Sermons from Lone
Rock Bible Church Flaming
Arrors and Falling Sparrows Flaming arrows are launched by a serious enemy and strike fear into the hearts of their targets. How is faith our best defense? Let’s break this verse down:
Let’s open our Bibles to Ephesians 6 as we continue discussing the armor which the apostle Paul says if you are a Christian you had better be putting this one on. The apostle Paul was using the equipment of Roman soldiers in his analogy, wasn’t he? Truly the analogy is much better for Christians who are called to fight the good fight as believers against an enemy who, though he is invisible, is very real and has a large host at his command. So the apostle says put on the armor. He has talked to us already about having on the belt of truth, the breastplate or body armor of righteousness and having our feet shod with the preparation of gospel of peace. We get to verse 16, where he says: Ephesians
6:16 In
addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish
all the flaming arrows of the evil one. We need to understand the shield of faith because we need to make use of it. I thought the best way to address this verse is simply to break it down into its component parts and go from there. I first want to talk about the shield itself. The apostle, which is so often the case, had a selection of words he could use because there was more than one kind of shield available to the Roman soldier. We are not talking here about that little round shield that a gladiator would strap to his arm while he carried the sword in the right hand and duked it out in the coliseum. The particular shield that the apostle has in mind here is a large one. It looks like the kind you see on the newsreels when the riot police spring into action. It is four feet high and two and half feet wide. It is a big shield! It has a frame work of wood. It is covered with thick leather and oftentimes also a sheet of metal in order to provide maximum protection to the soldier. We can even see, should the occasion necessitate, all the troops can pull together behind their collective shields and form a wall that is very difficult to penetrate by an arrow. The shield had to be tough enough and able to quash flaming arrows and also large enough to shield the soldier completely, getting one hundred percent of the body behind it. The shield of faith in the apostle’s mind is intended to cover every area of life. When we invite someone to become a Christian we say that the formula is so simple, and indeed it is. We invite people simply to put all their trust in Jesus only. What a simple formula. Even though we know that works, something is necessary beyond our initial coming to faith. We need daily, regularly, and completely to put all our trust in Jesus only as well. I don’t know if others of you heard this anecdote on the radio about how a police officer, in one of the major cities, came upon an intersection where there had been some sort of a problem in traffic. Jumping out of his car he viewed one woman absolutely agitated, using foul language and using foul gestures. Just acting on his reflexes he went over to her and put her hands behind her back and cuffed her and made her sit in his car. Once he had her seated in his car he radioed in to check her license number. Meanwhile she had calmed down and began to talk. She said, “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” He said, “On the back of your car was a fish and a sticker that said ‘WWJD.’ I was sure it was a stolen car because of the way you were acting.” If we are going to be people of faith and if we are going to hoist the shield of faith, we have to be behind it with all our parts and every dimension of life. Not the little shield; the big shield. Let’s talk about arrows. I grew up on westerns. I watched a lot of them and I loved them. This is not a racist remark, but I didn’t care so much for the cowboy rustler ones. That was just cowboys on cowboys. I liked the cowboys and Indians parts. I just loved seeing those Indians whooping it up on their horses and their headdresses and their bows and arrows and spears, circling the wagons. That was an exciting experience to see that sort of thing. When they went to shoot an arrow at somebody I think “That’s fair,” but when the arrows were flaming I thought, “Now you’ve gone too far.” It’s one thing to shoot an arrow into somebody in a fight. But it’s quite another to tip that arrow with burning pitch so that the damage goes beyond the puncture. I thought it was going a little bit overboard. There are two points to be made about this flaming arrow. The apostle could have said just “arrow.” But no, he said the flaming arrows of the evil one. Two key features of the flaming arrow: One is this indicates an attack from without. In other words, someone is coming at us. The phone rings and someone is chewing us out. Maybe in traffic it’s that lady and she is coming at us and ripping into us. Maybe someone confronts us and accuses us. But it’s an unexpected confrontation coming from somewhere else. This is not one of those cases where I am struggling with some sort of an internal issue and certainly not one of those cases where I have caused the problem. You might say the flaming arrow represents a form of persecution that comes to us. People have said if you are a Christian you will be persecuted. Maybe, but sometimes if a Christian is acting like a jerk he or she ought to take some hits. This isn’t one of those times. This is when I am enduring an attack that I didn’t see coming and that I didn’t bring on myself. The flaming arrows are coming from the wicked one. He is trying to take us down. Here is the best example I can think of in Scripture. Job did not know, but we do, about the heavenly conversation between God and Satan that led to Job’s misery. Think it through. All Job knew from where he sat was that messengers kept coming to him with bad news. He kept taking, as it were, flaming arrows. For instance, the Sabeans have attacked. The Sabeans are people. Followed by the Chaldeans. Sometimes the flaming arrows take the form of people. Other cases contributing to the ruination of Job, incited by the devil. This is clear in Scripture. The wind, the elements have come. How often do we consider this, that the elements may be wielded by our enemy? The fire from heaven, the wind that brought down buildings, that caused destruction that sent Job into the sorry state he found himself in and followed by an attack upon his health. This was the frustration for Job; he didn’t ask for any of this. