Title Ephesians 06:10-13 Spiritual Arming
Content 'Spiritual Arming' (Ephesians 6:10-13)
Not long ago, a polling company anonymously surveyed the moral status of Americans. The results found that 91% of Americans habitually lie at home and at work. When asked who they lie to, 86% said to their parents and 75% to their friends. Thirty percent of HIV-positive people say they do not tell their lover that they are HIV-positive.
When asked what work you could do if you could get $10 million, 25% of respondents could abandon their family and 23% could work as a prostitute for a week. 7% said they could kill people they don't know.
How shocking is it that, in a group of 100 Americans, 7 people out of 1,000 can attack with a gun if there is something that might be tempting them? That is why it seems that shocking things are happening all around us.
We live in a climate where we can do anything without hesitation for money, pleasure, and self-satisfaction. There are people who say that this is because the political, educational and economic policies are wrong, but that is only a superficial reason.
The Kansas City School District has invested $2 billion in improving the educational environment over the past 15 years. We built 15 new schools, some cost 30 million dollars. The educational environment was changed to the best, but the education that did not change the attitudes, thoughts and inertia of the teachers did not produce any results.
In the end, it proved that change does not mean changing the environment with money. To the fundamental question as to why this happened, the Bible answers, "It is because you have forsaken God and become a slave to the devil who has taken the power of the air." It is a saying that a certain spiritual event is taking place behind the outwardly revealed moral, ethical, and cultural life.
Today's verse 12 says that our battle is not a battle against flesh and blood. In order to solve this trend, it is said that a deeper and more fundamental spiritual dimension must be resolved before working with blood and flesh, that is, people.
For example, if a person habitually drinks alcohol and is addicted to gambling, it is a spiritual problem that goes beyond a lifestyle problem. It is said that if someone cheats and cannot get out, it is because they are held by a great spiritual force behind them.
Basically, deep inside of us humans, everyone has a desire to be loved and recognized. If you don't, you won't be able to ascertain your worth, and you will lose confidence, feel lonely and anxious, and become afraid of it. Where did these desires come from? The Bible says that this desire to be acknowledged and loved is primordial within us humans after we were expelled from God because of sin.
In the past, there was no such spiritual hunger because we lived every moment receiving God's love, which is greater than anything in the world, but human beings who lost love fell into a deep spiritual hunger.
To satisfy that hunger, he began to fill the empty soul with things other than God. They try to satisfy their hunger by having more rather than giving and sharing, by reigning over people, by achieving something, being recognized, loved, and self-affirming their worth. However, in the midst of such loneliness and anxiety, everyone tried to get each other and get mutual recognition, which created conflict and wounds.
The devil works at this inner crossroads. In other words, it prevents us from turning to God at the crossroads of whether we go to God or to the world to satisfy our inner hunger.
When we cannot find the answer in the world, we should quickly turn our attention to God, but rather we resent and hate those who do not give us that interest and love, and we will do our best to get more and achieve more acceptable achievements. However, our soul's thirst is not quenched by anything, but rather, we become more thirsty, like a person who drank salt water.
In this deep hunger, we indulge and cling to something, and that is the path that Satan drives us. Because human hunger and thirst are spiritual, they cannot be satisfied with anything in the world and can only be filled with the love of God.
Just as the woman of Sugaseong came out to the well with an empty jar, her empty life was full of anxiety, chaos, loneliness, and fear. She changed the men by five or six in order to take it off and start anew, but she was still thirsty, and the hunger was not resolved. It was only by meeting Christ that her deep thirst was quenched.
In this thirst the devil says: God has already forsaken you, what kind of God are you? Does God exist? Is a life like you worthy of love? And rather than raising their eyes and looking at God, it makes them cling to their wounds and problems and the things they see now.
In particular, Satan prevents us from acknowledging our own worth. Look at you, who is already a sinner, full of scars, and filthy. What value do you mean, and so weakly, to forsake yourself and go to God? Even if it becomes bloody, we have to stand alone... He continues to try to rule us by making us feel lonely in our own complexes, pride, pride and wounds.
But God saw us like this and said, "Your whole head is sick, and your whole heart is weary, and from the sole of your feet to your head there is no sanctity, only bruises, ruptures, and new marks. I have not received it??(Isaiah 1:14). And he opens his hands and invites them.
?쏷hough your sins are as red as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.
though it be red as crimson, it shall be like wool??(Isaiah 1:18).
?쏷he LORD your God is among you.
He is the Almighty who will bring salvation.
He cannot overcome his joy over you.
loving you quietly
He will rejoice over you with singing and rejoicing.??(Zep 3:18) He is saying that our God is the One who accepts and restores us as we are.
Above all, what is the most urgent expression of Heavenly Father's heart toward us? Cross. What is the voice heard on the cross? The voice that is shed with blood is to come back to me from the path of self-abuse, wandering, pain and temptation on the path of the world.
Beloved, what is preventing you and me from drawing near to God? Pride. guilty. any hurt. hate. Self-righteousness that I can still do it with my own strength. Fear of losing what you have. present hardship. unreliable mind. Using these very things, Satan has been dragging mankind into ever greater wounds and pains of evil since Adam and Eve.
Let's lay all these things down before the cross this morning. And let's get close to the Father.
?쏬et us put off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, to walk modestly as in the daytime, not in licentiousness and drunkenness, not in licentiousness and sensuality, not in strife and envy, but put on Jesus Christ, but put on Jesus Christ for the sake of the flesh. Don't do it (Romans 13:14)."
In this evil generation, for a strong life where you can defeat the power of the devil and fly the banner of truth high as a child of God, go to the cross and put off your old things and put on the armor of forgiveness, faith, and obedience that God gives you. You must put on spiritual armor with your mouth. That is the secret to living while overcoming the work of the evil devil in this chaotic age.