The QC Christian (1)

Eph. 6:10-13

Christine was fresh out of college when she married Tim.  God blessed them with a child sooner than they had planned.  A month to the day after their anniversary, she was holding their first child.  After much discussion and prayer, they decided that it would be best for Christine to stay home and not enter the work force.  Two more children followed, and Christine’s life became a whirlwind of changing diapers, nursing colds and coughs, settling the daily squabbles, doing PTA and being active at church. 

She and Tim had been raised in the church and had trusted Christ as Savior when in middle school.  When she met Tim in college, everyone agreed, it was a match made in heaven.  When they married, part of their ceremony was a commitment to establish, preserve, and protect a Christian home. 

That was 26 years ago.  Earlier she could never have imagined that horrible day, but it, like all great events, had cast its shadow.  She first noticed that Tim was becoming less active in church, and about that same time, he’d stopped praying with the kids in the evening.  He’d gone to church, but she had to nag him into the building and on the way home, while the kids chattered away in the back seat about Sunday school and children’s church, he didn’t say a word.  Like he was angry. 

As she thought about it, it all started when he accepted a new position that brought in more money, had more incentives, but along with that came longer hours.  His new work environment was filled with people whose priorities were different.  They craved status, money, prestige, and saw nothing wrong with those desires, thank you.  It seemed that their worldview was becoming Tim’s, ever so slowly. 

The values which had been so foreign to him were coming to be adopted and along with the new attitude came new actions.  He stopped fighting the constant flirting which was part of office life and started to enjoy it.  That’s when Tim met her. 

The horrible day was when Tim came home and announced that he’d found someone else, saying, “I just don’t love you any more.”  Of all the humiliations she endured, his accusations were the worst.  He blamed everything on her and her past support and faithfulness didn’t seem to matter to him. 

Everything was her fault, and then he said it, “You’ve been worthless since the day I met you.”  It was a lie and she knew it, but it was a lie Tim believed.  It was a lie he communicated to the kids. 

After the divorce, Tim married his new love and continued in his career. *

Tim was a battlefield casualty, a Christian gone AWOL, one whom Satan could display as a trophy, one who quit the faith.  There had been no “resist the devil and he will flee from you,” to put it in New Testament terminology.  It was quite the opposite: he’d cooperated with the devil and fled from God.  What in the world happened to Tim? 

From what we’ve learned from Job 1-2, we know that there is an evil half to the supernatural universe and that half wanted to bring Job down.  I would think that this is Satan’s desire for every believer, to take you down, meaning, to get them to “curse God,” as he wanted Job to do. 

But you have to wonder, why?  Why does he hate the human race, and in particular, why does he hate us (Christians) so?  What’s it to him, anyway?  Maybe we have a clue in the book of Job, Job 4:12-19.  There Eliphaz is telling Job that Job is suffering because he’s a sinner and been up to something. 

Where did he get this idea?  He says he got it “amid alarming dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on men.”  He says that he trembled and his bones shook.  He said he saw a spirit and the hair on his body stood on end.  As the spirit stood before him, he heard a “hushed voice” asking him if a human being can be more righteous than God, asking him if a man can be more pure than his Maker.  Then the spirit asked, “ . . . if He charges his angels with error, how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than the moth.” 

Eliphaz’s authority isn’t God.  God identified revelation from Himself when such revelation occurred.   The spirit must have been an evil spirit, a demonic being.  The angels God charged with sin were Satan and those angels who followed him in the rebellion.  For this they were cast out of God’s presence and will be eventually cast into the Lake of Fire . 

After the satanic rebellion, God created the human race and after the fall, He does something for us that He didn’t do for angelic creation—He provided righteousness to sinners as a gift through faith in Christ.  We’re sinners and we’re the only sinners for whom Christ died and makes righteous by faith alone.  Yet Satan sinned and he could crush the human race as a moth.  But there’s no righteousness given to him, as powerful as he is.  Christ did not die for the fallen angels.  Therefore, he hates the human race which is the object of God’s love and grace.  Whenever he sees and wherever he sees any of the redeemed, he wants to bring them down.  That’s you.  That’s me. 

This is part of the view from the cauldron.  Having someone out to ruin you is an awful thing, it’s serious, and that’s just what Satan wants to do.  In Peter 5:8, we read that Satan is like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may chew up and spit out.  That’s us.  Jesus told Peter that Satan wanted to “grind him like wheat.” 

Let’s think about a roaring lion.  We often hear that Satan is so subtle (and he was in Eden ), but let’s not limit him to subtlety.  What’s subtle about a roaring lion?  Nothing.  There he is, you can hear him.  His roar is an offensive weapon to get his prey to panic, to freeze, and do something without thinking.  Fear is the main weapon Satan uses against the believer.

Think about how a believer can be afraid to witness for Christ.  Then how about churches which are so afraid to give the gospel, so they’ve taken down the crosses inside and outside the building, so they won’t offend anyone because, as Paul said, the message of the cross is offensive.  The fear factor brought to bear by the roaring lion and you’re scared, churches are scared.

