospel of peace, but we can be firm and take our stand because we know where the power is behind us, and it is the absolutely sufficient power provided by the Lord Jesus Christ.

So you want to be triumphant in your Christian life. We’ve looked at three pieces of armour that help us to understand what that means. Ask yourself, first of all, with regard to the belt, do you really want to win? How much does it matter? That’s the first issue. If you’re content to live in the low ground, if you’re content to live with your petty sins, if you’re content with your marginal commitment to worship, with your indifference to the things of God, you’ll lose. You’ll lose repeatedly and you’ll lose severely. You’re not going to lose your salvation, but you’re going to render yourself virtually useless to the purposes of God.

Therefore, you’ll forfeit an eternal reward and you’ll wind up under divine chastening instead of enjoying the benefits of blessing. So ask yourself, are you pulling in the loose ends of your life? Do you really want to go into this battle? Are you committed to the truth? Do you have convictions about the truth? And are you willing to go to war for those convictions? Secondly, do you seek to support that with a holy life? Or are you content with your sin? Really, another way to look at the same thing. Thirdly, do you have the kind of confidence that it takes to march into the den of the roaring lion? It’s a wonderful thing.

Yeah, I think back. People have asked me so many times. When I go on television and I talk to these people in very, very adversarial environments where I don’t even know what they’re going to say and the whole world is watching and all that on CNN or whatever, do I have confidence? And I just remember what Jesus said to his disciples. Don’t worry about what you’re going to say. When you get there, I’ll tell you what to say. And while I’m not an apostle and don’t get divine revelation, it is amazing what comes out of my mouth that I haven’t planned to say.

I don’t have any fear of what they’re going to do to me. I don’t have any fear they’re going to destroy my faith, no matter what arguments they make. I’m confident in the one who supports me. If God is for me, who can be against me? So do I really want to win? Do I seek to live a holy life? And am I bold in the battle, confident in the strength that is provided for me? That brings us to the fourth part of our book, but I can introduce it to you.

Shield of faith, the shield of faith. Now, obviously, if you have any familiarity whatsoever with ancient armor, you’re very familiar with the idea of a shield. So verse 16 says, in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one. Now what are we talking about? Well, we’ve got to make the image clear because that helps us to understand the analogy. There’s several kinds of shields that were used by different armies and by different branches of the same Roman army.

For example, if you were a gladiator, you’ve probably seen depictions of this. If you were a gladiator, if you were among the Greeks, for example, you would use a shield that was very small, very round, and you would hold it in your hand, and it would wrap around your wrist, and it would be easy to move the shield around to parry the those that were coming at you in that kind of environment. If you were right-handed, of course, it would be strapped to your opposite arm, and then with this one, you would make the thrust with your own dagger.

With the other one, you would use the shield to parry the thrusts that were coming from your mortal enemy. This is a small, lightweight, usually pounded metal, pounded very thin, designed for the free movement of the soldier in this kind of hand-to-hand combat. That’s not the word here, that’s a different word. The word here, thurion, is not a small shield. It’s probably around four feet in height and about two or two and a half feet in width. The design of this shield was to put it in the ground and be able to put your entire body behind it.

This is a large, oblong shield, like a small door, designed for full protection. You wouldn’t be holding it when you got into hand-to-hand combat. It was designed for full protection in the initial phases of ancient battles. Now, you know how ancient armies used to fight in a line called a phalanx? They would come like a side-winding snake across the ground like this, all shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder. You see that even in the Revolutionary War. The British were still doing that, getting picked off like sitting ducks as they marched shoulder-to-shoulder. Well, the ancient armies did that, and they first put the soldiers with these thurion shields, these whole shields that gave the frontline complete protection.

There would be many rows of those, and the bodies would be able to hide behind them so they couldn’t be hit by anything flying in the air. And behind them were the archers, who would be shooting their arrows over the rows and rows of shielded soldiers out front. And they would move, eventually, that way across the land. A solid line of protection until they engaged the enemy in the hand-to-hand combat, when those shields would be laid aside because they were useless and you would go to battle with if you had another one, a smaller shield, or if not, you just fought with your sword.

What is this? Well, please notice some very important components. In addition to all, the NAS says, I think the old authorized said above all. Doesn’t mean it’s more important, it simply means on top of everything else. You have to have our belt on, pull all the loose ends in, you have to have your breastplate on, protect your vital organs, you have to have your shoes on to be able to stand firm. And above that, on top of that, in addition to that, you need to get a shield. This provides double protection, really does.

We’re going to talk about a minute. Your helmet, which you already have to cover your head, your breastplate, which you already have to cover your vital organs, and this is double protection. That’s what above all means. Above the shield, above the shoes, and above the sash, or the belt, and above the breastplate, you need to have the shield. But it’s not only that. In addition to those three, you take three more. The shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, verses 16 and 17. Shield of faith, verse 16.

Verse 17, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of spiritual war. Nothing to fear. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. you
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