The Full Armor of God

1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43; Eph 6:10-20; Jn 6:56-69

The scripture lesson for this morning from the letter of Paul to the Ephesians is one of those scriptures that has always intrigued me. In fact, I've always wondered what the full armor of God would look like if someone was wearing it. Would it be shiny? Would it be heavy? Would it be thicker than regular armor?

A few years ago I was walking through a religious book store and at the back of the store was a collection of religious things for children. I was interested to find out that one of those things was a set of armor that kids could wear. Included in the set of armor was a genuine vinyl belt of truth, a plastic breastplate of righteousness, a shield of faith, the shoes of readiness, and a sword of the Spirit. The box had the words "satisfaction guaranteed" written across it and it all sold for the low, low price of $19.95.

All of this was meant to teach a Sunday School lesson, of course. I could imagine a Sunday School teacher dressing up one of his/her students in this armor and using the object lesson to explain Ephesians 6:10-20. But, as I looked at this box of plastic armor I started to ask myself some funny questions about it. I started to wonder: First, what sort of enemy will this "full armor of God" protect me from? And, secondly, is this full armor of God really much better than the insight of a good therapist? And, thirdly, how can we encourage each other to "stand firm" against the powers mentioned in verse 12, especially when many of us are simply more concerned with being stuck in life's journey than we are worried about standing up against the powers and principalities of evil?

So, this morning we'll take each of these questions on, one at a time. And, again, the first question was, "What sort of enemy will this 'full armor of God' protect me from?"

Perhaps in order to answer this question we should ask, "What sort of enemy did the Apostle Paul have in mind?" In verse twelve Paul answers the question when he writes: "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

The keywords here are these: "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood." What Paul was getting at was that no one person can be called an enemy of Christianity. The ultimate enemy is mainly spiritual. And, yet, the power of the spiritual can affect the reality of this world in more ways that we can imagine. Thus, the enemy of the Christian is somewhat abstract and yet very real. It is hate, greed, envy, lust, lying, cheating, stealing, revenge and any of the other mortal sins you can think of. It would be easy if the enemy of the Christian was a person or some group of persons. But it isn't. The enemy can't be vanquished by putting someone in prison or conquering them. For the enemy is invisible and uses stealth and is the midst of us, even in the midst of the best of us.

Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, a country even Ronald Reagan called "The Evil Empire," a book was written with the title: "Beloved Enemy". The author of the book pointed out that human beings derive energy and a sense of purpose when they can identify an enemy to fight against. It was, after all, a terrible war, the First World War, that put this country into a position of world prominence. And it was the Second World War that brought us to unmatched and unheard of economic prosperity and military power. And it was the Cold War that has brought us to a world hegemony that is far greater than what the Egyptians, the Assyrians, or the Roman Empire ever had. So, in the book, "Beloved Enemy" the question was asked, "Who will America's next enemy be?"

Of course, for many people, the great enemy of America is the government. So, we now have a militia movement spewing some pretty strange propaganda about the federal government and have even succeeded in blowing up some buildings and getting media attention. And then there are the hate-groups, like the Skinheads and the KKK and the Neo-Nazi types who believe that the great enemy of America is anyone who isn't White, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. And so now they go around holding marches and burning crosses, getting themselves on the six- o'clock news. And, now, more than ever before we have organizations that believe that the enemy of America are businesses like lumber, oil, and mining companies that make their profit off of the environment. But, at the same time there are the organizations who believe that the real enemy of America are the environmentalists. With the fall of the Soviet Empire we are now beginning to see enemies all over the place. First it's Saddam and then it's O.J. Simpson and then it's Timothy McVeigh and then its Bill Gates and then its somebody else. The enemies just won't go away. They keep coming at us too fast to number.

And what this all points out is that our real enemy may actually be our need to find an enemy, someone to blame for our problems, a scapegoat. Our real enemy may be our failure to love and to share and to care and to be open and friendly and giving. Our real enemy may be our desire to hide in our safe shelters while failing to reach out to others.

