Scripture

I recently watched a game where one team’s best player could not participate. His injuries kept him out of the action. The cameras showed him pacing up and down, cheering from the sidelines, but unable to go out on the field. His skills were missed, and his team ended up losing the game. The enemy knows he can’t take us off God’s team, but he can sideline us. He can’t separate us from God’s love, but he can render us ineffective. Satan is always working to put us on the injured reserve list.

In Scripture, the heart refers to the control center of one’s life. It is the central point of our thoughts, desires, and actions. We must guard it with all diligence. Proverbs 4:23 says that the springs of life flow from our hearts. In the spiritual battle, our hearts must be protected with the breastplate of righteousness.

While there is a real spiritual battle going on in the air that we can’t see, there is a real spiritual battle on the ground that we certainly experience. Scripture reminds us that our primary fight is not against flesh and blood. We battle in a hand-to-hand engagement against our adversary, the devil.

Satan seldom shows up as the fiery demon that scares us to death. He is more subtle and craftier in his art of temptation. He puts before us what we want, addresses our purpose in life, and then promises a shortcut if we follow his lead.

Scripture is clear that our spiritual battle belongs to the Lord. We are not strong enough to fight and win it on our own. We saw yesterday that God is the Mighty Warrior who dresses for war with the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation, along with all the needed battle gear. When God is with us, we will win every time. So, why do I often lose the battle? Why do I give in to temptation and embrace sin? If the battle truly belongs to the Lord, why am I ever defeated?

How many of you have a favorite passage of Scripture? How many of you have a passage of Scripture you really don’t like that much? Today’s passage is about loving your enemies, and I’ll admit that these verses are in my least favorite, “I really don’t want to do this” category.

False teachers are a dime a dozen. They stand tall with stage presence. Their presentation is engaging. Their message is wrapped in an attractive package. But at the end of the day, the attractive package is empty, like “waterless springs.” The stage presence is backed by pride, and the message engages hearers by appealing to the “sensual passions of the flesh.”

The early church was saturated with false teachers. To gain a hearing, they devised clever stories that would appeal to their listeners. To the intellectuals, they philosophized. To the emotional, they told stories that grabbed the heart. To the spiritually naive and immature, well, anything worked with them. False teachers always skipped a significant doctrine (or two), but they could sure draw a crowd, so Peter made it clear that his message about Jesus was as an eyewitness.

Peter was fond of using the word “living” to describe the essential elements of the Christian faith. In 1:3, he used the words “living hope” to describe the confidence we have in our future with God that is fresh, vibrant, certain, and eternal in comparison to the things of the world that are empty, deceptive, and temporal. In 1:23, he described the Bible as the “living…word” to show how Scripture, inspired by the living God, is as powerful, relevant, and life-changing today as the day it was first penned (or chiseled). Here he describes Jesus as the “living stone.”