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t only Job who was saying there is no person in all the earth more righteous than Job. Those were not Job’s words only; those were God’s words. Job wasn’t being a jerk and inviting people to address him as such. Job was so conscientious about the behavior of his children that he offered sacrifices for them lest they somehow sin and forget God. He was an upright man and yet here came the arrows. What did Job need? The shield of faith. I suggest that by the end of the book of Job, he knew that and he used it. First of all, this flaming arrow is an attack from outside. It’s like persecution. Secondly, about this flaming arrow, it is an attack intended to spread its damage. The arrow is tipped with flaming pitch. When they send the flaming arrows they don’t intend just to put a hole in somebody; they intend to spread the damage and cause fire and destruction and burn down more than would be the case if it were simply a pointed tip. The damage is intended to be spread. This is so pertinent to people. Sometimes we take personal hits. Sometimes we deserve them; sometimes we don’t. But the Bible says don’t spread them. “I was minding my own business and you know that lady, you know who she is, she’s the one who sits over here. She came up to me and she got in my face.” What have I done? I have taken an attack but I have allowed it to spread. Now I have another person or whoever may have overheard, involved, and that is a direct result of a flaming arrow. This shield of faith is to stop that sort of thing. How does that work? We’ll talk about that, but when the flaming arrows come the idea is that we extinguish them, not that we say poor me, could someone please sympathize with me, and watch the damage spread like a fire or even like a cancer. We choose to share or broadcast sometimes, don’t we? Do you realize that this is actually the principal behind the Old Testament law that says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That’s what that law is for. In other words, if someone puts out somebody else’s eye or tooth you only get an eye or a tooth in exchange. You don’t take an eye and a tooth and an ear, because people in these cultures, in any culture, tend to not only get back what is lost but maybe to add a little more. That escalates like the Hatfields and the McCoys and the first thing you know there is a full-blown war going on. The Bible says no, you keep the problem as contained as possible permanently. The person you or I tell about the injuries that we receive is either part of the solution or part of the problem. They are to be part of the solution. “I just have to have somebody to talk to.” Talk to God and talk to the person with the offense. That’s a whole other sermon, but that’s where it is to go. Otherwise we have a flaming arrow and a fire that will spread. Those are the arrows of the evil one. They come from without and they are designed to extend damage. Third, the nature of faith. This is quite a word and much has been done with it. Taking up the shield of faith. I am going to suggest three wrong understandings of faith. While they are wrong, nevertheless they are common. The first is this: Asking for a definition of faith and some
professing Christian people, religious people, might come back with something like this:
Faith is believing what I know is not true. That’s believing something I know really
isn’t true or is highly unlikely true, but I’m just going to believe in it
anyway. It’s like, “I believe in
Santa Claus because I want to.” So therefore, we have one. This is not faith. That is
illogical, absolutely illogical. Believing what I know now to be true requires an emptying
of the brain. Don’t empty your brain. God gave us a brain that we might use it. Do we believe in Jesus even though we are pretty sure it couldn’t possibly be true? I would hope not, but that’s the first one and we do hear it. The second wrong understanding of faith is what we might call stoicism. The stoics were a group of people who had a unique philosophy back in the first several centuries following Jesus. Probably the most well known stoic was the emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius, who was emperor during the era of the gladiators. In any event, a stoic saw life in somewhat of a different way. A stoic was honest enough to admit that he or she could not control what came their way in life. For the most part, we really can’t. We cannot make the sun come up; we can’t make the wind blow; we cannot make things happen to us. They realized that but having no belief in a personal god whatsoever, they believed in this impersonal notion of fate. They believed that all the world, as we understand it, is just one big entity and we are mere cogs in one large machine and nothing has purpose and nothing has point and so therefore we have no control over anything that comes our way. The only thing we can control as a stoic is how we respond to what comes our way. That’s why the word “stoic” comes down to us reminding us typically of the cigar store Indian that just stands there and stares straight ahead. No response. I can’t control what comes in but I can sure control how I handle it and typically I just take it. That’s a stoic. Stoicism, however, is common in our day among those of a new age persuasion. Believing that we are god and god is us