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I confess that I have not been following the series this
summer - my idea of being a rugged outdoorsman involves riding in
a golf cart and roughing it for me is staying at the Holiday Inn.
I was even less thrilled at the episodes concluding with the
barely disguised metaphor for human sacrifice. But, along with
more than 50-million other American sheep, I was led to the
finale on Wednesday night, and saw an admittedly conniving
corporate trainer win the million. The real winner, of course,
was CBS which was able to charge $600-thousand dollars for 30-second commercials during the final episode and has 50-thousand
people already applying for "Survivor 2" which will soon be
contested in the Australian outback. Go figure.
With that as background, think again of the lesson we just
read from Ephesians. The Apostle Paul says we are also in a
contest, in mortal combat even, "against the rulers, against the
authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against
the spiritual forces of evil..." And we have to admit he is
right. Our opponents are not Rich or Kelly or Rudy or Sue, but
much tougher ones. You and I are up against evil that goes
beyond human comprehension - systemic evil that pervades our
lives.
If you wonder about that, think in our own nation, the
richest that the world has ever seen, of those who have to sleep
in doorways or in alleys or in dumpsters to avoid the wet or
cold. Is that evil? Of course it is! Whose fault is it? Some
miserable, hard-hearted building owner who refuses people a warm
room? Or is it the fault of the system that even in peacetime
sees its priorities as bombs before beds? Do you think it is
evil to have teenagers make a better living selling drugs in the
school yard than selling hamburgers at McDonalds? I do. Whose
fault is it? Abominable drug dealers who pay too much, or
upstanding employers who pay too little? There is a system here.
Do you think it is evil to allow sick people to go without
available medical treatment or nursing home care when it is
needed? Certainly it is. But treatment and care cost money. Is
it the meanness and greed of doctors and hospitals that keep
people from treatment? Or is it the system that is not willing
to pay to have this care provided? My point is that there is
evil out there which is beyond the capacity of you or me to
correct. Paul understood that...probably better than we do. He
saw that this would be "survival of the fittest."
So how do we become Christian "survivors?" If Paul were
writing today, he might use illustrations drawn from the TV
experience, but as a creature of his own time, he talks of
survival equipment in terms his contemporaries would understand.
He uses a picture of the first century's quintessential survivor,
a Roman Legionnaire, and suggests the way he is outfitted as a
metaphor for our Christian survival equipment. Paul calls it
"the armor of God."
First he talks about the belt, that which holds things
together. The "girdle of truth," as the old King James Version
has it. One of the complaints we heard about contestants on the
"Survivor" series was that they often were not truthful with one
another. In fact, outright lies were employed as a strategy of
the contest. If deliberate deception were limited to that
tropical island, we might pass it off, but we know better.
Jesus once said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free." The truth is that life is a battleground,
not a playground, and until we recognize that, we are in danger
of being overrun. The belt of truth - GOD'S truth - is our first
piece of equipment.
Next Paul talks about the breastplate of righteousness.
Please do not misunderstand him. Biblical righteousness does not
mean blamelessness; it refers to the character of a relationship.
Paul wants us to know that we will never be able to withstand the
evil in this world without the protection of a right relationship
with the Lord.
Abraham is one of the rare characters in scripture called
righteous. Why? Because he did everything right? Of course
not. Abraham was just as much a sinner as any of us. The Bible
says Abraham was considered righteous because of his faith. His
relationship with God was right. He had enough faith to pull up
stakes and move to a foreign land because God told him to. He
had enough faith to trust God to give him a son and heir even
though he was an old man. He even had enough faith to be willing
to sacrifice that heir simply because God asked him to do it.
The relationship between Abraham and his God was one of master
and servant and Abraham kept it in that order. He did not try to
usurp God's place. Abraham was called righteous because his
relationship with God was right. If we wear the breastplate of
righteousness, it means our relationship is solid - it will be
trusting, it will be dependent, it will recognize that God is
God, and we are not. The relationship will be right.
Then there are the shoes of the gospel of peace. There is
something paradoxical in presenting the warrior in the midst of
battle equipped with peace. Paul knows that to establish the
peace of God in the universe (which is our ultimate aim), we must
do battle against the spiritual evil which disturbs that peace.
Perhaps the reason Paul uses the metaphor of shoes is that peace
is something that we cannot hope to convey by sitting on our
rusty-dusty. Peace will not magically break out.
Then there is the shield of faith (or to properly translate
here we should read "faithfulness" - the Greek word is the same -and remember that we are talking about GOD's armor, so to speak
of God's faith would not make sense). The Bible is full of
stories of God's faithfulness. There is that wonderful parable
in the Old Testament in the Book of Hosea. The prophet was
instructed to take himself a wife - not some sweet young thing,
but a prostitute named Gomer. She ran off after the wedding. He
went after her. He gave her presents. She ran off again. He
went after her again. She bore three children (presumably not
Hosea's), but none of that mattered. Hosea never gave up on
Gomer. The message of the book that bears that prophet's name is
that God never gives up on his people, no matter how low they go.
