The sixth chapter of Ephesians gives us that wonderful picture of the armor of the Christian believer. And since the preceding chapters explain how God will manifest to principalities and powers His manifold wisdom through the Church, we understand that He is revealing the ultimate destiny of the believer. The fullness and the victory of Christ is to be manifested through him, even to all of the great powers. We cannot fathom them. We cannot imagine them. The ways of God are past finding out, but to picture principalities and powers is something beyond human understanding.
Oh, how God does protect us. And the magnitude of His purpose is beyond imagination. If we could produce an elephant so powerful and mighty that it would be bigger than this world, then, envision a microscopic flea, and God saying to it, “Little flea, you are going to stomp that elephant to death. Right under your foot, little flea, it is to happen.” That is the picture when God says in the Word that it is His pleasure to bruise Satan under your feet shortly (Romans 16:20).
We cannot imagine how tremendous is the power of Satan to hold in his mind the memory of every human being who ever lived. In his mind is a vast amount of knowledge of every individual on the face of the earth. He can anticipate their thoughts and plans to a great extent. He can attack them—he can delegate demons, sometimes thousands of them, to possess people. But it is good to know that God has given us this: we are translated out from under his dominion into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son (Colossians 1:13). This means that Satan no longer has a legal hold on you; neither does he have a legal right to hit you. You have been set into the redemptive blessings of the Lord. You have been placed in a position of actually belonging to the Lord, and you are no longer open to the attacks of Satan as such. What happens, then? It must be that consciously or unconsciously you submit to his attack; you accept it.
Oh, there is so much in what we accept. If we accepted the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ and entered into the power to reject everything that Satan brings, we could reject it totally, at that moment. We have not come to that place yet, and that is why the battle is so intense. But when we come to accept Christ’s victory perfectly and totally, then the Scripture will be fulfilled, … and that wicked one toucheth him not. 1 John 5:18. The wicked one cannot touch him, because he is immune. The immunity, the protection that Christ has won has been appropriated.
In this chapter we will focus mainly on those who are in the process of that place of acceptance. We are not there perfectly, for the enemy still hits us.
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 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. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Ephesians 6:10–17.
Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. With every piece of armor, you are reaching into attributes of God to replace the vulnerable attributes of man. What we are short, we appropriate from God. We put on the armor of God and are literally encased with His divine nature; this becomes our protection. It is not something apart from God, for He is never separated from His attributes. God’s attributes can be communicated, for God is a Spirit, not having limitations or restrictions. The essence of all He is never is diminished; it is never decreased by anything that He imparts of Himself to you. When He has brought forth ten thousands upon ten thousands of sons in glory, made like unto the Son of God in all things, He will be no less than what He is now.
Oh, the vastness of God, the tremendous, inexhaustible nature of the Lord, the extent of His righteousness that He can impart it and impute it to us (Romans 4). The Word speaks of it as a garment—“robed with His righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10). We can put on God’s attributes. We can put on love, we can put on faith, we can actually find ourselves encased with an armor of divine attributes.
Now we come to one part of armor that I think is important. It seems to be the only aggressive weapon in all the pieces of equipment here. Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. This Scripture is misquoted, misused, misapplied by almost every sincere believer. People have been taught, “Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” and they hold up their Bibles and proceed to go out to do battle with the devil. The problem is that they do not battle with the devil; they try to find some susceptible person and argue religion. They spar around, taking their little Scriptures to wound one another. Or, taking the Scriptures like clubs, they beat one another over the head with them. This ceases to be the sword of the Spirit and becomes man’s interpretation of Scripture. We see examples of that in the Old Testament, among the Pharisees, and everywhere we look today. Many love to argue Scriptures and things that are not Scriptures; they will go into anything to win an argument.
You do not argue a person into a walk with God; you cannot argue him into it. There is an old saying that a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. Something within the will of man determines whether he is going to be a believer or not. “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God” (John 7:17). You come to know whether the teaching is of God or not when it is in your heart to do His will. He was not talking about a factual knowledge of the Scriptures, or even the ability to use them cleverly.
The scribes and Pharisees knew so much about the Scriptures. Jesus said to them, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. But they testify of Me, and you will not come to Me, that you might have life.” (John 5:39, 40). The Scriptures cannot be divorced from a revelation of Christ, and they had no revelation of Christ. And today there are many people who know Scripture, but their knowledge of Scripture is without value because they do not have open hearts that are set to do the will of God. It is a rare combination, but this is what God is after.
The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, is the sword of the Spirit; it is not your sword. The Word of God never should be handled carelessly or lightly. It should not be handled by someone who wants to win converts and arguments by quoting Scripture to them. It should be an anointed bringing forth. You have the word in your heart, but “The Holy Spirit comes to bring to mind,” Jesus said, “the things which I have spoken unto you” (John 14:26). At the moment the Holy Spirit reaches into the deep memory banks and brings forth that sword, and the anointing of the Holy Spirit is upon your lips for that word to come forth, oh, it could drive the enemy to his knees in complete surrender. He capitulates, if it is in the Spirit. But if it is not in the Spirit, it does no good at all.
