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At the ancient battle of Thermopylae , for many days a small band of Spartan soldiers with other Greeks held off the Persian army and today we recognize that battle as being an example of what free men can do when defending their country.  It was before that battle that the Persians, vastly outnumbering the Spartans, threatened them with the taunt that they would shoot so many arrows, they’d block out the sun.  To which the Spartans replied, “Then we’ll fight in the shade.”

The purpose of the Persian arrows was to remove as many Spartans from the battle as possible. In Eph. 6, Paul talks about Satan’s arrows fired for the purpose of removing you from the battle.  Satan is a master archer.  He could beat Robin Hood. 

He shot a fiery arrow at Eve which caused her to start thinking that God really didn’t care about her because He was not letting her have something that would enhance her knowledge and position.  Instead of focusing on what we have, the fiery arrow puts your focus on what we don’t have and if you don’t have it, and you pray and pray for it, but don’t get it, God must not care about you. That’s an arrow that can remove you from the battlefield.

With another arrow, he got Eve to start wondering about God’s word and if there really was such a thing as judgment.  From our perspective, if we start doubting the existence of a literal hell, it would be a big factor in removing us from the battlefield.  If there is no hell, why bother telling others about Christ?

Satan directed three fiery arrows at Peter and they came while Jesus was on trial.  A servant girl asked him, “You’re not one of them, are you? ” Two others asked him the same question and by answering, “No,” three times, Peter removed himself from the battlefield. 

The removal can be subtle.  Because of fiery arrows, we’ve all removed ourselves from the battlefield at one time or another.  Isn’t it interesting how we can be so quick to say, “I attend CLC,” or “I’m a member of CLC,” and not say “I follow Jesus Christ.”  It was when they tried to associate Peter with Jesus, that Peter went AWOL.  If they’d have asked Peter, “Didn’t I see you in the Temple ?” he’d have had no problem with an affirmative answer.  “Didn’t I see you a few days ago helping that sick person?”  No problem with that one either.

Do you know who one of the biggest hindrances to someone’s going to the mission field is?  Her Christian parent(s). (!) The fiery arrow Satan uses in that instance is a believer with a discouraging word! 

That’s where the armor comes in: “the shield whose content is faith.”  But that’s often left undefined, like “grace,” like “repent.”  What’s he talking about?  To know that, we have to know what faith is.  It’s one of those fuzzy words to many people. What does it mean to have “faith?”

It’s amazing how complicated we can make simple things.  Government is notorious for taking the simple and making it complicated.  (In a government- issued document, the reader could read about “unitary hog-raising structures,” which, being interpreted, means “pigpens.”)

Let’s start at the beginning.  Where does faith come from?  Some might say, “Faith starts with a feeling.”  Feelings are deceptive.  Jacob lived for years by his feelings and got into one disobedient debacle after another.  He felt it was right to deceive his father.  So did his mother, she felt it was the right thing to do to conspire with her son to lie to her husband.  After all, they desired a good thing, the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant (which were Jacob’s anyway, without all sin-shenanigans.  It created such a swamp of complications, she never saw her son again, he had to go on the run for what he did, all because he felt it was right.  Faith is not a feeling.

If faith doesn’t come from our feelings, where does it come from?  “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of [concerning] Christ.” (Rom. 10:17)  

Faith isn’t a decision.  John 1:12-13 shows us: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.”  “Make a decision for Christ” is not biblical terminology.  Remember what Paul said, “Knowing the fear of the Lord we persuade men.”  When you were in elementary school, and you started learning history, you didn’t “make a decision” that Washington was our first president.     

What is faith?   Faith is being convinced/persuaded that something is true.  When your faith meets the right object, Jesus Christ, that’s saving faith.  Saving faith occurred when you met the right object, Jesus Christ.  You became convinced that the good news about what Jesus did for you (died and rose again) and what Jesus promises you (everlasting life) were true and you became a child of God.  You didn’t decide that Jesus is the Savior who promises everlasting life any more than you decided that Lincoln was the president from 1861-1865.  You were persuaded that those facts are true.