Thus, the full armor of God is an armor that spiritually encourages us to get out of our safe little isolated lives, to risk a little (or even a lot) in order to share the gospel and to be a friend. The full armor of God is spiritual encouragement to say, "Hello" to a stranger who visits our church on a Sunday morning. The full armor of God is the inspiration we may need to get involved in a community program like "Lighthouse," or the Baldwin Community House, or a jail ministry, or Habitat for Humanity, or a dozen other such projects going on in the area.

So, when we ask, "Who is our enemy?" we might truthfully look in the mirror and decide that it is apathy, or laziness, or greed, or bigotry, or ignorance, or intolerance. We might better fight these things, instead.

But, then there is the second question: "Is the full armor of God really much different than the insight of a good therapist?" Indeed, you might ask that question if you believe that enemies are more imagined than real, more internal than external, more abstract than concrete. And you might ask that question, especially if you believed that the armor was for defensive, rather than for offensive purposes. But neither is the case. The enemies of the Christian are certainly real and they have a very concrete affect on the lives of millions of people. Poverty, injustice, ignorance, and hunger abound even in our own community. And God calls the disciples of Christ, you and me, to be actively engaged in fighting such effects of the enemy. And that's where we need the full armor of God – as encouragement to venture forth to do such works of love.

The fact is that God's full armor is anything but defensive. It isn't there for us to put on so we can sit through life and be protected from the nasty things that happen to everybody. In fact, when you think about it, armor isn't much good unless the person who is wearing it is advancing against an enemy. For when you look at the armor you'll notice that while there's a breastplate and a shield there isn't a back plate. You won't be protected by God's full armor if you aren't facing the enemy. And you won't be doing much good if you're not using that spiritual sword of the Word of God.

So, let's be encouraged to get involved with our world. God needs you at the hospital as a volunteer, or at the library as someone to read a book to a little kid, or at the school to help with an after-school activity, or at the homeless shelter helping with a meal. And if you can't do things like that, God simply needs you to be praying an hour or two a day for those who can.

The full armor of God isn't offered to us to protect us from people. Nevertheless, the enemy is real. And the armor is only good so long as we actively face the enemy. But, finally, how can we encourage each other to "stand firm" against the powers mentioned in verse 12, especially when many people are simply more concerned with being stuck in life's journey than they are worried about standing up against the powers and principalities of evil?

One of the most difficult challenges of the church, today, is to help people realize that they really do need Christ in their lives. Perhaps one of the biggest messages that the real enemy wants us to believe is this the message of apathy and noninvolvement. So, as a result of this message people isolate themselves from each other. They build exclusive homes, each of them facing private backyards, placed in homogenous neighborhoods, placidly out of sight and far away from people that might cause discomfort. They shop in malls and travel in ways that are inaccessible to the poor. The real enemy of Christianity wants to isolate us from one another. The Enemy wants us to mistrust. The Enemy wants us to define and hate people as our enemies, rather than to love our enemy. The Enemy wants us to turn our backs on community. The Enemy wants us to close our eyes to the needs of others. The Enemy wants us to be apathetic and placid and neutral and uninvolved.

So, for the Christian, the question is how to involve those who are stuck in their lives. How do we wake people up who have been lured into such a sleep as this? And the answer is this: As Disciples of Christ we have to learn how to make some noise. We need to advertise our presence and the message Christ has given to us. We have to be bold to speak up in this world where people have been told not to share their faith. We have to figure out ways, even surprising ways of sharing the spiritual wealth God has given to us. We have to turn up the volume or else those who need to hear will never wake up. And, if we're going to do that, if we're going to be involved with waking people up, with sharing the word, we'll need to put on that full armor of God. We'll need the kind of spiritual encouragement that comes from our faith in God and from God's grace that makes us worthy to be his disciples.

Amen.