Sermon Tone Analysis

Back when our son, Keone was little, he attended a friend’s birthday party.

It was a pirate party so at the door he was presented with a plastic blow-up sword, which looked good but caused no damage at all.

Keone and his little friends had a blast wielding their plastic blow-up swords with a distinct lack of dexterity.

The nimble skillfulness needed for sword fighting seemed severely limited by the floppy handles and fat blades filled with air, but at least they were safe.

High adventure with ABSOLUTELY NO DANGER.

Every parent wants this for their children.

You know, at times, that’s the kind of spiritual warfare we as Christians have preferred to wage - to go at it with our blow-up swords filled with our own hot air, waving them around with no skill and causing no harm to the enemy.

A blow-up sword is fine for the warrior who is only pretending to fight but when the danger is real and the enemy is attacking- you need a real weapon- you need real armor.

Over the past several weeks we have been learning about spiritual warfare and how to prepare for it with God’s own armor.

Author Drew Larson explains,

“Spiritual warfare is the leveraging of everything that God promises against everything that opposes God’s purposes.

God is a God of purposes and promises.

Purposes to redeem the world and promises to judge wickedness.

Purposes to grow his children into maturity and promises to unfailingly steward that process.

Purposes to save us and glorify his name, and promises about our lives and about his holy character.

Satan and his spiritual forces oppose all of that.

They oppose all of God’s purposes for salvation and redemption, as well as his every promise for accomplishing it.

In non-Christians the enemy and his forces will attempt to thwart salvation (Luke 8:11-12) and encourage sin (Ephesians 2:1-3).

In Christians they will attempt to sever our connection with God, prey on our natural inclination to sin, and deceive us into believing untruths that might hinder our discipleship or cause us to lose our effectiveness for God’s kingdom.”

(end quote)

The enemy of our soul works tirelessly to disrupt our lives.

He wants to temp us to make bad choices, to embrace sinful behaviors, and to corrupt our relationships.

Satan loves to bring division.

He loves to enslave us by way of addiction.

He wants to distract us from fulfilling God’s purposes by keeping us focused on anything else but God’s calling on our lives.

In that kind of battle, we need more than a blow-up sword.

We need a real weapon and in our text this morning found in Ephesians 6:17, the apostle Paul identifies this powerful weapon as “the sword of the Spirit.”

So let’s look once again at Paul’s instruction to us concerning spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6:10-17,

In this passage Paul uses the armor of a Roman soldier as an analogy.

You may notice that of all the armor listed- belt, breastplate, shoes, shield, and sword …

there is only one distinctly offensive weapon.

The Greek word Paul uses for sword in this passage is machaira.

In other Greco Roman writing, the term machaira referred to a short sword or dagger not to be confused with the much longer Roman sword called the gladius.

The gladius was heavy and often cumbersome.

It was often used with broad sweeping strokes with the hope of hacking down one’s enemy before they came in too close.

The machaira, however, was a precision weapon.

When one’s enemy came in close, the soldier would use his machaira to inflict precise deadly blows.

In the New Testament the term machaira was used generically to refer to any type of sword.

The sword of the Spirit therefore, is more like the Viking sword Ulfbhert, Which is a wide sweeping weapon that can be used to prevent our enemy from coming in too close.

But if the enemy comes in too close, it is also a precision weapon, capable of exacting precise deadly blows.

That brings us to our first point this morning:

1.

The sword is the Holy Spirit’s offensive weapon that He empowers us to use.

Notice that the word “Spirit” is capitalized.

That indicates that the spirit discussed is not an “it” but a “who.”

This passage is referring to THE Spirit.

The Holy Spirit who is an essential member of the Trinity.

He is God.

As the Nicene Creed declares, he is “the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified…” It is the Holy Spirit that helps us to apply salvation- to work it out in our lives.

It is the Holy Spirit in us that helps us to live out Jesus’ command to love one another as He has loved us.

Through the Holy Spirit we can have a personal relationship with God.

