Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

The Shield of Faith

by Dave Wilkinson

Ephesians 6:16

January 30, 2000

The story I’m about to tell you is really old. (How old is it?) It is so old that the Kingston Trio used it as the basis for one of their songs. Now that’s old.

But it’s not just an oldie. It’s a goodie. It’s a goodie because it’s going to help us better understand the good news of God’s word. It’s the story of Desert Peter.

Imagine yourself as a traveler in Death Valley, far away from the road and dying of thirst. Your canteen is empty and you are using your last strength. The vultures are beginning their slow, inexorable descent. They know in their buzzardly way that the end is near for you. You stagger across a rise and you see an old deserted mine shack. Next to the shack is a hand pump. Attached to the pump by a length of wire is a tin can. Inside the tin can, you find this note: "Hello stranger: Under the white rock to your left you will find a bottle with just enough water to prime the pump. If you pour it all in and pump like crazy, you’ll get all the water you can use. But if you drink any of it first you won’t have enough to prime the pump. There’s extra canteens in the shack you can use to carry the water. The road is about 10 miles due west. Make sure you refill and re-cork the bottle for the next fella. I put a new sucker washer in the pump in June, and it should be good for five years." The note is dated and signed, "Desert Pete"

This is a situation that requires an act of faith. Do you trust Pete? Do you have faith in him? Before you take the decisive step of pouring away that precious water you would want to know a few things. Who is Desert Pete? Does he have the right intentions toward you or is he a sadistic lunatic -- hiding behind a rock to watch your agony when no water comes out of the pump? Or, even if he does have good intentions, does he know what he’s doing? Does he know how to put in that new sucker washer -- whatever that is? Before exercising faith we would like to have some indication that this Desert Pete is a valid object for our faith. Of course in this case we can’t have the evidence we would like. We just have to choose to trust or not trust.

What is faith?

There are many mistaken ideas about faith. To some, faith is naivete. One boy defined faith to his Sunday School teacher as "something you know isn’t true but you believe anyway." That’s not faith. That’s stupidity.

Or sometimes people say: "I wish I had your faith." What they really mean but are too polite to say is, "I can’t be as simpleminded as you."

To others, faith is emotionalism. It is a psychological crutch for those who can’t handle life on their own. That’s what Jesse Ventura said last fall. Ted Turner has said the same thing. For others, faith seems to be some eerie kind of religious experience that makes your skin crawl.

For still others faith is simply another word for optimism or positive thinking. "Have faith," we are told, and then we can whistle away the gloom, achieve our goals, and find happiness. "Don’t worry! Be happy."

But Biblical faith --real Christian faith -- is far more than any of this.

We are looking together in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians at the armor of God -- the equipment God gives us to "stand fast" in the evil day. We have described and considered the belt of truth, which equips our minds, the breastplate of righteousness, which equips our emotions and the sandals of the "preparation of the gospel of peace" which equip our wills. Each of these pieces of equipment is vital.

Now, Paul writes, in addition to these things, "take up the shield of faith."

There were two kinds of shields used in the Roman army. There was the small shield and then there was the shield Paul is talking about here. Paul says that our faith is like the shield called the "thyreon" -- a name, which came from the word "thyra", which means, "door." That’s what this shield looked like — a door. In the face of an attack by enemy archers or javelin throwers, a man could hunker down behind his shield and be invulnerable. It was a portable fortress. Roman soldiers fought in disciplined ranks side by side with a solid wall, a "testudo" of these shields. But it was also light enough to be useful for single combat.

Paul is saying that our faith is a shield that protects not just a part of our being, but which protects all of who we are. It is a shield designed for fierce combat. It is recorded that after the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, one Roman officer named Sceva counted 220 darts sticking into his shield. Paul says that this is the kind of protection our faith can give us.

But what is faith? The word is used in a lot of different ways both by Christians and by non-Christians.

When we are talking about Christian faith we are not speaking of simple optimism or "holding a good thought." The faith, which protects us as a shield, is the faith, which involves entrusting our lives to the person, character and power of God.

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin sets forth what is considered a classic definition of Christian faith. "Faith," Calvin says, "is a steady and certain knowledge of the divine benevolence towards us, which, being founded on the truth of the free promise in Christ, is both revealed to our minds and confirmed to our hearts, by the Holy Spirit."

Note first that Calvin says faith is knowledge. It is not shapeless and blurry. It has content. The content is defined as "the divine benevolence" --God’s graciousness and love toward His children.

Note second that faith is assured knowledge. It is "steady and certain." This is the point at which some contemporary people --even some in the church have trouble with Calvin’s definition. They consider it presumptuous to have a steady and certain knowledge of anything -- especially of God’s love and one’s own certain salvation. But Calvin is not saying that a Christian has no doubts. Calvin has wonderfully human passages on doubt in his Institutes. Nor is he saying that faith means that everything is crystal clear. Paul himself wrote that "now we see through a glass darkly." What Calvin is saying is that faith means that we take God at His word. He has shown us His love. He has given the Holy Spirit as a seal of our own certain inheritance. He has promised to "bring to completion" the good work He has begun in us. Our knowledge can be assured because of who God is, and the fact that God keeps His word.

Note third from Calvin’s definition that faith is existential. Now of course that isn’t Calvin’s word. Calvin wrote his definition in 1559, which is many years before the word existentialism was coined. But Calvin is talking about the same thing. He says that faith’s knowledge is of "the divine benevolence towards us." "Existential truth," said Soren Kierkegaard, "is truth that is true for me."