Have you had people try to argue Scriptures with you? It makes you furious because that spirit of argument and debate gets into the picture. There is no revelation at all, only constant resistance to one another. But we have to bind the strong man that operates as a darkness over their minds (Mark 3:27). We must loose them to receive the word, and the sword becomes the sword of the Spirit, drawn at the Spirit’s initiative, but voiced through your humble lips, bringing forth fantastic results.
This, of course, was exactly what made the New Testament ministry so effective. There were many in the New Testament who knew the Scriptures, but just witness, for instance, that not one of the rabbis would have interpreted the prophecies of the Old Testament like the disciples did when they were preaching. They reached in and seemed to take it out of context. This overrules all the rules of homiletics and hermeneutics we have learned; the church today has gone about to reestablish that the Scriptures must be interpreted in its context. That was not the way the New Testament quotations were made!
Beginning with the book of Matthew, check back into the Old Testament each time an Old Testament Scripture is quoted, and see if you can figure it out from the surrounding context that it was really talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. It took the Holy Spirit to make alive the words which the early Christians had heard from the time that they were little boys and girls in the synagogue –“This is what the Holy Spirit meant!” The Bible was never meant to be a book that could be understood by human wisdom.
This is the beginning of all understanding, that the Bible was never to be a book understood by human wisdom. Consequently, you can understand why the Old Testament prophecies were hid away, concealed like precious gems below the surface. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hid in a field (Matthew 13:44), and it is the Holy Spirit who opens it up to you. The rest of the people do not see it, but you see it because the Holy Spirit made it real to you. It has become something very, very precious to you, but not to anyone else. That is the way it is in this Walk in the spirit: people do not see what we see in it.
The Lord is opening a word to us. Others will read the same Scriptures and cannot get what we see in it, because it belongs to the great revelation in the Kingdom. If you doubt this, carefully read the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. God put everything in parables so that they would hear and not understand; they would see and not perceive. It was intended that way. But if God reveals a truth to your heart, then as you walk along with the Lord in obedience, the veils are lifted off the secrets of the Word and more is revealed to you. Some of it is chronological in nature, dispensational. The Old Testament believers searched as they read, and understood by the Holy Spirit on a certain level. Some of them were looking into the future, inquiring into the things that they were seeing, but not fully understanding them. Then Jesus came and began to open it all up. Afterward, the disciples and apostles continued to open the Scriptures. And in this day there are many truths, still hidden in plain sight, which no one has ever discovered. We may have read a verse of Scripture many times, yet we constantly find illumination on it that makes it burst forth into the most fantastic revelation.
Let us get over the idea that the Word of God is the sword that man uses to further his religion and to win converts. It is too vast for that. We can quote Scriptures all the time and still not know what they mean. Their depth of truth is inexhaustible. We will never be able to come to the end of the great depth of wisdom and knowledge that is in any passage of Scripture; but the Holy Spirit, who makes it alive, will make alive the word for this hour. And ten years from now, we will understand things in the Word that we did not even dream of before. I do not think that we believe more than ten percent of truths in the Word that will be required basic revelation for us to walk in in the Kingdom.
We have experienced a quarter-century of things unfolding continually. It is tremendous, but we still see only a little. I keep my spirit open, because I don’t want to read the Word with my understanding limited by the past; I want to read it with the Lord loosing that revelation flow to my heart. I do not believe that we have come into the real, correct usage of the Word of the Lord. We need some spiritual fencing lessons to know how the Word of the Lord should really be drawn by the Holy Spirit and used in a marvelous way. We are coming closer to it all the time.
The Word is so rich. I do not have the words to express the concept that I see concerning this Word God has given us, this precious, precious Word. We shall become a people of the Book, for this is the hour that the seals are to be taken off (Daniel 7; Revelation 5). It is as if a veil has been upon them, and little by little, on through the days of Reformation, a little more light has come. But it is surprising, when you read the writings of those men, to find how limited their revelation really was. They took volumes to explain their limited understanding of the Word. It is fantastic to see the way God has opened it up little by little. It makes me yearn to reach into the days of revelation.
Nothing of the pharisee fits into a dedicated walk with the Lord. The legalism of the pharisee bypasses the true definition of righteousness. Righteousness is not a matter of rules and regulations; it is a real appropriation from God, and that is why people who really walk with Him repent so much. This eliminates the sense of legalism, for righteousness is the real issue. We deeply repent of the things that are wrong in order that we might break into what God has for us. It is a tremendous concept.