So, in the view from the cauldron, what about all that?  What to do?  Paul tells us in Eph. 6:10-18: “Be strong.”   What about this?  I thought the Bible said that we can’t be strong.  Does it?  Yes.  Then what’s going on?  You can’t be strong enough.  What Eliphaz heard was right in that Satan can crush you like a moth.

The worst charge a soldier can face is that of cowardice under fire and deserting his post.  The following is from the original letter dated August 16, 1943 by Lt. Col. Perrin H. Long, Medical Corps, on the subject of "Mistreatment of Patients in Receiving Tents.”

“Pvt. Paul G. Bennet, C Battery, 17th Field Artillery, was admitted to the 93rd Evacuation Hospital on 10 August 1943 . This patient was a 21 year old boy who had served four years in the regular Army.  He had never had any difficulties until August 6th, when his buddy was wounded. He could not sleep that night and felt nervous. The shells going over him bothered him. The next day he was worried about his buddy and became more nervous. He was sent down to the rear echelon by a battery aid man and there the medical officer game him some medicine which made him sleep, but still he was nervous and disturbed.

“On the next day the medical officer ordered him to be evacuated, although the ‘boy begged not to be evacuated because he did not want to leave his unit. Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., entered the receiving tent and spoke to all the injured men. The next patient was sitting huddled up and shivering. When asked what his trouble was, the man replied, "It's my nerves," and he began to sob.

The General then screamed at him, "What did you say?" The man replied, "It's my nerves, I can't stand the shelling anymore." He was still sobbing. The General then yelled at him, "Your nerves; you are just a coward, you’re yellow." He then slapped the man and said, "Shut up that crying. I won't have these brave men here who have been shot at seeing a yellow coward sitting here crying." He then struck the man again, knocking his helmet liner off and into the next tent.

He then turned to the admitting officer and yelled, "Don't admit this coward; there's nothing the matter with him. I won't have the hospitals cluttered up with these yellow-bellied cowards who haven't got the guts to fight."

He then turned to the man again, who was managing to sit at attention though shaking all over and said, "You're going back to the front lines and you may get shot and killed, but you're going to fight. If you don't, I'll stand you up against a wall and have a firing squad kill you on purpose. In fact," he said, reaching for his pistol, "I ought to shoot you myself, you whimpering coward."

As he left the tent, the general was still yelling back to the receiving officer to send that coward back to the front line.”**

Gen. Patton had no use for cowards.

Paul puts the word in the passive voice—“Be strengthened; “be empowered.”  He’s not talking about your self-effort.  The Christian is to “stand,” having been empowered by the Lord.  “Be empowered” and “stand” are the two commands and they are plural—this is to all believers in the church.  The opposite of fleeing (i. e. quitting) is to stand.  The believer by faith believes that “standing’ is what God wants him to do and that the strength to stand comes from God.  A good way to translate this is “allow the Lord to strengthen you.” 

Then Paul tells us how God strengthens us: It comes when we “put on the full armor of God . . .”  The casual reader might miss this, so let’s look at it—you’re to put on the full armor, not part of it.  Each piece listed in the “panoply” is to be worn by the GQ Christian.  

The purpose of the armor is so that you can withstand the attacks which Satan throws at you as he uses your sin nature and the world and his emissaries directly to come against you to ruin you. 

He used the world-system to ruin Tim as Tim absorbed the world’s values at his office.  His purpose is to get you to disobey, disregard, and deny the Word of God.  A pattern of this will ruin you.  The armor is there so that you can take your stand against the devil's “strategies.” 

This would explain why there are so many “Christian Tim’s” in the world.  They don’t put on the full armor and I mean consciously put it on.  They ignore the armor and fall easy prey to the world, their own flesh, and the devil. 

What he’s talking about is what every Christian learns sooner or later: the Christian life is not a playground; it’s a battleground and Satan wants you off the field.  If he can make a coward out of you to get you off, he will.  If he can get you off by enticing you to some sin, he will.  If he can get you to adopt the world’s values and get you off that way, he will. 

In verse 13, we have the summary: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”  Notice that it’s not “if the evil day comes,” but “when the evil day comes.”  It was like in WWII, the Germans knew that D-Day, the allies’ landing in Europe , was coming, but they didn’t know when it would come or where it would come. But there was no “if.”

God does not bless a church of cowards.  God commends a church which will put on the armor and stand.  God does not bless the church which stands for a battle or two, but stays the course.  In other words, your life and your service should exit the stage at the same time.   

When the history of today’s church is written, the objective historian will have to say that coward-churches preached success instead of the Savior, health instead of hell, and paid attention to demographics instead of doctrine.  So as not to offend, they took down the crosses from their buildings and auditoriums, all for the sake of nickels and noses.

Truth to Take Home: Play the man.  Take a stand.

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 *from “Spiritual Maturity,” by Baker, pgs. 2-5

**Letter has been edited.