Lessons #281 and 282
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+ 1. It is best to use this note after you have listened to the lessons because there are +
+ comments given in the actual exposition not in the note. +
+ 2. The Bible abbreviations are as follows: CEV =Contemporary English version, +
+ CEB = Common English Bible, ESV= English Standard Version, +
+ GWT = God’s Word Translation, ISV = International Standard Version, +
+ NAB=New English Bible, NASB= New American Standard Bible, +
+ NEB= New English Bible, NET = New English Translation, +
+ NLT = New Living Translations NJB = New Jerusalem Bible, +
+ NJV = New Jewish Bible, TEV = Today’s English Version. +
+ 3. Notes have not been edited for grammatical errors. +
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Sword of the Spirit (Eph 6:17b)
Take … and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
The primary proposition that we have been expounding with respect to Ephesians 6:14-20 is that the spiritual armor consists of defensive and offensive weapons. We have considered the five defensive weapons that a believer should have in order to be successful in the spiritual warfare. The last defensive weapon we considered was the helmet of salvation that we said had to do with confident expectation with respect to salvation in its three aspects of time, past, present, and future. This defensive weapon is joined with the offensive weapon, the sword of the Spirit, since the command take at the beginning of verse 17 is applicable to phrase the sword of the Spirit because of the connecting conjunction and that begins the last clause of verse 17 and because without the word take the second half of verse 17 is unintelligible.
It is interesting that the Holy Spirit commands believers to take up the offensive weapon of the sword of the Spirit that we will get to shortly. What is interesting about it you may ask? It is that there is no clear indication elsewhere in the Scripture that the believer is to be on the offensive in the spiritual warfare. However, we have clear indication in the Scripture that we are to be on the defensive in the spiritual warfare with the promise of victory. The Holy Spirit through James instructs believers to be on the defensive in the sense of resisting the devil with assured result of his leaving the believer alone albeit for a moment, as we read in James 4:7
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Similar instruction is also given by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 5:9:
Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
But, as we have indicated, there is no clear passage of the Scripture that indicates we are to be on the offensive with respect to the spiritual warfare other than the implication given in Ephesians 6:17 with the concept of the sword of the Spirit. Someone may say that there is such indication for being on the offensive in the spiritual warfare, because the disciples were instructed to drive out demons. Because of the authority the Lord gave the Twelve, some Christians have taken the position that they have the mission to drive out demons and so to be on the offensive with respect to the spiritual warfare. This can hardly be the case. The authority the Lord gave to the Twelve with respect to driving out demons is for specific purpose of preaching the kingdom of God, as we can gather from Luke 9:1–6:
1When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, 2 and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. 3 He told them: “Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic. 4 Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. 5 If people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave their town, as a testimony against them.” 6 So they set out and went from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere.
The Twelve were sent to preach the good news of the kingdom of God. It is while preaching the good news that they were to drive out demons. They were not always successful in driving out demons when they were not in a missionary mode, as implied by the record given in Luke 9:40:
I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they could not.”
Thus, we cannot state that because of the authority given to the Twelve to drive out demons that believers are commanded to be on the offensive with respect to the spiritual warfare. This notwithstanding, there is only one situation that implies believers are to be on the offensive against the kingdom of darkness, it is the preaching of the gospel. When we preach the gospel, we are indeed on the offensive against the kingdom of darkness since that is implied in the mission of the church to the world as per the command of the Lord to the disciples recorded in Matthew 28:19:
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
But outside this passage, there is no clear indication that we are to be on the offensive with respect to the spiritual warfare. It is this observation that makes the introduction of offensive weapon interesting in the spiritual life. The implication is that the offensive weapon given in our passage is concerned with the gospel although the offensive weapon mentioned in our passage may under certain spiritual warfare conditions be recognized as defensive.
Be that as it may, the instruction of the Holy Spirit to us is to take the sword of the Spirit as in the in phrase the sword of the Spirit of Ephesians 6:17. The Greek phrase translated the sword of the Spirit may be fully read in two possible ways based on whether the Greek word (pneuma) translated Spirit is understood to refer to the Holy Spirit or not. If Spirit is taken as a reference to the Holy Spirit, then it could be read as the sword that is from the Spirit, that is, one furnished by Him or made powerful by Him. On the other hand, if the word “Spirit” is not understood as a reference to the Holy Spirit the phrase may be interpreted as a reference to “spiritual sword” indicating that the kind of sword the believer is to take is spiritual as against material or physical. While this second interpretation makes sense but it is the interpretation that takes the phrase as sword that is from the Holy Spirit that is certainly what the apostle had in mind, as demanded by the context. This is because the Holy Spirit is God but the apostle is concerned with the armor from God since he instructed believers to put on the full armor of God that consists of defensive and offensive weapon. Thus, in mentioning the sword as part of the full armor of God, the apostle must have had in mind the Holy Spirit so that it is the sword from Him that was in his mind. Of course, the apostle had in mind the description of the Messiah on whom the Spirit of God rests that will smite the earth with the word of His mouth in the Septuagint of Isaiah 11:4:
but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
The phrase the rod of his mouth reads in the Septuagint, the word of his mouth. Thus, the apostle who read the Septuagint was thinking of this passage that described the Messiah but now he applied it to believers so they are to take up the sword of the Spirit.
The word “sword” is translated from a Greek word (machaira) that literally refers to a relatively short sword or a dagger used for cutting and stabbing. The Greek word used here is contrast to another Greek word (rhomphaia) that means a large, broad sword that is used for military offensive. The sword used in our passage is easier to handle. Anyway, sword is used not only in a physical sense in the Scripture but in a figurative sense. The sword is used to depict discord and violence, as we read in 2 Samuel 12:10:
Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.'