Once I was talking to a group who liked to feel that they could quote Scriptures. I would present something, and they would throw a Scripture at me. I would say, “Yes, but the Word here is talking about this,” then they would throw another Scripture at me. It was an elusive thing, a hit-and-run approach. They said, “We feel that we are more Scripture-oriented than you are. We have a great respect for the Bible. We memorize the Word. We are more truly a Scriptural people.”
I said, “The fact is, it is just the opposite. We have a deep sense of reverence and respect for the Word. We don’t approach it carelessly, as though we could interpret it by our own wisdom, or as though it were a special little set of Scriptures for us to use at our wisdom. I said, “What you’re doing is tearing the Word down to get ammunition for your gun. It is very dishonest to treat the Word that way. We reverence the Word. We approach it looking for the revelation of the Lord to open it up to our hearts. We know it is His Word. You say it’s the Word of God, but if you really believed that, you would look to the Lord for revelation in it.”
When I finished, they were very unhappy with me, for they were arrogant in their opinion of themselves. But anyone who walks with God has a lot more respect for the Word of God than these who will go on their little Scripture-memorizing programs in order to produce little salesmen or arguers who can go around presenting their views. That is a very dishonest thing.
Again, the sword of the Spirit is His sword, and the Spirit can bring it forth. Most of the time as I preach the word, I find that the Scriptures take on a revelation beyond what my mind has ever found. I reach into the depth of the Word, and the revelation brought forth makes us all want to stand and applaud, because it is all God. It is a word that has come by revelation of the Holy Spirit. I cannot take any credit for it. But I can be tremendously thankful and deeply inspired just to be a channel, knowing that it was all Him and it was His Word coming forth.
Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. How shall we learn to use it? Should we memorize it? Yes, but more important than memorizing it is looking for Spirit-led meditation that brings it forth. Listen to spiritual tapes and read spirit-directed literature also, in which the Word is expounded on a plane of revelation. If you listen to the kind of preacher who is sharp intellectually, you tend to become an intellectual disciple and try to follow that way. If you listen to the flow of revelation, you tend to follow a desire for revelation and that is what comes. Like begets like. It is like priming a pump. When you hide in your heart a word that is really inspired, a word revealed by the Lord, it tends to bring forth the same thing when you go into the Word.
I do not advocate that we substitute something else for the Scriptures. Be careful of what waters you drink from; if there is no revelation in it, forget it. No matter how sound the preacher or teacher seems to be, if the word is not really inspired of the Lord, it will only produce a low level of understanding in the Scriptures. Take in only that which is really inspired, filled with worship and with reverence for the Word. As you listen to that, then as you get into the Word, the same thing is produced in you.
As you talk to people, look to the Lord to give you answers. The truth is that you do not really need a lot of instructions. In the old order, we used manuals to train soulwinners, and we taught, “If he’s a backslider, these are the Scriptures to use on him. If he’s unsaved, this is how you convince him that he’s a sinner.” I could usually never get past that one. I could not walk up to a man and say, “ ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.’ Now, you are a sinner.”
“Yeah? I’m just as good as you are any day of the week,” and he would want to fight. That approach blows your convert right out of the water. He just does not want to listen, because it takes the Holy Spirit to reach him.
I disagree completely with the old-order approach. The preaching style of the reformers was to thunder on for an hour, preaching to the people what terrible sinners they were and how God hated sinners. Then they threw the bait to them, “But God will save you. He loves you,” and they would pull it in—sometimes with an empty hook, but they tried. The procedure was to first beat them down and then try lifting them into the boat. That method doesn’t work. In the first place, the ego in man will not accept his position as a sinner. In the Scriptures I found that when God wants to make a man feel like a sinner, the Holy Spirit comes to convince him of sin and of righteousness and of judgment (John 16:8). How is that done? It is very simple. Read that chapter in John and you will see it always speaks about a revelation of Christ. Sinners are convicted of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father and ye behold me no more. Verses 9, 10. It had to do with the revelation of Christ.
When the Lord wanted to convince Isaiah that he needed some help, He let His glory fill the temple. Isaiah saw it and said, “Woe is me” (Isaiah 6:5). There isn’t anything like a revelation of God to convince a man what a sinner he is. The blessing of the Lord comes and humbles him so much that he feels like nothing.
Just let a sinner come into the presence of the Lord, and we don’t need to use the old-order evangelism. In our Communion services, we can say, “Those who want to open their hearts and confess Him, accept Him,” and they will do so. Why? They have come into a revelation of Christ. The revelation of Christ by the Holy Spirit has left them feeling their need. Let’s start the way it should be: “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me” (John 12:32). Just lift Him up and see what happens. You don’t need to convince a man that he is a sinner. Just let the House of the Lord be filled with the glory of God. People will be crying out like they did in the book of Acts. “Men and brethren, what must we do to be saved?” It is a cry that comes up out of the heart.
