Preventing Satan Entry

➡ Paul, the voice-over for the ministry ‘Your Daily Bread’, encourages listeners to strengthen their spiritual connection with Christ through daily devotions. He emphasizes the importance of being alert and resisting Satan’s influence by not giving him any opportunity to enter our lives. He advises listeners to flee from temptation, control their lives by thinking like Christ, and put on the ‘armour of God’ to protect themselves. This armour includes truth, commitment, righteousness, and personal holiness, which are essential for living a godly life and resisting Satan’s attacks.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voice-over for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh 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 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 focused discussion will be preventing Satan, entry. While we understand he’s a vanquished foe, that in itself does not mean that he’s not going to have an impact on us if we are not alert, sober-minded, thinking clearly, thinking biblically, and doing everything we can to avoid this roaring lion.

Bringing you down a little further, the third thing you need to realise is that you cannot give any room for his entry. Ephesians 4.27 says, Don’t put yourself in a situation where you give him an opportunity. Yes, he is the victim, not the victor. You recognise 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, never giving room for him to have entry, giving him no opportunity.

Bringing it down further, flee from temptation. Second Timothy 2.22 says, You have to run from the things that give Satan an opportunity. The other side of that, bringing it down even further, is to give control of your life to Christ. Second Corinthians 10.5 says, Bringing every thought captive to Christ. First Corinthians 2.16 says, We have the mind of Christ. Think like Christ thinks. Or, Philippians 2, Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Those are things we’re all familiar with as Christians, right? Those are sort of the basics of living a godly life in an ungodly world.

But there’s another way to say all of that. There’s another way to grab all of that, pull it into one memorable format. And it’s this, put on the whole armour of God. Put on the whole armour of God. And that brings us to our text. The armour of God is just another way to pull all of those components together in a memorable fashion, in a mental image of a soldier. We have the best outfitted army ever. We have the best commander in chief. We are the most powerful force that’s ever walked on the earth.

But if you go out without your armour, you’re going to be vulnerable. Put it on, and you can handle anything the enemy brings. So let’s look again at the armour. Ephesians 6. First thing we saw, and this will bring you down to where we left off last time in verse 14, to the opening words, Stand firm. That’s what we’re talking about here. Standing firm under the assault of Satan in the world system. Stand firm. How? Having girded your loins with truth. The belt of truth we talked about that last time.

Since Satan is a liar and the father of lies, it is obvious that you must know the truth. But that’s really not the main issue here. The word aletheia is used in the sense of truthfulness or commitment based on that truth or conviction tied to that truth. In other words, as a Christian, you must not only understand the truth, but you must fully embrace the truth with the kind of conviction that makes you determined to go out and to battle against all lies and deception. In other words, you’re serious about the warfare.

This is commitment to the battle. Remember I told you the first thing a Roman soldier did? He wore a tunic, it was like a dress, put a sash around his waist, or a belt around his waist, and pulled up his tunic inside so that it became a mini tunic so he could move rapidly. Cinch that belt or sash down so it wasn’t flying around in the breeze when he was in a hand-to-hand combat. Pulled in all the loose ends. Peter says the same thing, remember? Gird up your loins, 1 Peter 1.

Tie all the loose ends of your life together, square up with what you know to be true, and make a commitment to live according to the truth. That’s where it starts. Bottom line, you’re really not going to win the forays, the battles that come with Satan if you’re not committed to winning. Get serious about it. 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 of one kind or another. We talked about the kinds last time, to cover their vital organs.

The breastplate that we must wear is that of righteousness, not talking about forensic righteousness or imputed righteousness that comes to us from Christ, but that imparted righteousness, that personal holiness that protects us from sin. The breastplate is holiness, righteous living. Unless you walk in holiness on a daily basis, you’re in trouble. I mentioned Romans chapter 13. It’s worth another mention and 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 darkness and put on the armour of light. What does that mean? Don’t put on sexual promiscuity, sensuality, strife and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Make no provision for the flesh, for its lusts. That’s what we’re talking about. First of all, you know the truth, the truth is your conviction, and you go out to battle, 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, sensuality, and all of those other things, sexual promiscuity, et cetera, et cetera, and he also tells you what it doesn’t look like when he says put on the Lord Jesus Christ, put on Christlikeness.

Now that brings us to two more for tonight. Two more pieces of armour if we have time. Look at verse 15 for the first one, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. I think in the society in which we live, it’s probably in most societies, even down to the time of our Lord’s life on earth. People understood the importance of having the right shoes, particularly if you happen to be a soldier engaged in a battle.

