The Shield of Faith | Dr. David Jeremiah | Ephesians 6:16

What is the Armor of God?

Message Description:

Doubt is Satan’s oldest weapon and the one he uses most often. What can you do when he casts doubt about God? Dr. David Jeremiah considers the defensive armor that protects you from those doubts and can become a trusted tool you carry at all times.

Satan’s first work in his relationship with man is to create doubt about God Himself.
That is what he did in the Garden of Eden.
As we shall see in a few moments, he’s been repeating that with success.
From that day until this day. Always causing people to doubt God.
That is his purpose, and that is what he tries to do.
The Bible says that the way we are to stand against this attack upon God and his promises in our own lives is we’re to take the shield of faith.
Once again, as we have learned, this is simply another way of expressing that we’re to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and allow Him to be our defense.
I came across this week the words of a pastor who said that he thought a lot of Christians would have been much happier if Paul had written these words instead of the words that he wrote.
Lay back and relax with the belt of evasion buckled loosely around your waist, with the breastplate of defensiveness in place, and with your feet fitted with the pluralism that offends no one.
In addition to all of this, take up the shield of grudges with which you can hold on tightly to hurts and to slights.
Take the helmet of entitlement and the bludgeon of the flesh, which is the word of anger, and air what’s been done to you on all occasions with all kinds of criticisms and complaints, end of quote.
Now he must have been having a bad day when he wrote that, but it’s an interesting thought, isn’t it?
That this armor that God has given to us is such a positive thing, but it does not in any sense of the word, deny the reality of life.
If you study the history of the church, you will discover that the church was born in persecution and in martyrdom, in suffering and in imprisonment, in bloodshed and death.
Our leader was executed, and all of his followers with one exception died a martyr’s death.
In the 1st centuries of its existence, the church suffered unspeakable persecution.
I remember as a young boy having been given a copy of a book called Fox’s Book of Martyrs.
I learned very quickly not to read that before I went to bed at night.
It is a horrible rendition of the things that were done to the people of God because of their faith.
So far, we’ve examined the following pieces of armor that we’re to wear in the midst of the war.
The girdle of truth, and the breastplate of righteousness, shoes of the gospel of peace.
Ephesians 6 16 says, above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all of the fiery darts of the wicked one.
We learn that Satan’s first work in his relationship with man is to create doubt about God Himself.
That is what he did in the Garden of Eden.
That is his purpose, and that is what he tries to do.
The Bible says that the way we are to stand against this attack upon God and His promises in our own lives is we’re to take the shield of faith.
What does it mean to take the shield of faith? First of all, notice the priority of it.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed it in your Scripture, but it says, and above all, take the shield of faith.
Faith is the key to all spiritual armor.
The shield of faith, the Bible tells us, is given to us to deflect the darts of the wicked one before they reach our heart.
So the Bible says, above all, above all don’t forget the shield, it is a priority.
Not only is it a priority, but let’s notice the purpose of the shield.
Notice that the purpose of the shield of faith is here clearly spoken about.
Paul says specifically that the purpose of the shield is to quench the fiery darts from Satan.
The reference to fiery darts could mean either one of 2 things.
Sometimes, soldiers in ancient times would dip the tips of their darts or their arrows into a solution of lethal poison.
And if those darts only gently penetrated the skin of the enemy, the poison would spread through the bloodstream, producing a swift and painful death.
On other occasions, soldiers would dip their darts into pitch and light them on fire before shooting them into the enemy camp.
Then the arrows would ignite anything that was flammable.
So the Romans came up with this plan to cover their shields with animal skins soaked in water, so when the fiery darts hit the shield, they would be extinguished.
When the arrows rained down on them, the shields would quench the fire.
New Testament scholar Peter O’Brien helps us to understand what this means.
He said the burning arrows depict every kind of attack launched by the Devil and his hosts against the people of God.
They are as wide ranging as the insidious wiles that promote them, and include not only every kind of temptation to ungodly behavior, every kind of doubt, and every kind of despair, but also external assaults like persecution and false teaching.
So I would suggest to you that most of the darts that Satan has in his quiver are fire tipped.
They’re hellish balls of fire.
They have but one purpose, and that’s to produce the stress of mind and depression of spirit and disappointment in relationships in your work or in yourself.
Long after those arrows have been felt in their initial attack, their sting can linger on.
