「聖霊に助けられ、根気よく祈り続ける」宣教 2025年8月31日
エフェソの信徒への手紙 Ephesians 6章10〜20節 牧師 河野信一郎
Good morning. We have reached the last day of August. I am so thankful that such a day is the Lord’s day and we are to praise and worship God with you all this morning, In July and August, the number of people gathering in the chapel dropped dramatically due to the extremely hot weather, and I felt very lonely, but we are thankful to God that He has given us the grace to live-stream the services and the hope that we will be able to worship together in the chapel in the fall.
We thank God that the mission team from the First Baptist Church of Tacoma, Washington, U.S.A., attended this morning’s worship service and offered a special praise as they did last year. The song they sang, “Hana mo,” is a praise song written in Japan and sung in Korea as well. We often sing this song in the evening service at Okubo Church. The heat wave will continue during your stay in Japan, but we pray that your health will be protected and the missionary mission will be celebrated.
Before I begin this morning’s message, I would like to make three short announcements. Tomorrow we begin the month of September, and September is “Church School Month”. We will be listening to the book of Joshua in September. Also, Wednesday Prayer Meeting will resume on the 3rd of this week, and we will start a series of reading the Gospel of John from chapter 1 to chapter 21, so please attend the Wednesday prayer meeting at 10:30 or 7:00 pm.
We will also begin a new series of messages starting with the next Lord’s Day service, and during the three months from September to November, we will hear God’s message from the book of Jeremiah. We will listen together how God deals with and saves Israel and Judah who disobeyed God, and what truths this book teaches us in this age. We will hear how God gives us blessings through Jesus Christ when we admit our sins and mistakes to God, repent, and turn to Him. Please join us in person or online.
In August, we have been listening to the Word of God with the keyword ” patience /perseverance”. As we walk through this world, we are subjected to various trials, temptations, battles, and challenges. It is not only this summer’s heat wave, natural disasters, water shortages, and high prices. We may face illness, injury, or physical decline in ourselves or our families, we may have difficulties in our daily lives, or we may have to raise children or care for the elderly. There are also difficulties in work and study. Most distressing and painful are the complications and breakdown of relationships. There are battles that cannot be managed by our will, strength, or effort alone. That battle is not one fought with deadly weapons in our hands, but a spiritual battle against evil spirits.
The worst battle of all, however, is to be confused and in pain because you have hit a big wall, but to suffer alone, shed tears, and experience loneliness without discussing it with anyone, including family, friends, and people you trust. It is quite natural that we live in a world filled with sin, and that problems and challenges will arise in our lives. However, we see them as something to be ashamed of and keep them to ourselves. It is because we have a strange pride. Many of us try to solve problems by ourselves, but it never works. We have the sin and weakness of pride. What does a lonely battle bring to our hearts? It is despair. It is darkness. It causes us to lose the meaning of life, joy, and motivation, to fade away from society, and ultimately to experience spiritual death, physical death, and eternal darkness.
But here we must ask ourselves one question. Is it God’s will that we continue to live in such a spiritually dead state? God’s answer in the Bible is clear. God’s answer is that it is not His will for us to die in solitude, in spiritual and physical despair. Because it is not God’s will, He sent Jesus to us as Savior. Therein lies not only God’s love and mercy, but also God’s patience.
During our month-long study, we heard how God and Jesus are waiting for us to turn to Him with love, truth, and patience. We heard how God’s love, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are always with us, encouraging us and enabling us to persevere in faith in the midst of hardships and trials by the power of God’s love.
God’s will, desire, and expectation for us is that we turn to Him through Jesus Christ, continue to trust in Him, and live in joy, gratitude, and peace by His great power. It is God’s desire and will that we live together in His love, without fear of the power of the world and the forces of evil, which are riddled with sin, without suffering from our own weakness or the selfishness of others, without pain, and without hurting anyone. For this purpose, God has sent Jesus Christ and has blessed us with His Body, the Church. Through the Holy Spirit, He makes us one body and part of the family of God.