In his Institutes Calvin wrote: "Faith is not confined to our knowing that there is a God, but chiefly consists in our understanding what is His disposition towards us. For it is not of so much importance to us to know what He is in Himself, as what He is willing to be to us."

Note fourth that faith is a gift. We don’t go looking for God! God comes to us! Calvin tells us that our faith is founded "on the free promise in Christ." The promise and provision of grace is always there first. We can respond, we can never initiate. The most we can do is open our hands to receive a gift. Calvin tells us that "faith is both revealed and confirmed by the Holy Spirit." God offers the gift of His self-revelation and by His power enables us to receive it.

And note finally that faith is a relationship, involving the whole person. While it is, indeed, revealed to our minds, it is also confirmed to our hearts. It’s a gift given to the whole person. Stress on mind alone would reduce faith to dry intellectualism. Stress on the heart alone would dissolve it into vague sentimentality. Faith is for both the mind and the heart.

Faith is founded on the free promise in Christ, but we do not enter relationships with a promise. Behind the promise is the giver of the promise, Jesus Christ Himself.

Now that’s all theology. It sounds a little dry but understanding Calvin’s definition is important for us because we seem to have so much confusion about this today. We are called to live by faith, but this is not faith in faith itself or faith in "holding a good thought". It is faith in a person, Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Anything else will fail us.

I sometimes hear people say, "Have faith" -- as if we are simply to believe in faith. But to work, faith must have a valid object.

Suppose you want to cross a frozen river in winter. We all do this a lot here in Southern California so I know you can all relate to this. You may believe that the ice will hold you, but if the ice is thin, your faith will not keep you from going through. Thin faith plus strong ice equals safety. It will hold you whether you believe it or not. Strong faith plus weak ice equals disaster. It will fail you no matter how much you believe. Faith itself won’t do it. We are not called to have faith in faith but faith in Jesus Christ.

There is also a great difference between Biblical faith and positive thinking. Positive thinking seeks to tap the hidden resources of the mind and to utilize them for confident living. One person has characterized this as the doctrine of "salvation by thinking gorgeous thoughts." But Biblical faith relates us to the Living God, as a loving, willing, personal creator and from Him to draw courage to love in obedience to His will. It is the confidence, even in the "evil day", that God knows what He is doing in the world and in us.

For us to have faith is for us to see that the past, the cross and the resurrection, has meaning for our present and for our future. As Pamela Reeve writes in her excellent little book Faith Is, "Faith is not a "leap in the dark", nor a mystical experience nor an indefinable encounter with "Someone", but trust in One who has explained Himself in a person, Jesus Christ, in a historical record, the Bible. It is depending on the fact that God is love, not on our ability to figure out why. It is not related to our believing "hard enough" or our emotional exhilaration or flatness, but rests on what God guarantees in His word. It is not faith in faith itself, but faith in the Facts of scripture, the fact of Christ’s death, the fact of His resurrection. It is not a vague hope of a happy hereafter, but an assurance of heaven based on my trust in the death of Jesus as payment for my own sins. It is not an idea that God is somehow trustworthy, but confidence in Him based on proof of utter trustworthiness in dying for me.

We have spent a good amount of time this morning defining faith. It is important that we truly understand what faith is because Paul affirms that true Biblical faith can make a tremendous amount of difference in how you live your life and how joyful it can be.

Everything in this sermon to this point has essentially been introduction. Now, there’s the theme.

Paul tells us that as the people of God we are under attack from the one who is our enemy because he is God’s enemy.

Do you believe it? Do you feel it?

How about when temptations come to you out of nowhere hitting you when you are weakest and most vulnerable? How about when you are faced with nagging doubts about the love of God, the honesty of your Christian brother’s and sister’s, your own value and worthiness?

Not all of the attacks, slander, lies, and doubts that come to us are coincidental. Paul tells us that we are being shot at -- from long range but with telling effect. Paul uses the analogy of the flaming missile to describe these attacks. He calls them "fiery darts." These were the ultimate weapons of ancient warfare. If a dart stuck in the shield it flamed and blazed up, forcing the soldiers to drop his shield and expose himself to danger. There are many references to their use in ancient warfare.

What are the fiery darts that are being aimed our way? Where are the points of danger?

There are darts of doubt. There are darts of false, paralyzing guilt. There are darts of cowardice and weakness, there are darts of the "lusts which war against the soul." There are darts of disobedience and rebellion. All of these are a part of the arsenal of the enemy.

And against all of these darts, we are given protection. Paul writes that our protection is the great shield of faith with which we can not only intercept the darts but can actually absorb and extinguish their flame. By faith, we lay hold of the power of God in times of temptation and confusion.

The shield we carry was designed with one specific purpose in mind -- to absorb the blow and to keep the flames from having their effect. Faith can protect you when the going is hard. It won’t keep you from being shot at. But it will keep the arrows form getting through. It will extinguish the fires of despair and depression and the flames of greed and lust and anger and resentment and temptation. That is what our shield of faith is designed to do. When you join your shield with the shields of your brothers and sisters in the church, it makes a testudo — an impenetrable wall.

God designed our shield to work and it will work as He planned. But it will only work if you use it -- if you take it up and hold it before you. If you leave it one the ground or back in your tent, it can offer you not protection from the darts and from the spreading flames that would engulf us.

The shield is there and it is designed to work. We take it up not trying to manufacture "faith feelings" but simply by, as a conscious decision, putting our trust in God and placing our life in His strong hands. Through faith we trust Him not only for our ultimate salvation but for our daily salvation.