"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Wednesday, 19 August 2009 | |||
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Christian Kevlar | |||
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Eric, our ministry intern, tells me that when he was in the
Army, he was assigned to be part of testing new body armor. New Kevlar
vests were put on a mannequin, which was then placed on the firing range.
Then Eric and his buddies would load up and have at the poor dummy,
taking notes on which sorts of rounds penetrated the armor. Even more
fun, says Eric, was to put the vests on watermelons, which provided some
juicy effects when a round made it through. Our text for this week is concerned with Christian Kevlar for protection against and battle with the evil spiritual forces we encounter as we travel through this world. Ephesians 6:10-20 is a well-known catalogue of metaphorical, spiritual armor. It calls for a stance of strength against the powers of darkness. Yet a couple cautions are in order as we approach the text. The first is not to over-emphasize the verses here which speak of evil spiritual forces, verses 11, 12 and 16. C. S. Lewis warning about being too fascinated with the demonic applies here. But it would be especially mistaken and fanciful to think that we have a hierarchy of evil powers listed in verse 12 or that we really need to be concerned too much with the natures of those powers. We recognize that we live in a world that blends the material and the spiritual and that not all spiritual forces are good, but our main concern is a struggle against the evil that comes out of our own hearts, minds and mouths, not techniques for contending with dark angels or some such. The second caution here is to somehow embrace Paul's metaphor and be "military" without being militant. Here we need to keep the first part of verse 12 in mind, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood. . ." Other people are not our enemies. We are not armored against any man, woman or child for whom our Savior died just as He died for us. We are to armor against the world's evil, which oppresses both those against whom it is done and those who do it. How to be strong and forceful without being militant is the lesson we must learn in order to live for Christ in response to abortion, homosexual behavior, human trafficking, drug trade and many other evils. Our text concludes in verses 18 and 19, with perhaps the best way to appropriate spiritual armor and be strong in the Lord, constant prayer. It's as we pray that we discover new strength and we must pray for each other. Even Paul asks for prayer here. The participles which call for armoring in the previous verses are plural. This is not an image of a solitary Christian warrior going off to battle with the devil (a little critique of John Bunyan here), but of the Christian Church armored and shielded and fighting together as a single soldier for the Lord. We get to that point by praying for each other. God bless you with strength and with good armor as you join forces with brothers and sisters in Christ in the struggle we all share. | |||
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Profile |
I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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