Now, this morning, as we listen in the final installment of this series on “being patient/persevering” in Ephesians 6:10-20, it was the Apostle Paul who wrote this letter to the Christians living in Ephesus, a large city in Asia Minor, a land that was the center of worship to the Greek and Roman gods. During his missionary journeys, Paul sent many letters to the churches that had sprung up in Asia Minor, Greece, and Macedonia, and he also sent pastoral letters of encouragement to his disciples Timothy and Titus. It is believed that this letter to the Ephesians was the last one he wrote while in prison.
In other words, this letter is like a final testament of the Apostle Paul. In this letter, Paul writes about what a great grace it is to be saved by God through Jesus Christ, and he encourages the Christians in Ephesus by appealing to them how important it is to walk in the example of Jesus. The climax of the letter is this chapter 6:10-20, the most important part of the letter. Why was this letter written and sent? It is so that each one who believes in Jesus as Savior will not be separated from the church and will not be alone, but will live together in the Lord’s love and grace.
In this context, the apostle Paul really wanted to write down in verse 10, “Finally, I say to you, depend on the Lord and be strong in his great power. ” Why is this the last word of his last will and testament? It is because the power of the demonic spirits to separate us from the love of God and Jesus is strong. Spiritual warfare is a part of our daily lives. Evil spirits try to deceive us in various ways, lead us astray, confuse us, disrupt our unity, and isolate us from the Church and the family of God. From this isolation, loneliness arises, and it is the work of evil spirits to make us fade away from God.
It is important to note the first phrase in verse 11, “so that you may stand against the wiles of the devil.” It does not say “against the devil”. Because we cannot stand against the devil. Only God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit can do that. What we can do is to stand against the devil’s “tactics/maneuver”. As I mentioned earlier, it can take many forms, such as illness, injury, natural disasters, fear of death, errors in judgment, relationship breakdowns, and other pressures in society.
The apostle Paul says in verse 12, “For our warfare is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in heaven.” The phrase “the spirits of wickedness in heaven” is misleading. This is not heaven, where God is, but the forces of evil that exist in the realm between God and us, forces that seek to confuse us, separate us from God, and make us feel alone.
The way to win the spiritual battle against this evil power, Paul says, is to rely on the Lord God and be filled with His great power. And he commands us twice in verses 11 and 13 to “put on the armor of God” to resist the tactics/wiles of the devil, and we can see that this is important.
Now let’s read verses 14 through 17. “Stand up and gird up your loins with the truth as your girdle, and put on righteousness as your breastplate, and make ready to preach the gospel of peace as your footwear. And on top of that, take your faith as a shield. Then take your faith as a shield, so that you can extinguish every arrow of fire that the evil one throws at you. And put on salvation as a helmet, and take the sword of the spirit, the word of God. The Bible says, “Take up the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. We are exhorted to stand up in faith relying on the Lord and fight together with Him. We are not to leave it to God alone, but each of us has our own duties and responsibilities to fulfill.
Of the six pieces of equipment we are commanded to put on here, five are for defending our respective faiths, and only the sword of the spirit, the Word of God, is equipped to destroy the enemy. The five pieces of defensive equipment show how tough it is to fight the tactics/wiles of the evil one, but only one piece of equipment, the Word of God, is a It is not a weapon or word that destroys, but a word rooted in love, mercy, and patience that saves, heals, and makes one live in grace. It is in the words of love that God gives us through Jesus that we find the power to save, to give us joy and inspiration, to give us peace, and to give us hope.
As we daily depend on the Lord God and this Word of love, Jesus, and are comforted and encouraged by His great power, we are filled with the Holy Spirit and become people who pray to God. We are not to pray for ourselves, but as verse 18 says, “At all times, pray and ask, being helped by the ‘Spirit,’ and keep awake and persevering in prayer for all the holy ones”. We are encouraged to persevere in prayer with the patience of love for God’s love and for all those who are connected to Jesus Christ.
When we are made alive in God’s love and in His grace, when we believe it, we know that we are never alone and we can pray for one another. Let us make it our joy and our purpose in life to pray that those who work around the world for the gospel may speak it boldly, and that those who are in chains for the gospel may be protected by the Lord’s mercy. We believe this is what God asks of us through Jesus Christ. Let us pray patiently and continually, walk daily receiving strength from God, and serve God and our neighbors.