The book of Ephesians seems to follow three main themes: the wealth of the believer (all the inheritance and riches of grace); the walk of the believer (walk as dear children; walk as children of light); and the warfare of the believer. It unveils the great panorama of God’s plan from eternity to eternity, and at the same time it helps us to get our feet solidly on the ground to walk with God. It shows a most practical aspect of how to come against the spiritual forces that are ready to destroy us. Believe me, they are ready; do not think they are not. I would say the real problem in our walk with God has been the deep-rooted, subtle efforts of Satan to bring deception, to bring some way to trick us.
If I could ask for one gift of the Holy Spirit, it would be that the discerning of spirits be deepened. We must be able to sense the satanic schemes being worked in people’s lives and how they are being drawn into them without realizing it. We are to accept one another in the grace of God, but this can be a problem.
We say, “Oh, I remember how God met that brother. I remember the release God gave him,” but we may not always perceive what Satan is doing to take over the direction of that life or to divert it from the channel God originally had for him. When the flesh follows its motivations instead of the spirit following the motivations of the Spirit, it can be diverted easily. It can happen to a person who has a great gift from God and has suddenly reached a place of prominence.
We must come into an understanding and a deep discernment of the schemes of Satan. Remember that Judas was once an apostle. He healed the sick, cast out devils, and ministered in a marvelous way, but then his motivation changed. The covetousness of his heart took over instead of the desire for the Kingdom of God. Satan lurks, waiting for a moment of discouragement, resentment, or bitterness, to reach in and try to take over a person’s life. He will move in if he possibly can to possess that person.
The false prophets and the antichrists can be understood through the writings of John. “These antichrists (false prophets) went out from us” (1 John 2:19). “They went out from us”—they first are positioned in the house of God. Remember the day that Satan entered into Judas’ heart. “He went out and it was night” (John 13:30). It was at the Last Supper. You never know what is taking place; you never know how people are being brought to a moment of decision.
Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand. firm against the schemes of the devil. Ephesians 6:11. The enemy will come in with his schemes to trip us up with just one little thing. But oh, to be yielded to God and to learn that our strength is in the Lord. It is in His might that we prevail against the schemes of the enemy.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Ephesians 6:12–13.
Take the full armor of God. When we read the Scriptures concerning the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation, I think too often the idea is that we acquire them by our own diligence, as though we manufacture them ourselves. These are divine attributes, not human attributes. It is the armor of the Lord.
Verse 10 says, Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. The strength is something you appropriate from the Lord to meet the test. Of course, you won’t appropriate it if you are so deceived by Satan that you do not realize what the battle is. That is the reason we must have the full armor of God.
Take the helmet of salvation … Ephesians 6:17. I think most people recognize salvation as good for the heart, but the heart is covered by God’s righteousness. It needs the breastplate of righteousness. The head is what needs salvation. It is our thinking that must be delivered from all of the tricks and schemes of the enemy. So we are told, “Put on the full armor of God,” which means, “Appropriate it!”
God is very happy to give us anything that He is. Can you accept that? What is He giving us, then? He is giving us of Himself. Unless we eat of Him we will perish. “He that eateth Me shall live by Me” (John 6:57). We literally partake of Jesus Christ. A great illustration of this is what we do at the Communion Altar every Lord’s day. We partake of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ, because we know that we must partake of God. It is in His strength; it is with His armor; it is clothing ourselves with His attributes. We literally “put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh” (Romans 13:14). Like slipping on a sweater, we put it on.
We must bring to an end the struggle on the wrong basis. If the enemy can lure you into battle to see who is stronger and you start meeting him in your strength or with your understanding, you are beat right there. You do not have to overcome—you dare not try to overcome—the powers of Satan in yourself. You stand in the victory He won at the cross, or there is no victory. You stand by His precious blood, or you do not stand at all. You prevail in His name, or you do not prevail at all.