and all is one. It’s anybody’s game and nobody is steering this ship and it’s not going anyplace anyway so just take it. That’s not faith. That’s impersonal. According to the Bible, if nothing else, faith is patently and intensely personal as a relationship between ourselves and our God. Edging closer to where Christians tend to land, the third error with regard to the nature of faith is this: Faith is not my own internal, mystical, spiritual generator to bend the will of God. Why, if I can just go off someplace on a mountaintop or somewhere and just gin up enough faith, just close my eyes, grit my teeth, and trust, trust, trust until the cows come home, then God will do what I want. If you can do that, move the mountain. That is so humanistic and so arrogant to think that we have what it takes, if we can just spiritually focus so intently that we can just make God do things. He has then become our cosmic lap dog and we are bordering on blasphemy to hold that view of God. I have heard of people who give God deadlines and it’s wrong. But yet, “If I just had more faith I could get God to do things for me. I could win that lottery.” It is not my own internal, mystical, spiritual generator to bend God’s will. That is humanistic. We memorize Ephesians 2:8-9, “By grace you are saved through faith and that not of yourselves.” Folks, you heard it here in church. The pastor said it. You didn’t come up with your own faith either. The faith we have, our ability to trust in the living God is itself a gift. We don’t turn that around and say ok God, now perform. Get me what I want. Let me define faith this way – it is not believing what I know is not true. It is not stoicism. It is not my own generator. The best definition I can offer this morning – faith is simple trust. Simple trust in a personal God who is sovereign and wise and good under all circumstances. Here’s how it works. Here come the arrows and they are flaming because the intent of the enemy is to share the damage. What do we do? We get behind our shield of faith. That means we seek refuge in the shelter of a personal God who is sovereign, wise, and good and we trust Him. We give over to Him whatever is difficult. We go to Him and say God, I don’t understand, I don’t think I deserve this, God I can’t see the end of this, where this is going, but God, I am going to place it in your hands. I’m going to get behind the shield of faith. I’m going to put my trust, all my trust in a God who is sovereign and wise and good under all circumstances and I am going to leave it there. I may have to do that again next hour, but I’m going to do it. Simple trust in a personal God who is sovereign and wise and good under all circumstances. I’m going to read from Matthew’s gospel, a couple points to underscore this. You’ve heard these verses before; they have to do with birds. Matthew
6 25
For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat
or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more
than food, and the body more than clothing? 26
Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and
yet your heavenly Father feeds them. And then the kicker line: Are
you not worth much more than they? Maybe not in some parts of America but in God’s mind, yes, you are. Simple trust in a personal God who is sovereign and wise and good. In Matthew 10, Jesus is talking about following Him and devotion to Him. He says: 29 Are
not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart
from your Father. 30 But
the very hairs of your head are numbered Can we trust a God like that? Faith is only as good as the object you place it in. I can have faith in a chair and if I sit down and it collapses my faith is poorly placed. Faith is only as good as the object in which we place it. Is God worth our simple trust? Can He pull it off? That’s why we describe God as sovereign. That is to say He does what He wants and He is in complete and perfect and ultimate control of all things and He is orchestrating all things to His appointed end. He is sovereign. That also means that He is big enough to take responsibility for everything we don’t understand, even those things which bring us tears and grief. He is big enough to take responsibility for it. He is that big! He has to be that big. If we are dealing with a God whose arm can be bent and whose will can be changed simply because you or I get worked up, what kind of God is that? Why, we have become that god then and frankly, I don’t want to be. There is a side to God and it must be this way because of His vastness and His size and His depth that we will never understand, that we will never figure out and it must be that way. The minute we can understand every facet of the character and the person of God, we are God. We have that kind of mind. He is the creator; we are the creature and we must stay in our place. This simple trust in a sovereign and personal God does not exclude wondering, which I hope you do. “I wonder what God is doing?” “I wonder why it’s going this way.” It doesn’t exclude questioning. Job had many questions but he never broke faith. He never blasphemed. But he had questions, and so do we. It’s ok to ask them and it’s ok to grieve and to feel badly because we are wired to oppose death. It’s foreign to us. Death and pain and suffering and injustice should tweak our hearts. We are created in His image. Let it be that way. It’s ok. It’s ok to ask. It’s ok to agonize. One of the most stellar believers of all time had to be Joseph in the Old Testament. You talk about flaming arrows. Here is this guy in his youth, probably in his impetuousness, he had to point out to his brothers that they were to worship him some day. He probably shouldn’t have done that, but what happened? He goes on an errand for his father, goes to the trouble of tracking down his brothers. They want to kill him. They grab him, take his precious coat. Let’s kill him. Let’s not kill him; let’s sell him to the Midianites. They throw him in the