“Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes” Ephesians 6:11
To think it all began in a garden! Surrounded by colorful flowers, plants and trees, Adam and Eve could freely enjoy walking and talking with the Creator. Then everything changed. Lured by another voice, they began to question the Father’s authority, choosing to believe Satan’s lie, “You shall not surely die.” No longer content with enough, they desired more. And just like that, they fell out of close fellowship with God into separation, loneliness, and ultimately eviction from the garden. They fell out of innocence into condemnation, guilt and shame. They fell out of abundant Life into want, grueling work and pain. They fell into certain death. The first blood was drawn from an animal whose skin became their covering in what was to become an alien world. That spirit of disobedience and self-will later resulted in one of their sons killing the other. So much blood has been flowing since then!
Genesis 6:11: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.” This was during Noah’s time, when God regretted He had made man and so sent the flood as judgment for sin. Later, in the Book of Esther, Haman devised a plan to kill all the Jews, but his plot failed. His descendants were the Amorites, who were bitter enemies of Israel until God wiped them out for their repeated sins. The war between Israel and Palestine is just the latest in reported mutual cruelties that make readers shudder at the lengths to which people today will go to wreak revenge, or inflict injury on innocent people, whether it involves physical and verbal attacks on passersby, mass robberies of businesses in broad open daylight, stories of neglect, such as the mother who went on a week’s vacation and left her 8 month old child home alone, or patients in convalescent homes being mistreated. America seems to be falling to a new low. Moral standards are sadly kicked to the curb in personal and public life.
Thankfully, He provides us with a covering not of an animal’s skin, but with His own righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ and His shed blood. Next He equips us with spiritual armor and the power of the Holy Spirit to contend “...against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph.6:12). I found a note in my Bible which probably came from a sermon that I once heard. I think it sums up beautifully what God has done to “...keep [us] from falling and to present [us] before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy” (Jude 24). The note lists 4 words: selected, protected, directed, corrected. I would add one more: connected. First we are saved by grace alone. Then we are protected from God’s wrath, directed and corrected by the wisdom and enlightenment of God’s Holy Spirit, and finally we rest in the peace of knowing God because we are eternally connected—reunited to the One from Whom we have been separated by sin.
“To the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen” (Jude 25).