The whole purpose of His being a substitute for us is to bring us to stand in the Lord and in the power of His might. We stand in His victory. We do not lean on our own understanding, but we look to Him for wisdom and for guidance. We put on the complete armor of God, that we may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. The weakest saint who learns how to trust God can prevail over the biggest devil that was ever spawned out of hell. There is no contest. Satan is no contest.
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood. When we see someone being motivated and dominated by satanic forces, it would be easy to hate him instead of hating the devil who has deceived him. It would be easy to judge the individual instead of believing for God to release him. I do not blame people for the problems they get into. They get into them through deception. Satan draws them on. James, of course, is careful to warn us that these men are drawn away by their own lust (James 1:14). That is true. They are responsible for the desires they let become the motivation of their lives; then their actions are based upon that. We can blame the devil only so far, but the devil has to work with the material he has. Thus he works upon lust, upon a person’s desires, upon the motivations of the flesh as much as he can. After he finds an inroad, he then begins to direct that life.
We cannot blame the individual inasmuch as we say, “Oh, God curse him to hell.” We must believe the Scripture that we are to rescue those who are snared by the devil, hating even the garments spotted by the flesh (Jude 23). We reach in to rescue them like brands plucked from the burning (Zechariah 3:2). Our attitude is to be one of grace and understanding. The whole idea is that we put on the Lord, for we have two heredities—one from Adam, and the heredity we have from the Lord Jesus Christ. It is easy to slip into the right heredity. Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Galatians 5:16. We are not to follow and give expression to its propensities or appetites. If we are led by the Spirit, we are not under the Law (Galatians 5:18). We won’t fulfill the flesh, for we will walk in a different plane. It is good to remember that.
When you are in the spirit, you reach in to appropriate certain things. You realize that when you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are accepting His righteousness. Your spirit will never die (John 11:26); it is energized with His eternity. On top of that, you begin to acquire His nature. The fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22, 23) is nothing more than the nature of our Lord being fulfilled in you. His love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, temperance, and faith begin to grow in your life. People look and say, “My, what a change.” Yes, you are beginning to manifest your heredity as a child of God. You are appropriating it.
Sometimes it is a vicious struggle as you wrestle with the old nature. “O God, I must see an end to this.” Then the work of the cross comes because you are identified with Christ’s death, and the very thing you struggled with dies. Something else comes alive of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is why Paul says, I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me. and gave Himself for me. Galatians 2:20.
And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts. Galatians 5:24.
But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world was crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Galatians 6:14. Those three basic Scriptures referring to the cross identify how we come to the cross. We die as something of the nature of the Lord comes alive in us.
Sometimes you think something in your old nature is dead, and it is not quite dead. You think, “I’ve died out to it! I don’t care about this thing anymore. Lord, I’m just ready to walk with You.” However, it may not be dead. As long as you react to a thing, it is still alive. Blessed are they who, when they are persecuted, rejoice and are exceedingly glad (Matthew 5:11, 12). It means they are dead to the fleshly reactions, the resentments and bitterness that come through various dealings in this world.
Put on the full armor of God … Clothe yourself with it. When the enemy comes like a roaring lion, just pull yourself into the Lord. When you were a child, did you ever play with turtles? If a turtle is afraid, the feet disappear, the head draws in, and nothing is there but a shell. That is what the Lord wants you to do: learn how to hide in the Lord.
A preacher said, “when the troubles and the temptations come and the enemy brings everything against me, I’ll tell you what I do. I put a chair over in the corner, and I just sit there until it is all over.” Then he paused. “I sit in the corner a lot, hut it is better than being defeated.” He was saying in effect, “Draw away from it in your own energy. Don’t try. Don’t struggle.”
Another famous man gave a secret of overcoming, using 2 Chronicles 20:17 as his text: Ye shall not need to fight in this battle … He said, “It is like floating. As long as you struggle, you will sink. If you try to overcome the flesh in yourself, Satan likes that. He wants to draw you out and let you battle it as though it were between Satan and you, and it is not at all. You are in Christ, so the conflict is between Satan and Christ. Stand in His power and in His might. When you learn to float, you lie back on the water and trust the water to hold you up. That is what you must do with the Lord. Trust that the Lord will help you.”