Stu Weber notes that the shields were carried in such a way that they were packed tightly together, virtually interlocking into a large complex of shields.
Here’s what he wrote. He said, do you see the critical point here?
This is the shield of faith, which by design is interlocked with the soldier next to you.
This is the shield of faith utilized in community, the community of faith.
I would say in small groups, we are linking our shields together to protect ourselves from the enemy.
In our spiritual battle, as is true in any combat environment, there is no room for lone rangers.
If you expect to be protected, you’ve gotta stick with the group, march with the unit, and live like a family.
End of quote. So you get this picture of these shields locked together, and of God’s people coming together in the church, in in small groups, to withstand the enemy and to help one another, and we sometimes say, watch one another’s back, so that we can be prepared to do the battle against the enemy.
That’s the priority of the shield and the purpose of it. Notice what the potential of it is.
The Bible says, with this shield, you will be able to quench most of the darts of the wicked one.
No, it doesn’t say that.
The Scripture says, with which you will be able to quench all of the fiery darts of the wicked one.
The word all means all.
The Bible promises us that this shield is sufficient, so that no matter what kind of attack we are under, the evil one comes with his best shot, but God gives us a means to repel His attack through the shield of faith.
Ken Hughes says it’s no exaggeration to say that during earthly life, multiple thousands of deadly blazing arrows are launched at the Christian warrior by demons and by demon oppressed culture.
But the answer is faith.
The apostle John wrote these words, he said, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.
1st John 5:4. Why? Because faith binds us in vital deep union with God, and faith is not just belief, it is belief plus trust.
It is resting in the person of God and in His Word to us, and I’ll give you an illustration of what that means in just a moment.
So we have the priority of the shield of faith. Above all, take the shield of faith.
We have the purpose of it, which is to ward off Satan’s attacks upon us.
And the potential of it, which says if we take this shield of faith, it will ward off all of the darts of the evil one.
Now let’s talk about the protection of it, the protection of the shield of faith.
How does the shield of faith protect us?
Let’s talk for a moment about what kind of darts Satan most often uses.
So how would you know that?
Well, there’s a law of Bible study, which is called the law of first reference.
And that law says that wherever you find in the Bible the first time something happens, it usually is definitive as to how it is to be applied other times.
So let’s go back and see if we can figure out what Satan’s up to by looking at his first involvement with humanity.
And where would we find that?
All the way back in the book of Genesis in the temptation of Adam and Eve.
And here in this first encounter of Satan with a human being, he throws his first dart at Eve, and his first dart is doubt.
You gotta say that carefully. His first dart is doubt. Genesis chapter 3 verse 1.
Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
And he said to the woman, has God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
What is Satan doing? He’s shooting a dart into Eve’s heart to question the integrity of God.
In Genesis 3, 2, and 4, and the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it nor shall you touch it, lest you die.
Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.
The Devil now chooses an even more powerful dart.
He follows up the dart of doubt with the dart of denial.
He now doesn’t come right out in the beginning and deny God, no he waits until he has softened you up with the first dart.
Then he comes with the second one, and he sows the seed of denial and deception.
Notice verse 5 of Genesis 3 said, God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
The favorite and most often used tool of Satan is the attack of doubt in the life of the believer.
So watch this, if Satan’s number one attack is doubt, then certainly the shield of faith must be what we use against it.
Even Jesus wielded the shield of faith as no other man has ever done.
We’ll get to this in a full message later on in this series, but in the 4th chapter of Matthew, we read that Satan took Jesus to the wilderness and tempted him.
And he tempted him with these words, Matthew 4:3.
He said, Jesus, if you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.
And Jesus said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Jesus used the shield of faith. What did He do?
He quoted from the Scripture, believe it or not, from the book of Deuteronomy.
He quotes all 3 of his quotations are from the book of Deuteronomy.
And he uses the shield of faith from Deuteronomy to wield off the attacks of Satan against him.
Former seminary professor Howard Hendricks, my wonderful friend, used this point to to teach us something.
And he asked this question, he said, if your spiritual survival depended on how well you knew the book of Deuteronomy, how long would you last?
You see, the shield of faith is something we build along the way with our knowledge of the Word of God.
So we have the priority of it, and the purpose of it, and the potential of it, and the protection of it.
Now notice the possession of the shield of faith.