No matter how unfaithful we are, God will always be faithful.
For those in the midst of a struggle for survival, it is
comforting to know that our God will never desert us, will always
stand by us and will never let us down.
Next Paul talks about the helmet of salvation. Salvation
does not mean pie in the sky by and by. Salvation means health,
wholeness, something similar to the old Hebrew word Shalom.
Salvation is a description of life the way God meant life to be
lived.
The way the Bible is arranged helps us understand. As you
read the opening chapters of Genesis and hear the story of
creation - life in its simplest and best form - and then see how
that good life was ruined by sin and evil, we know why this world
is not the wonderful place God originally intended. But at the
very end of the Bible, the final chapters of the book of
Revelation, we read in a beautifully poetic way an affirmation
that God will one day restore creation and make it good again.
No more hunger, no more thirst, no more tears, no more war, no
more death. Salvation.
The reason Paul called salvation a helmet is because a
helmet offers protection for the head. Too often Christian
people either act or fail to act because they THINK they know
what God wants. Sometimes we even misidentify the enemy, and
that ALWAYS results in disaster. Someone has said that the
church is the only army in history that shoots its own wounded.
Friendly fire? Ha! We need God's protection for our heads if we
are to ultimately survive.
The final piece of equipment is the sword of the spirit -
the word of God. It has been noted that, of all the equipment
for Christian soldiers, this is the only source of OFFENSE. And,
no question, some faithful folks have been most offensive in
their use of God's word - they have used it as a club to bludgeon
people into one narrow, little theological mold. I do not think
that is the appropriate use for the sword.
Perhaps the phrase might be better understood by looking at
another passage where God's word is compared to a sword. Hebrews
4:12 - "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than
any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and
spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes
of the heart." This is hardly an offensive attack. It is
exploratory surgery. If Paul had written in the year 2000, he
might have called God's word, not the sword, but the scalpel of
the spirit.
A couple was entertaining a visiting minister in their home.
Near the end of the evening, the wife asked the guest if he would
care to read the Bible and offer prayer before they all retired.
Being assured that he would enjoy the opportunity, the hostess
said to her young son, "Bobby, go into the other room and bring
that big book Mommy and Daddy read so much." In a moment the lad
came back...with the Sears Catalog.(2)
If we are to have any hope of successfully waging this
contest of survival, this war really, we will open our marching
orders...and follow them. We will make use of the sword.
Sometime back I read a book called Military Misfortunes: The
Anatomy of Failure in War.(3) It looks at some of the disasters in
the history of international conflict with an eye to avoiding
repetitions of the same tragic mistakes. It makes some
interesting points:
1) Do not underrate your enemy.(4) Our military learned that
lesson the hard way in Viet Nam; Christian soldiers cannot
underestimate the power of evil in the world. If we do, we will
not survive even though we serve a commander who has already won
the war.
2) Be alert - Pearl Harbor was not destroyed because no
defense was possible but because the warning of impending attack
was never sounded.(5) If we are to survive, we must be alert to
avoid the attacks of evil that often come as unexpectedly as
kamikazes.
And 3) Use your equipment - the book says, "The disaster of
Pearl Harbor lies in the failure of the Army and Navy in Hawaii
to make their fight with the equipment at hand - it was not that
they had no equipment, for they did, but they did not utilize
what they had."(6) Christians have the equipment to survive - the
armor of God. We need to use it.
Paul gives one final instruction. He says pray:
But do not stop there. Paul asks the saints to pray for
HIM. Sounds like a request we have heard around here in recent
days. Do not just pray for your fellow "soldiers," pray for your
"field officers" as well. Yes, pray for your pastor...every day.
And pray for those faithful friends who are making themselves
available as teachers and leaders in our Sunday School program.
They are the ones who will be equipping us for survival from week
to week.
Being a Christian "Survivor." Yes, there IS a contest going
on, not against Rich and Kelly and Rudy and Sue, but, as Paul
says, "against the rulers, against the authorities, against the
powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of
evil," against everything that would make life less than the Lord
intended for all creation, even you and me. Our "tribe has
spoken." We MUST survive. We CAN survive. And we WILL survive.
In the name of Jesus Christ. To HIM be glory, honor, dominion
and power, now and forevermore!
Amen!
1. "'Survivor Tsunami," Newsweek, 8/28/2000, p. 54 2. Clyde Murdock, Ed, A Treasury of Humor, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1967),
Page 14. 3. Eliot Cohen and John Gooch, (New York: Free Press, 1990) 4. p. 16 5. p. 50 6. p. 49
Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of
prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and
always keep on praying for all the saints. Pray also
for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be
given me so that I will fearlessly make known the
mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in
chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I
should.
Pray at all times and pray for one another. There is a
wonderful reminder here that we are not Lone Rangers on this
island. We are members of a tribe - not the Tagi or the Pagong,
but that vast company of saints through the ages known as the
Church of Jesus Christ. We are not alone.
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