I believed this word and began to overcome one thing after another because I stopped fighting the battle in myself. “Well, come on, Satan, I can take you on.” That is an overconfidence you cannot afford. He has had six thousand years of experience in tripping up people like you; he knows exactly how to do it. He knows more tricks. We want to overcome his schemes.
How do we overcome the schemes of the devil? We withdraw into the Lord. Knowing that we fall short, we are not moved into action in ourselves, but we withdraw into the Lord and trust Him. We believe Him. We draw His armor upon ourselves. Don’t you wish you had learned how to do this when you first became a Christian? Many times you have tried to struggle in yourself, only to find defeat or something inadequate and incomplete. You always felt there was something short. But He is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him (Hebrews 7:25). Believe it!
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood. The struggle is not on a human plane as much as you may think. Everything on the human plane is secondary; the primary thing is to seek first the Kingdom and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). People make wrong decisions because they make them on the basis of what looks normal and right on the human level, rather than just seeking God and saying, “Lord, You show me. You lead me. You tell me what I am to do, and I will be quick to do it.”
You cannot reason out things in your walk with God. Only in retrospect can you look back and say, “My, that was wise; that person made all the right decisions. Look how God led him.” And other times you look back and see that another made all the wrong decisions. Everything he did was wrong, but it turned out well; the Lord worked things out. What appeared to be such poor judgment may have been God deliberately leading him into many dead ends. The Lord did that to me. If everything had gone smooth in my life, I wouldn’t have learned.
I know that God led me into impasses so that I could learn which were the wrong ways. He led me as a young man to preach for almost every denomination that existed, and each time it was a dead-end street. I would say, “Lord, what are You doing to me? Look, I didn’t want this,” but He would lead me into one denomination after another. God in His mercy led in all these different paths, so that I could learn what it means to really walk in the Spirit and learn what it means to be a part of the restoration.
You say, “But God led all those churches.” Yes, but remember that Babylon is all that God has done in the past and in the present which will not accept what God is bringing forth now. The day we refuse to accept the revelation God is bringing, we become Babylon, History reveals that persecution always comes from people who have moved on with the Lord the furthest, those who could have actually heard and received the word that God was bringing. When they reject it, they become vicious persecutors of those who take a step on in God. It has always proved to be that way.
The Church of England was persecuted, but they forgot all about it when the Methodists came forth. The Methodists were responsible for much of England’s salvation, yet when the Church of England saw that it was one step beyond what they had, they persecuted it. Then the Methodists began to really go well. Everything was going fine until William Booth began taking the gospel right down to the slums, to the streets. Then the Methodists persecuted what we now call the Salvation Army. The Free Methodists and all those who took a step into the holiness of the Lord came out of the Salvation Army. Some of their people sought God so earnestly that they began to speak in tongues, and they were rejected.
From the Methodist church came the foundation of the Pentecostal movement. That is why most of their church government is based upon the Methodist Episcopal form of government. Each taking a step on, out of the Pentecostals came the healing movements. The denominations that had been formed went against that, and the healing movements gave way to a recognition of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The healing ministries rejected that because it meant divine order.
When the divine order began to come forth in the restoration of the Church, everyone became angry with it. Because each movement lasts an average of thirty-five years, we want to be careful that we are not shaken up in the next great thing that comes along. Whatever it is, I want to be in it. I am going to go on. I am determined to be a new wineskin and not the last expression of Babylon that must come down. I have not walked with God this long only to be a part of something God has to destroy. Do you agree?
The wiles of Satan can cause people who have so much from God to use human reasoning, instead of following divine revelation at that critical hour when they could take a step on with God. This is a very important message to our hearts. We must appropriate the whole armor of God, that we may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.