I need to tell you one last thing from this passage about the possession of the shield of faith.
God is not gonna drop it out of heaven into your life.
It doesn’t say God will give you the shield of faith.
It says above all, take the shield of faith.
You don’t get the shield for good behavior after you’ve been a Christian for 5 years.
No, what does it say in the verse? Taking up the shield of faith. What does that mean?
Who does the taking up? The soldier, how do you get the shield of faith?
You appropriate it, you take it, you possess it. What does that mean?
That means you have to get the truth. Faith has to be appropriated, then it can be used.
Faith is not faith unless it’s at work.
True faith is always active, and the way you appropriate the faith is to arm yourself with the truth about God and who He is, and to arm yourself with the word of God, so that no matter what Satan sends your way, you have an appropriate answer, an appropriate truth, an appropriate verse which you can use to repel him.
Let me jump ahead just a little bit to the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
That’s the only offensive weapon we have in the whole arsenal that we’re given in Ephesians chapter 6, just the the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
I used to think the sword of the Spirit was the Bible, but that’s not it.
The sword of the Spirit is the rhema of God, that’s the word in the language of the New Testament.
And the rhema of God is not the logos, which is the word for the whole Bible.
The Rhema of God is the short sword that comes from the arsenal to use against the enemy, and the Rhema of God is a specific truth for Spirit, which is the word of God, and use that against your enemy.
This is not really the sword, this is the armory.
And in this armory are many swords, and the Bible tells us that we’re to look at what Satan is trying to do to us, how he’s trying to attack us, where we know we seem to be vulnerable.
And we’re to take the shield of faith and hold it up in that particular place of our vulnerability, and we’re to take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Rhema of God.
And that means find the Scriptures that deal with the issue that Satan is trying to destroy you with.
You know, the Word of God is a gift, as we’ve learned today.
It’s the exceeding great and precious promises of God, but it’s taking out of that word the specific truths that deal with the specific problems that we face.
And every one of us know what our problems are, don’t we? We know where Satan gets us.
I mean, you know what I’m talking about. Sure you do.
Right now, in your mind, you’re cycling through, oh yeah, man I need some verses for this.
So let’s say my problem, Pastor Jeremiah, is I’m afraid. I can’t sleep sometimes.
I think about things and wonder if they’re gonna happen. I I deal with fear.
Here’s what I would do, I would go to the concordance, I would look up the words fear and afraid, get a yellow pad, write all the references down, and then go through the Bible and look at all those verses, and you’re going to find the ones you need that will just grab hold of your heart when you read them.
In fact, the whole issue of fear will be one of the simplest things you ever did.
The Bible is filled with truths that we’re not to be afraid.
In fact, someone has said there are 360 5 fear nots in the Bible, one for every day of the year.
Over and over again, you will find in the Scripture these truths.
Now Ray Stedman helps us understand that this is not a passive thing that we do.
Faith is not simply a passive idea, it is acting upon belief. Faith is decision, and action, and resolution.
Faith is saying yes, I believe Christ is the truth. He is my righteousness. He is my peace.
Therefore, this and this and this and this must follow. When you say therefore, you move from belief into faith.
Faith is particularizing, it is taking the general truth and applying it to specific situations and saying, if this is true, then this must follow and that is the shield of faith.
If God tells me I don’t have to be afraid, if God tells me that He will be with me in every situation, I will hold that shield up against the enemy when he comes at me with all of his fiery arrows.
Do we know what we believe?
If we know what we believe and we’re building we’re building this shield so that it will be impervious to anything Satan can do to us.
The problem that we have in the contemporary church today is that our faith tends to be somewhat shallow.
And when you have shallow faith you become an easy target for the enemy.
He can get through the shallowness of our faith without much effort.
And so if we’re not careful, uh, we are victimized, we need to take what God has given us in His precious promises and mine out of it the truths that will help us live the practical Christian life with victory.
Now let me give you one more point in this outline.
Number 6, the principles of the shield of faith. Number 1, focus on the source of your faith.
Your faith is not in faith itself, your faith is in Jesus Christ.
The writer of the book of Hebrews tells us that we are to look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
Keep your eyes on Christ. I know a lot of Christians who think that faith is something that you well you ask them what they have faith in.
It’s in faith. I have faith in faith. No, no, your faith is not in faith.