The sword of the Spirit has a strange way of wounding a man. The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, comes to show how great He is, how much His loves shines forth to us. And the immediate effect is for us to cry, “Woe is me,” and to look to the Lord to bring cleansing. That is why there is no substitute for exalting Christ.
If I were to go back in an old-order church as an evangelist, I would give every sermon that the Lord would give me to exalt Christ and lift Him up. That is all I would do. I would not follow the old tactics of evangelism which constantly deal with the sin problem; I would make it incidental at the end. I would say, How wonderful He is! What a blessing it is to serve Him, to open our hearts to Him, to be loosed from sin, to come into His very Presence and to be made righteous.” Then they would come in. This is the way I would approach it. The evangelism of the Kingdom is proclaiming the great King. “Tell them that the King reigns in Zion”; this is the whole message. Once we have told them, men will submit their hearts to the Lord.
“But shouldn’t we have preaching against sin?”
When people accept Jesus Christ, you can be sure that for a long time to come they will do more than just the superficial repenting which belongs to a sinner accepting Christ. They will go into a period where God reveals Himself to them step by step, and they will be repenting from then on. Most repentance in the Scriptures is given to people who are believers. Haven’t you done more repenting since becoming a Christian than you did to become one?
I want to show you something of the nature of the sword of the Spirit and why it is called a sword. It does pierce. Every time a message like this comes, even though its context is seemingly unrelated to your thoughts and your personal need, you feel as though something is cutting you up. It reaches down to the motivation, it penetrates to the deep things in your life, and you say, “Lord, do something about all this. I can’t even understand the depth of my need, but Your Spirit was cutting down and slicing me away and I feel like much has to go. Lord, You show me. You do the thing within my life.” And He does it.
We find more about the sword of the Spirit in the book of Hebrews, chapter 4. The first part of the chapter talked about the Sabbath rest, and we read from verse 9: There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. (This seems unrelated, but please file it in your mind.) Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:9–16.
The passage first speaks about the rest, entering into that rest and ceasing from our labors. Then it says, “For the word of God is so sharp,” and ends with the high priest entering into the heavens for us. It all seems completely unrelated. Allow me to tie it together and show exactly what the Scriptures tell us. We want to get into that Sabbath rest. We want to get to the end of the fleshly, soulish struggle. Whether it is religious effort to please God or whatever it is, we are sick of it. We want out of that. We want to enter into His rest and cease from our works as God did from His.
In order to get into that rest, we approach Him; and as we approach Him, He uses the sword on us. (A surgeon’s knife would be a good illustration.) The high priest could take the sword and cleave the animals open. You remember how Abraham divided the animals, laid them out as a sacrifice, and shooed away the buzzards (Genesis 15); he exposed them all to God and then the fire of God passed among the pieces. This is what God wants to do for us, but we may have too many things going. Something has to reach down to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. Something has to get down to the hidden motivation, the self that is on the throne. You cannot enter into His rest because you’ve too many things going in yourself, so you come, and the Word cuts.
The sword of the Spirit reaches deep, dividing asunder even of soul and spirit. It separates between that soulish activity which is so repulsive to God—that religious thing, that legalistic thing that God abhors—and comes to the spirit, for God is seeking men to worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23). It comes right down and divides, telling us, “Now, here: that is soulish and this is spiritual.”
“Of joints and marrow”—this is where the body makes increase of itself. The flow of life comes from where the blood is manufactured, in the marrow of the bone. So the sword comes right down to the source of life, and is able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart.
And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open (this is the purpose of the sword of the Spirit) and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. The intercession of the High Priest, who has entered into the heavens for us, is based upon the deep knowledge and opening of your life to yourself and to the Lord which takes place through the word. Does it really happen that way? I believe it does, because you come to the house of the Lord often not really aware of the hidden motivations, the deep-rooted hypocrisy, the self-rule. You do not want it to be that way, but you are not even aware of it. Then the Lord brings a word and begins to open it up. Soon you feel, “I’ve never seen anything like this. I can’t have any secrets. I’m just exposed to everybody.”
We are laid bare before Him and, in a real sense, to each other, too. Our needs are exposed to each other, and we begin to believe the Lord and trust Him even more.
The great and tremendous sword of the Spirit is not so much a sword that you use on another man. It is a sword that He uses on you more often than anything else. And when He uses that word through you to another person, you are only the instrument through which He moves. Have a new respect for the Word. Love the Book more than you have ever loved it in your whole life. Cherish it. It is that anointed, living thing that God has given of His own word. He has filled it with His very self: His words are spirit and they are life (John 6:63). He speaks a word which, if you are open to God, goes beyond the penetration of the understanding. It reaches down in a creative, purging, purifying thing of the heart. The word is the channel to change every wrong thing in your life, and the key by which it will be done.
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word …. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. Psalm 119:9, 11.