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Newington Three Angels Church

Prepared

Eric Walsh

01 Is Your Armor On

02 Facing False Prophets

03 Weapons of our Warfare

Our message this Sabbath is entitled, Prepared, the Weapons of Our Warfare.

And this is the third part, last part in this series.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word.

We thank you Lord for your goodness and for your grace.

And once again, Lord, I just ask that you make me a nail on the wall, a rusty, sorry nail, Lord, but upon that nail I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

There really is no point in me being seen or heard, Lord.

Instead, we want to hear a word from the throne room of grace.

Humble me, Lord, that I would do your will and remove the distractions from this place.

Bind the devil now, Lord, that we might study your word in earnest.

We've been coming from the book of Acts and the travels of Paul for these messages.

1 interesting story about Paul, Acts 28 and verse 1 says, and when they were escaped, Then they knew that the island was called Melita.

And some think that this is actually the island of Malta where they actually crash landed.

If you go back to chapter 27, Paul warned them not to leave from where they were.

They should stay where they were, because if they left, they would lose the ship and that they would lose much of it's much of what the ship was carrying they didn't listen to Paul and they took off anyway and as you read that chapter the storm comes they get into trouble but God visits Paul and says don't worry I'm going to deliver you from this storm you will stand before the emperor in Rome.

With that confidence, Paul goes into chapter 28 and God even says, and I'm going to save everyone on the ship.

In fact, he says, I'm going to give everyone in the ship to you as well.

So Paul knew that they were going to be safe.

So they crashed land on Malta, verse 2 says, and the barbarous people showed us no little kindness.

Now in these days they would call them barbarous if they didn't speak Latin.

If they weren't Roman citizens by default they were called barbarians.

Doesn't seem fair by our modern American, especially, way of looking at the word, but that's what they meant.

The barbarous people showed us no little kindness.

In other words, they were very kind to them.

For they kindled a fire and received us, everyone, because of the present rain and because of the colds.

It was cold, it was raining, the indigenous people started a fire, started looking after Paul and the others from the boat.

And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat and fastened onto his hand.

This would be catastrophic for me, I don't like snakes.

But Paul, when you read the commentary, when they say it was cold, the snake was probably hibernating.

And when the heat of the fire hit the snake, the snake was probably shook in fear and latched on to the first thing it could bite.

The Bible says in verse 4, and when the barbarian saw the venomous beast hang on his hand they said among themselves no doubt this man is a murderer whom though he has escaped the sea yet vengeance suffereth not to live.

This is kind of like the idea of karma, right?

They think, well, he must have done something bad the snake bit him and didn't bite nobody else.

They say, he must be a murderer, he must be the worst prisoner on the ship and they didn't know that in a sense they were right but he wasn't the worst prisoner because of evil he had done he was the devil's top enemy because of the good Paul was doing and hence Paul was hoping to wipe the devil was hoping to wipe Paul out before he could get to the emperor.

It, to me, is as if the devil knew that if Paul ever stood before Nero, the entire empire would shake under the power of the gospel.

Verse 5 says, and Paul shook off the beast into the fire, and then look what it says, and he felt no harm.

Let me tell you something church, some of you this year, the devil's gonna try and get you with a terrible beast.

But there's some folk in your life that are that venomous beast.

There's some folk in 2025 that some of y'all need to shake off in the fire.

Some people you need to leave behind in 2025, especially some of you young people, if you are with folk who are not leading you towards Christ, shake them off in the fire.

He shook off the beast into the fire and felt no harm.

Verse 6, how be it they looked when he had should have swollen or fallen down dead suddenly, but after they had looked a great while and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.

You see what happened when you're superstitious?

He went from being a murderer to a god in all of like 40 minutes.

Verse 7, in the same quarters were possessions of the chief man of the island, whose name was Publius, a very Roman name, who received us and lodged us 3 days courteously.

And it came to pass that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux, to whom Paul entered in and prayed and laid his hands on him and healed him.

So Paul goes from surviving the snake, he finds out that the man who's taking care of them, his father is sick, he goes in, Paul lays hands on the man and heals him.

Are you seeing, It kind of ties in perfectly to our children's story, doesn't it?

You see how Paul, when he traveled, he made sure that he left a wake of goodness behind him.

First of all, those who did not believe in God saw the power of God in how the snake could not harm him, but he goes further and the most influential man on the island, he heals his father.

Verse 9, so when this was done, others also which had diseases in the island came and were healed.

Who also honored us, this is Luke speaking, also honored us with many honors and when we departed they laded us with such things as were necessary.

They came on the island, crash-landed on the island, they were foreigners and they thought they just barely escaped the sea.

By the time Paul leaves, this island has been radically transformed not just by the speaking of the gospel but by the fact that Paul does good for the folk on the island.

How do we, What are the weapons of our warfare?

We talked about some of them before, but I wanna submit that in 2025, we are coming so much closer to the soon coming of our Lord that we have got to make it so that our first profession is our professional faith, and that in all we do, We are reaching people for Christ.

This week I put on 1 of my sweaters to go to work and I don't know how, I've never had this problem in my life, but moths got into my sweaters.

And there's a hole in my sweater right here, not this 1, but 1 of my other ones.

And I said, I don't care that the moth put a hole in it, I'm wearing my sweater to work.

I get to work and I'm shocked, a little tiny hole, how many people jump up, hey, you got a hole in your sweater.

I've never told anybody they got a hole in their sweater, I don't know how many holes I see, I wouldn't tell them they have a hole in their sweater.

I work with a lot of very very Observant women so they you got a hole in your sweater And you know what the Lord told me to do I began to text them that the Bible verse That says where Jesus says to store up your treasure in heaven where moth does not corrupt and thieve does not break through and steal.

I said, I'm wearing this sweater to remind you that you ought to store up your treasure in heaven because as expensive as this sweater was, moth still eat it.

And 1 of the other Christians at work texted me back, Jessica, she texted me back, she said, wow, that's a good way to spread the gospel.

In 2025, find a way to share the gospel with folk.

Find a way to tell them about the goodness of Jesus.

As Adventists, we ought to be forefront in telling folk how good our Lord is, how merciful, how gracious, how patient He is.

That righteousness is by faith, that you don't have to figure out a system to work off your debt Christ paid it all on the cross So I read again Ephesians 6 This is where we've been coming from Ephesians 6 and verse 10 says finally my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God, as Paul did, as you can see from these stories.

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

Verse 12, we talked about this 2 sermons ago.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

And I want to remind you on that text, that text tells me that my enemies are not Republicans or Democrats.

Not people who disagree with me on vaccinations.

And every time I begin confused as to who my enemy is the devil laughs I told you guys the story before when the funniest things happen in our neighborhood our neighbor across the street Kathy is an amazing Catholic lady and we go over and we've had lunch with them and we every Christmas we go over and sing them Christmas carols.

In fact, our family from New York here went with us the last time and we sang with them and she loved it so much.

And this is the way we share the gospel with them, right?

They're Catholic, they really love Christmas, they'll go over and sing some Christ-centered hymns with them, it's something that they love, we do it every year.

And once a bear, you know we got these bears running around Connecticut like they're crazy, and so once a bear took our garbage and brought it across the street and strewed it all over her yard.

And Jackie found out, and Jackie was like, oh my goodness, the trash, what happened?

And Kathy called us, there's trash in my yard, how did it get there?

Jackie was like, I'm sorry, I think a bear did it.

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Prepared

03 Weapons of our Warfare

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