pit. They pull him out. Off he goes as a slave. He is 17 years old. He is a slave now in Egypt for years. He is in Potiphar’s house, doing a good job, upright, a man of integrity, resists temptation. Here come the arrows. He goes to jail. He didn’t do anything to deserve jail. In jail he languishes for years, then he hears these two guys have these dreams. Don’t think for a second that a day didn’t go by where Joseph wasn’t saying, “I hate this jail, and furthermore, I don’t deserve to be here. I didn’t do anything.” Joseph interprets the two dreams. One guy dies as a result of that interpretation; the other guy goes back to be the cupbearer to the Pharaoh. Joseph says, “When you get out, which you will, please tell them I’m here and I don’t deserve to be here.” Years went by before that occurred. Yet Joseph trusted God through those arrows. When finally God had reversed everything and Joseph was the man, he was able to say to his brothers that all the stuff they meant for evil, a sovereign God who is good and who is wise, meant it for good. He preserved many people alive because of what they did. Joseph trusted Him. Isn’t that great? Joseph trusted God when things were bad. Remember what happened to Naomi in the book of Ruth. She was just a mom with two sick boys. She goes away, leaves the land and her husband dies and her sons die. She has nothing except this daughter-in-law. They go back home to Bethlehem. People come out and say, “Naomi, Naomi, you’re back!” Naomi means pleasant. She said no, don’t call me pleasant. My life isn’t pleasant. Call me Mara, call me bitter. Why? Because God has dealt bitterly with me. Did she break faith? No, she trusted in a God who is sovereign and wise and good. The shield of faith is where we go when the fiery arrows come and we need to place all our trust back on Him. Casting all our cares upon Him, Peter says, because He cares for us. Be anxious for nothing, Paul says in Philippians, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. Give it to Him! Trust Him and see where He goes. We need this. We need it all the time and I will say this by way of remembrance because this is a bit of a preview. Where does that faith come from? Faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. The Bible has a way of generating faith and trust within us. We must be in the Bible and the Bible must be in us or when the darts come we won’t handle it. We need faith and faith comes from our meaningful interaction with the word of God. Finally, the nature of faith, the greatness of God. This is implied in the verse but I’m throwing it in the sermon because faith is only as good as the object and if our object is God and He is great then our faith is well placed because He takes responsibility for His own eternal agenda. I have good news for you and for me. We get to read the end of the book. Read it! Read the 20th, 21st, 22nd chapters of the book of Revelation and see how it ends because God has told us well in advance just exactly how he intends to put a bow on this fallen creation and fix it all. It’s there. We know how it ends. He has told us and furthermore He paid for it. It’s bought and paid for with the precious blood of Jesus. It’s a sure thing. Regardless of our questions and our wonderings and our anger and our grieving we can say ok, I can give that to God, I can get behind the shield of faith because I know how it ends and it ends well. Secondly, on the greatness of God. This is for all of us. Realize, He does not need our understanding or our permission any more than He needs our help. He will be God regardless. The Bible says let God be found true though every man be found a liar. He is totally at peace with himself. God’s self esteem is doing well. He doesn’t need our understanding. He doesn’t need our permission any more than He needs our help. We are the happy, blessed, hopefully humble beneficiaries of His grace. Job went through that whole group of chapters asking all these questions, basically asking why God? Why did I lose everything, including my health, he asked all through that book. Finally God shows up and said Job, I don’t remember ever asking you anything. I don’t remember, Job, ever needing your advice. As a matter of fact, Job, where were you when I laid the foundations of the world? And God came back to Job over and over and over again with questions of that nature. Can you make it snow, Job? Go ahead. Can you cause the cattle to calve? How do you do with the crocodile, leviathan? Go ahead, Job, pet him. Job said, “I brought a knife to a gunfight here.” What is interesting about the book of Job is how it ends. Job is never told why, ever. What he is told is who. He comes face to face with the living God and he is done asking questions. He is exactly where he ought to be. The apostle Paul points that out in Romans 9. He says remember your place. Somebody would say why do we even bother then with the things of God if He is sovereign? Who resists his will? How can God still find fault if He is sovereign over people? What does Paul say? Who are you to answer back to God? Doesn’t the potter have the right to say to the clay whatever he will? Remember your place. That’s for all of us. We are the clay. He is the potter. He is the creator. We are the creature. Live with it. Love it. He takes responsibility. Rejoice in what He has made clear. He who spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things? We don’t have a clue. We can’t begin to fathom the beauty of what God has in store. We don’t have the capacity between our ears to put that together. So what we do is look at what is clear – and that is He gave His Son – and His Son suffered undeservedly. His Son knows a lot about flaming arrows. He took them for you and me, and He died on the cross to prepare the way for us to have a glorious eternity that we don’t deserve. Rejoice in what He has made clear. Trust Him.
Jim Carlson 2006, Lone Rock Bible Church, Stevensville Montana, USA |