He is our comforter and our guide.

Moreover, when we are attacked by the enemy, we are not left defenseless.

As our passage for today states, the Holy Spirit equips us with His own sword.

That brings us to our second point this morning:

2. The sword of the Spirit is the uttered word of God.

The spoken word is often compared to a sword in the Old Testament.

Specifically, the Bible compares God’s word to a sword in His hand used to lay bare the heart of man, to separate the truth from the lie, and bringing about justice through judgement.

As Hebrews 4:12-13 declares (NIV),

In this passage, the sword I envision is the machaira- the smaller precision weapon used by God to cut deep in just the right spot for maximum impact.

The Greek term for “word” in Hebrews 4:12 is the same word we learned about last week- logos.

There are many English words that have several different meanings depending on the context in which the term is used.

Words such as love convey different things such as: “I love this coffee,” or “I love you brother,” or the love a man has for his wife.

As we learned last week the Greek term logos also has several meanings.

Plato used logos to refer to the source of man’s reason- his intellect- his inner self.

The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo referred to logos as the force by which all things were created and by which all things are held together.

The apostle John identified this force- made flesh as the Logos, capital L, and names Him Jesus.

In Hebrews 4:12, the apostle Paul gives us yet another use of the term logos.

In this passage Paul says that the “logos of God” is a double edge sword.

In this context, logos refers to the meaning or the message of the word.

There is a second Greek term used in the New Testament that translates into the English term for “word.”

Graphe is used to refer to the written word.

This is the graphe of God.

When we read it and study it the Holy Spirit helps us to understand the logos- or God’s intended meaning.

However, in today’s text in Ephesians 6 where we are instructed to “take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” neither graphe or logos is used.

Instead, Paul tells us that the sword of the Spirit is the rhema of God.

Rhema refers to the uttered or spoken word.

It was often used to indicate a promise, declaration, or command.

As Tony Evans explains,

“Rhema is the declaration of the logos that you got from the graphe.

The Graphe is the book, the logos is the message, and the rhema is the utterance- the speech of the message… The graphe, the book, gives you the logos, the message, but it is the rhema that plunges in and draws blood.

It is the rhema that the Spirit uses… When it comes to spiritual warfare and the enemy is all up in your grill, you need more than graphe and logos- you need rhema.

You need the logos from the graphe uttered- spoken- declared.”

God’s written word- the graphe is powerful and useful.

It is even more powerful and useful when we comprehend the logos- its message- its meaning.

But when you feel tempted, as Dr.

Evans puts it, when “Satan is all up in your grill,” you probably won’t sit down for a good scholarly session- reading the Bible and studying its meaning.

No, when the add pops up when you are watching YouTube and temptation starts pumping and lust begins to flood your mind - you need the rhema of God- the word of God that you can utter over and over again like Psalm 51:10 (ESV), “create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (repeat 1 to 2 Xs).

When your co-worker says something nasty about you and your hateful retort is on the edge of your tong, you need the rhema of God like , “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

Friends, the word of God is a weapon used to bring about deliverance for the one who yields it.

The word of God is the Spirit’s sword.

When you grasp it, the Holy Spirit brings God’s truth alive within you.

God’s word emboldens our faith and we become fortified by His knowledge and understanding so that we may resist the onslaught of the enemy.

Undoubtedly, the most meaningful example of how we are to use this weapon is found in Matthew 4:1-11.

Which brings us to our third point this morning:

3. Jesus modeled how we are to use the sword of the Spirit when He was tempted by Satan in the desert.

Imagine if you will that you are Jesus’ cousin John.

You know, I mean you know that you know that Jesus is not just some ordinary guy.

Your parents had first hand seats to the miracles that lead up to Jesus’ birth.

You watched Jesus grow up and saw with your own eyes that this young man is extra special.

So when Jesus comes to you and askes to be baptized, you are taken aback and reply, “I need to be baptized by you Jesus not the other way around.”