Your faith is in Jesus Christ. It is the object of your faith which is the most critical.
It isn’t just your faith. I’ve told this story before, but this illustrates it better than anything I can tell you.
If you were to ask me to go ice fishing, which isn’t going to happen in California, but if we were to go back east or to Canada or someplace where it’s very cold, and we would walk out on the ice, I wanna ask you a little question.
Here’s a little riddle for you.
Would you rather have a whole lot of faith in a quarter of inch of ice or a little tiny bit of faith in 4 feet of ice?
You know I’ve given that question to people and had them write their answers, and it usually ends up about 5050, believe it or not.
I always take the people who have faith in a quarter inch of ice, put them on a list, and never go fishing with them.
Isn’t that an interesting thing? We even pause when we say that, don’t we?
We think about that for a moment. It seems like you should have a whole lot of faith. No, no.
Faith is irrelevant apart from the object of your faith. You see that?
So our faith is not in faith itself. It’s not in the Bible, as important as that is.
Our faith is in the Lord God himself. He is the object of our faith.
Not only should you focus on the source of your faith, but you need to fortify the strength of your faith.
You say, how do I do that? You do it the same way you strengthen your physical body.
The way you get a strong body is to do 2 things primarily, eat right and exercise.
Perhaps this illustration by Donald Whitney will provide the encouraging end to the message.
In his book, he writes this.
He says, imagine 6 year old Kevin whose parents have enrolled him in music lessons.
After school, every afternoon, he sits in the living room and he reluctantly strums home on the range, while watching his buddies play baseball in the park across the street.
And that’s discipline without direction, and it’s drudgery.
Now suppose Kevin is visited by an angel one afternoon during guitar practice, and in a vision, he’s taken to Carnegie Hall.
He’s shown guitar virtuoso giving a concert.
Usually bored by classical music, Kevin is astonished by what he sees and he hears.
The musician’s fingers dance excitedly on the strings with fluidity and grace, and Kevin thinks of how stupid and clunky his hands feel when they halt and stumble over the chords he’s trying to learn.
But Kevin is enchanted. His head tilts slightly to one side as he listens.
He drinks in everything. He never imagined that anyone could play the guitar like this.
What do you think Kevin? Asks the angel.
The answer is a soft, slow 6 year old’s wow.
The vision vanishes, and the angel is again standing in front of Kevin in his living room.
Kevin, says the angel, the wonderful musician you saw is you in a few years.
Then pointing at the guitar he declares, but you must practice.
In the same way, God provides a vision of what we will be like one day.
He says we will be conformed to the image of his son, but in order to get there we must not become lazy, instead we must consistently exercise and practice an active faith.
Yes, that is what God has prepared for those who love him, but he tells us in his word that he wants us down here to become in practice what we already are in perfection before him.
I’ll never forget that line, but you must practice.
We’ve got all the scores, all the curriculum, all the notes, Now he wants us to practice.
How do you practice? You take what you know and you put it into operation.
You read what God tells you to do, and then my goodness, you do it.
And then you discover that the joy you have in obedience to the word of God leads you to something else.
And before you know it, you’re putting together a life of obedience to the word of God.
And that’s what builds us strong and makes it possible for us to stand against the wiles of the enemy with the shield of faith in our hands.
And now, with one last word for today’s program, here is Doctor. Jeremiah.
Ultimately, it’s not our faith that is most important. It’s the object of our faith.
So the question is, toward whom or what is my faith directed?
Do I have faith in religion, in the church, in my good works, maybe in my sincerity and commitment?
Only Jesus Christ, the resurrected Son of God, is worthy of our faith.
Only He can give us victory over our spiritual enemy.
To encourage you to place your faith in this strong savior, I would like to send you 2 free A booklet called, Your Greatest Turning Point, and our monthly devotional magazine called, Turning Points.
They will point your faith in the right direction toward Christ alone, and we’ll send them both to you free of charge if you will contact us here at Turning Point today.
Next time on Turning Point.
We’re fighting in a war whose end we already know.
We’re fighting in a war that in essence we have already won, and we don’t have to skirmish around in a fear of defeat because we know victory is ours in Christ.
So we put on this helmet of salvation and the helmet of salvation is our hope in Christ.
Thank you for being with us today.
Join doctor Jeremiah next time for his message, The Helmet of Salvation, here on Turning Point.