Shoes are important. If they’re important in an athletic contest, they’re certainly important in some kind of hand-to-hand mortal combat. Armies have been defeated for lack of shoes. Have you read that in history? You know enough about history? Even in America, in the Revolutionary War, one of the greatest problems in the Revolutionary War, when the Americans were trying to fight against the British, was they were barefoot because their shoes were worn out. You know the old adage, for the want of a nail? The kingdom was lost. You know what that’s about. For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost.

For the want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For the want of the horse, the soldier was lost. For the want of the soldier, the kingdom was lost. How you shod yourself is very important. The Romans understood that. The Romans understood that it was essential to make sure that the soldier, with everything else that he had, and particularly because what he was carrying and wearing was relatively heavy, that he could stabilize himself. And remember now, what we’re talking about, please, if you go back to the beginning of verse 14, is standing firm.

Standing firm. Slipping is not good in hand-to-hand combat. In Roman times, there are historical accounts of long marches. The Roman army amazingly had long marches over terrible terrain, wearing out the leather in their shoes. Historians tell us that took the toll in thousands and thousands of lives in the battles. Proper shoes were essential, because if you’re not firm on the ground, it doesn’t matter what you can do. Your whole body will be immediately debilitated. Shoes are vital. Now the Roman soldiers generally wore a very tough sandal, very, very tough leather, with straps holding it firmly on.

And what they did was they pounded nails from the inside through the bottom, thick hobnails, studs, like a football shoe or a baseball shoe or soccer shoe. And that gave the soldier the ability to stand firm in his footing, as he was engaged in the fight, to run up a hill and to run down a hill without slipping and sliding. Also, a familiar device in ancient warfare was to place traps in the ground. These are the precursors to mines. We know about that, don’t we? People crossing minefields in the wars in our history, and even in the Middle East today, are blown up.

Well, before there were minefields, in the ancient times, they would take sticks, and they would sharpen the points of those sticks, and then they would bury them in the ground, with the points sticking up. Invariably, the points sticking up out of the ground would rip up a barefoot soldier, or penetrate readily through a weak piece of leather. These hidden traps were great dangers, because if you had your foot injured, you were done. Slashes bleeding, infection meant debilitation. And Paul sees a spiritual parallel to this very familiar part of a soldier’s uniform or armour.

So he says in verse 15, have your feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace. The idea here is made ready, equipped. The feet are to be prepared. The feet are to be equipped for the battle, like all the other vital parts. Now, through the years, most commentators have said what this means is that you have a symbolic call to evangelism here, and they borrow it from that idea from Romans 10-15. Blessed are the feet of those who preach the good news, which is a quote from Isaiah 52-7. But Romans 10-15, and the feet of those who preach the good news, is not a verse to explain this.

In the first place, that has nothing to do with warfare. That has nothing to do with shoes. That’s just saying that the people who hear the Gospel will bless the people who brought it to them. Paul is not talking about going anywhere. He’s not talking about traversing any place. He’s not talking about taking the Gospel to anyone. He’s talking about standing, not going. The issue is not evangelism. The issue is taking a firm stand in a battle against the devil as he assaults our lives. 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 that gives us a firm footing? It is having your feet prepared with the Gospel of Peace. The Gospel of Peace, what does that mean? Well, the Gospel of Peace is the Gospel. It’s sometimes called the Gospel of Christ. It’s sometimes called the Gospel of God, like in Romans 1, and here it’s called the Gospel of Peace.

What is the Gospel of Peace? It is the good news that you have made peace with God. That’s essentially the theme of the opening verses of Romans 5. 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? Simply, it means that God is not our enemy, but God is our strength. And it takes you right back to Ephesians 6-10. Be strong in the world, because we know that we are, in reality, invincible.

Satan may come at us, tempting us one way or another. We are firm in the great truth that we are at peace with God. Therefore, God is on our side. I think 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 had declared his identity, and the entire crowd of hundreds of people fell over flat when he spoke.

Now that would leave Peter with the impression that he was pretty safe. Pulled out his sword because he knew who was on his side, and he knew what kind of power he had. All we need is Christ, and we can stand against everything Satan has to bring. You go into the battle with Satan, and if you’re not sure where you stand with Christ, if you’ve got doubts, you’re very vulnerable. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of preventing Satan entry. 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. [tr:trw].