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Muskegon SDA Church

Jason Sliger

The Sword of the Spirit

Father in heaven, we thank you for yet again another opportunity to step into your presence and to be instructed by the living Word of God.

And Father, as we read from the sacred writings of Scripture, may we find advice that will help us in due season when we find ourselves in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy.

We pray now Lord that you would speak to us through your word for we ask it in Jesus name.

In the last several presentations we've looked at how we are in a spiritual war.

As we look at the description of this in Scripture, the Bible describes that the Christian life is a life of war.

And I've mentioned several times, and it's worth repeating, that the Bible does not describe a wartime part of life and a non wartime part of life it simply describes that we are in Battle And that battle is going to take place until Jesus comes to take us to the heavenly camp meeting that will never end.

And I know you're looking forward to that.

Ephesians chapter 6 is what we have been looking at.

We've looked at several elements of the armor of God and we won't have time to go through every part of it.

I will leave that for you to go back and look at on your own.

But I wanted to finish with verse 17, Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 17, the Bible tells us, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the what?

So the last thing that the Bible tells us in the series on the armor of God is the sword of the Spirit.

Now, Paul tells us about the different elements of armor that we are to put on, and all of those elements are protective They are to protect you as you go into war but as you know any soldier that goes into battle is not going there just to stand and To be protected from flying shrapnel and bows and arrows They're going into war to destroy the enemy.

Therefore, they need a weapon to be able not only to defend themselves, but to destroy the enemy, to put him to death.

And so here, Paul tells us that, yes, we want to put on the armor of God to protect us from the assault of the enemy, but we also need something to combat against the enemy, to defend ourselves against the enemy, and by God's grace, to put the enemy to flight and to destroy him.

Hudson, Taylor Bunch in his book, The Armor of Righteousness, he says this, the most effective fighters in the army of Prince Emmanuel are the men and women, listen to this, who have the best knowledge of the scriptures and whose faith and confidence in them is unquestioned.

Who are the best soldiers in the army for Prince Emmanuel?

Those who have the best knowledge of what?

They are effective in their use of the sword of the Spirit.

Acts of the Apostles, sorry, Christian Education, or Christian Experience, page 116 says this, the Word of God is called the sword of the Spirit, and you should become skillful in its use.

If you would cut your way through the host of opposition and darkness.

If we want to overcome the enemy, If we want to destroy the enemy, we must become skillful in our use with the sword of the spirit.

Now, as I was preparing this presentation, as I was preparing this Bible study, I got a little carried away in some of my research this past week is I was thinking about, you know, the Bible being a sword, and I was thinking about the ancient Japanese samurai warriors and the swords that they would use.

And I started doing some research, and I probably got a little bit deeper into this than I should have, but I found out some interesting things.

The Japanese samurai fighters, when they were born, when they were little babies and the little baby samurais were born, they would bring a samurai sword into the delivery room and lay it next to the baby.

When the ancient samurai warriors died, they would bring a samurai sword and lay it next to the man as he breathed his last breath.

For the samurai warrior, the sword was with him at all times.

1 was a long 1, 1 was a medium, and 1 was a short 1.

When they would come into the house, they would take the long 1 off, but the small dagger they kept with them at all times because they never knew when the enemy would attack.

Contrary to what Hollywood portrays when it comes to the Samurai fighters and their sword fights, the object of the Samurai was not to have a sword fight.

The object of his engagement with the enemy was to kill him.

And in a few decisive blows, they were taught to effectively kill the enemy with just as few blows as possible.

In fact, It has been said by some that a skillful Samurai warrior could cut somebody in half with his Samurai sword.

Now I find this interesting because I think it has a lot of comparisons to our spiritual life, especially in the sense that the sword was always with the Samudai fighter.

It was a constant companion that was with them at all times.

Do you think they became so skillful in their use of the sword in just 5 or 10 minutes reading about it or talking about it or listening to somebody else talk about it every day?

How did they become skillful in the use of the sword?

It was everyday constant practice that they were doing.

In fact, when the child was about 3 years old and they were training them to be a Samudai warrior, they would put in their hands a little wooden sword and they would teach them the movements of how to use that thing.

Every day they were skillfully being taught how to use and wield that sword so that when they got into battle, they could destroy the enemy.

They were not there to have a sword fight.

They were not there to look fancy, they were there to kill the enemy.

Sometimes I wonder if we would rather have a sword fight than actually kill the enemy.

Throw out this passage, throw out that passage, kind of play around with it.

God wants us to take his word and learn how to use it to effectively destroy and kill our enemy, amen?

The sword of the Spirit, the Bible tells us, is what we use to defend ourselves in this great battle.

The Great Controversy, page 599, says this, we should day by day study the Bible diligently.

Day by day, we should study the Bible diligently, weighing every thought and comparing scripture with scripture.

There's no other way around this, brothers and sisters.

The only way that we'll become effective swordsmen and swordswomen is if we spend time with the word.

If we spend time with it day by day and allow the Holy Spirit to teach us how to hold the sword, how to swing the sword, how the best, effective, and most efficient way to kill the enemy.

The Holy Spirit has to teach us that day by day as we practice it in our morning devotions, we become more and more skillful in our use of the sword.

Unfortunately, though, this is what we find.

According to the American Bible Society, 9 out of 10 American households have a Bible.

That's, what is it, 87% of Americans have Bibles in their house.

Now for Adventists, that's more like 30, isn't it?

And we're born and bred through the reading and the studying of God's word.

9 out of 10 American households have a Bible in their house, the average being 3.

This is an interesting study that I found in Christianity Today.

It revealed that 19% of Christians, not just Americans, but 19% of Christians admit to reading their Bible every day, how many?

And we wonder why we're not effective in our spiritual warfare.

I think I'll pass up the metal sword and use my wooden sword.

I've got my own little sword that's made out of wood here, and This is what I'm going to use in battle.

And then when we come into battle, the devil cuts that sword right in half, and we're like, we're caught by the enemy.

19% of Christians read the Bible on a daily basis, and statistically we know that as Seventh-day Adventists, we tend to follow the Christian trends.

As Seventh-day Adventists, it should be more like 99% of us are reading our Bibles daily.

But the reality of it is, that is not the case.

And that is proved by the way that we treat each other If we were spending time in God's Word the way we ought to we would have that loving affection towards 1 another Lifting each other up instead of pulling each other down 19% of Christians read their Bible on a daily basis.

May God help us to spend more time with the sword of the Spirit.

Now, according to surveys, what do you think the biggest barrier is to reading the Bible?

Yeah, you've probably used that excuse, haven't you?

That's the number 1 reason that Christians give for not reading the Bible.

And we wonder why we're not effective in fighting off the enemy.

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The Sword of the Spirit

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