But what does all this have to do with the GQ Christian?  It’s important because if we don’t know what faith is, how can we use the “shield of faith?”   

Let’s put that definition with Eph. 6:16’s “shield of faith.”  When the fiery arrows come to remove you from the field of battle, you’re convinced that what God says in the Bible is true and that shield of being convinced that God’s Word is true is your defense against the arrows of fire.

One author describes the Roman shield: “The Roman shield was flame retardant. It was rectangular in shape and about two and one-half feet wide by four feet long. With it the soldier could protect his whole body. Before a battle in which flaming arrows might be shot at them, the soldiers wet the leather covering with water to extinguish the arrows. The Roman legionaries could closeranks with these shields, the first row holding theirs edge to edge in front, and the rows behind holding the shields above their heads. In this formation they were practically invulnerable to arrows, rocks, and even spears. These arrows were sometimes ablaze in order to set fire to the enemies' clothing or camp or homes.” 

The faith that provides such a defense for the Christian in his or her spiritual warfare is two-fold. It is trust in all that God has revealed and active application of that trust at the moment of spiritual attack.  That’s what the Bible means when it commands, “walk by faith,” that is, “live out the truth you know.”

Over the weekend, I attended a memorial for my brother in New Hampshire .  It was held in a home and was an informal gathering of friends and family who came by on Saturday from 2-4 PM.  There were refreshments and conversations going on in the dining room, in the den, and in the kitchen. 

I was sitting in the living room when a man I’d never met came in and sat down and we started talking.  He started the conversation by saying in a quiet way, “I understand you’re a strong evangelical Christian.”  (That’s some way to start off, isn’t it.?)  He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but I guess it could take it as an undeserved one.  I told him I was and asked about his church background.  That’s when things got interesting. 

He told me about a church he attended in Washington D. C. and how much he liked the pastor.  What he liked about him, he said, was, “His sermons were always crisp and right to the point.”  That sounded good to me, so I asked him, “How long were they?”  He told me that no sermon was longer than twenty minutes.  I remarked, “That’s unusual.” 

Then he went on to say, “I left that church since the pastor retired and I’m now a Unitarian.”  He said, “In our Unitarian group, we have all kinds of people, a lot of educated people, professors and such.  One Sunday, we may hear from a Buddhist and the next Sunday we may listen to a Muslim.  We have Buddhists and Muslims in our group and we also have a pagan group, so we may listen to one of their speakers on a given Sunday.  And, we also have listened to an evangelical Christian.” 

The next thing he said was, “I guess what I’m saying scares you, doesn’t it?”  There was one other person in the room who then said, “No, he’s not scared.  He’s very settled in his beliefs,” and then, as if by divine appointment, she left the room.  But that was nice to hear.  (In ten minutes, I’ve gotten two compliments and I usually don’t hear that many in any given month.)

After he told me all about his multi-believe-anything-listen-to-anything-Unitarian group, he said, “Tell me about yourself, what kind of a church are you with?” 

There it was!  A God-created opportunity to walk by faith, live up to the truth that I know, if ever there was one. 

So there was this golden opportunity, but there were some considerations, some fiery arrows.  “Hey, listen, you’re in someone else’s home and you shouldn’t start anything.  What if he gets upset at what you’re thinking of saying and what if others get in on this and start jumping all over you and ruin the special time here.  Why don’t you just recommend a good book for him to read?  You don’t want to create a scene here, do you?” 

That’s when the shield of faith swings into operation—“You have a command, ‘Do the work of an evangelist,’ ‘Be instant in season and out of season;’ “Go into all the world and make disciples,’ (evangelism is the first step to making disciples).  So, the shield of faith deflects those arrows because faith means that I’m convinced that those verses are true and the way to go with him.  

I said, “The church I’m in emphasizes preaching the Bible.” 

He interrupted to ask, “What does that mean?” 

I said, “It means that instead of emphasizing music or some other substitute, we spend most of our time together studying the Bible verse by verse.” 

“The church I was with in D. C. spent time listening to the Bible stories and then getting a metaphorical meaning from them,” he said.

This gave me an opportunity to advance the conversation by saying, “I believe that any given verse in the Bible can only have one correct interpretation and that there are not three levels of meaning or allegorical meanings to the Bible.  I went on to say that we take the Bible as the literal Word of God and that’s the preaching at our church presents it.

You probably realize that, having said all that, I haven’t given him the gospel yet and I knew that so I continued, “In the preaching, what we emphasize is grace, that Christ died for our sins.”

At this point, he interrupted to say, “Grace!  I learned all about that when I was in all those Catholic schools I attended and I attended Catholic schools all the way through.”

(There was an obvious problem with his statement because Roman Catholic theology doesn’t understand grace the way the Bible uses the word.)  I wanted to seize the moment, so I said, “That’s one thing that’s always puzzled me.  I don’t understand how they can call it ‘grace’ and yet say, “You have to attend church, you have to partake of the Eucharist, you have to . . .”

And then it happened.  Two people walked into the relatively small room, interrupted our conversation and started talking to him.  Conversation over.  Finished. 

But you just can’t let the matter drop.  Before he left I asked for his e-mail address and his mailing address and when he gave it to me, he said that he found our conversation very interesting and wanted to pursue it. 

I wish I could say that we completed the conversation right then and there, but we’ll have to do it long distance now.  I wish I could say I was that faithful all the time, but I’m not.  But what I do know is that if your shield isn’t in place, we’re just not going to stand for Christ.

This by-faith, Christ-life way of living is unknown to most Christians or flat-out rejected by them.  Someone has said, “It’s difficult to convince non-Christians of the substitutionary death of Christ and it’s difficult to convince Christians of the substitutionary life of Christ, the walk by faith.”

This life is the only opportunity you’ll ever have to use the shield of faith.  This life is the only opportunity you’ll have to walk by faith and not by sight.  Are the shields of believers up?  I wonder when a read a statistic like this one: “95% of all believers will never lead a person to Christ.”  Never?  Never. 

The only way that statistic can be true is because 95% of all Christians aren’t walking by faith.  95% of all believers are “hearers, but not doers” of the Word.  95% are not raising their shields of faith in this fundamental area.  95% will spend all of their lives sitting at that fire with Peter.  By not raising the shield of faith, by not walking by faith, no matter what the believer is doing, he is not pleasing God because “without faith, it is impossible to please God.”  (Heb. 11:6)

You might agree with all we’ve looked at today.  To agree is one thing; to raise the shield is another.  Remember Peter at the campfire?  Believers sit and listen to that story of how Peter wouldn’t raise the shield of faith and say, “Yes, I’ve known Him for three years; would you like for me to tell you about Him?”  What an opportunity he had!  But he didn’t raise the shield and walk by faith, walk on the basis of the truth he knew.  He was the one who’d earlier said that Jesus was the Son of God.  Now he lies and says he doesn’t know anything. 

What if an opportunity presented itself to use your shield and step out of the shadow of the dull and mediocre 95%?  What if you could get in the joy and excitement of the 5%? 

On Nov. 7^th, you can suit up; you can raise the shield.  On November 7^th, you can help man a table at our community wide Fall Festival and take a Spiritual Viewpoint Questionnaire which will lead you, step by step into presenting the gospel to those who attend, one on one, face to face.  That sounds exciting!  We’ll show you how to do it.  

Our Fall Festival presents an opportunity to raise the shield of faith.  If you think this is something you’d like to be a part of there are three ways you can: 1) Pray for the outreach 2) be present at the Festival and invite people over to the table to  take the spiritual viewpoint questionnaire (people love to give their opinions) and/or 3) be one of the interviewers.  I’d take the fellow’s words and give them a bit of a twist and ask, “Does that scare you?”  That's OK. God has provided something for you.  The shield of faith.  You’re convinced that God is right when he says, “Go into all the world,” don’t you?  Then you raise the shield of faith and go.

Now, the shield of Eph. 6 doesn’t just sit on the page any more, does it?  

 Truth to Take Home:

A church goes together with the shield of faith raised together.