When Prophet Nathan said sword will never depart from your house that means that there would be discord and violence among David’s family members. This interpretation is clear in that Amnon raped Tamar resulting in Absalom killing him and Absalom also revolted against his father. The violence and bloodshed continued with Solomon killing Adonijah (1 Kings 2:25). It is in the sense of discord or conflict and division that the word is used by Jesus in declaring what His mission would bring among family members in Matthew 10:34:
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
Sword is also used figuratively for war, as implied in the blessing that will come to Israel for obeying the terms of its covenant with the Lord in Leviticus 26:6–8:
6 “‘I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove savage beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country. 7 You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. 8 Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.
So, absence of war is denoted by the turning of sword into plowshares in Isaiah 2:4:
He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
It is under this figure using sword for war that it is used for military defeat of Judah by their enemies in Jeremiah 19:7:
"'In this place I will ruin the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who seek their lives, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.
Sword is used to symbolize suffering, as in Luke 2:34–35:
34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
The sentence a sword will pierce your own soul too means that Mary would experience pain and sorrow because of Jesus.
Sword is used as a figure of violent death, as we find in Romans 8:35:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
The idea that the sword in this passage represents violent death should be no surprise to us since the Apostle Paul later used the word “sword” to depict the power of the governing authorities to punish and execute wrongdoers in Romans 13:4:
For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.
In any event, when sword is used figuratively in a negative sense it would convey the sense of hurt and harm. It is for this reason that tongues of people that can bring hurt and harm are compared to sword in Psalm 57:4:
I am in the midst of lions; I lie among ravenous beasts — men whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.
In our passage of Ephesians 6:17 the word “sword” is used in a figurative manner as a reference to God’s word because the apostle gave the explanation in the clause which is the word of God.
What is this word of God? This may seem to be a trivial question, but it is not for at least six reasons. First, the Greek word used in the phrase the word of God has two meanings implying two possible interpretations of the Greek phrase. The word “word” is translated from a Greek word (rhēma) that refers to what is said hence means “word, saying, statement of any kind.” Apostle Paul used the word for preaching in Romans 10:18:
But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did: “Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”
He used it to refer to words he heard in Paradise that are not to be spoken or in the words of the NIV “inexpressible things” in 2 Corinthians 12:4:
was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.
The phrase inexpressible things of the NIV is more literally words not to be spoken. The Greek word may mean “matter, event”, as it is used in 2 Corinthians 13:1:
This will be my third visit to you. “Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.”
Another meaning of the Greek word refers to an event that can be spoken about hence means “event, matter”, as it is used by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 13:1 that we cited previously. In our passage of Ephesians 6:17, the word is used in the sense of some form of communication that we will yet determine. Second, the phrase the word of God may refer to spoken words given to prophets to communicate to God’s people. It is this spoken word of God that was rare in the time of Eli before the Lord spoke to Samuel, as recorded in 1 Samuel 3:1:
The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.
It is the spoken word that Prophet Isaiah mentioned in Isaiah 24:3:
The earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered. The Lord has spoken this word.
It is the spoken word of God that the Lord said He gave to Prophet Jeremiah to communicate to His covenant people, Israel, in Jeremiah 1:9:
Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “Now, I have put my words in your mouth.
Third, the word of God may refer to Jesus Christ as the incarnate Son of God, as recorded in John 1:1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Word here refers to Jesus Christ who was in existence prior to any creative work of God. Fourth, the word of God may refer to the gospel. It is in the sense of the gospel that the word of God is used in Acts 6:7:
So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.
The phrase the word of God refers to the preaching of the gospel as that is what spread to various areas as believers proclaimed it. It is in the sense of the gospel message and probably oral teaching of God’s word that the phrase the word of God is used by the Apostle Paul in referring to his communication to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 2:13:
And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.
Fifth, the word of God may refer to Scripture as the written word of God. It is in the sense of Scripture as the written word of God that our phrase is used in Daniel 9:2:
in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years.
It is the written word of God that is referred to as OT Scripture as implied by the assertion of the Apostle Paul in Romans 15:4:
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
Of course, the word of God written down in the NT is also referred as Scripture, as we can gather from 2 Peter 3:16:
He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
Sixth, the word of God may refer to His promises. It is in this sense that God’s word is used in Psalm 119:140:
Your promises have been thoroughly tested, and your servant loves them.
It does not appear that it is God’s word that the psalmist described in this passage but it is. You see, the word “promises” of the NIV is translated from a Hebrew noun (ʾimrāh) with various meanings but especially in Psalm 119 the word is used with the meaning of “word” or “promise.” Thus, the sentence Your promises have been thoroughly tested is translated Your word is absolutely pure in the NET. Hence, it is clear that God’s word can mean His promises.
We have given six reasons to indicate that our question with respect to what the word of God is, is not a trivial matter. So, we need to answer the question: what is the word of God in the clause which is the word of God? Although some take the phrase word of God as a reference to the gospel message, it refers to the written word of God, that is, our Scripture. Thus, it is the Scripture as the sword of the Spirit that believers should take up as an offensive weapon in the spiritual warfare. The written word of God should be understood as both the OT and NT Scriptures. You see, there is the tendency for some Christians to ignore the OT Scripture because they have the view that only the NT teachings are applicable to them. This is incorrect, because of the assertion of the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul in his second epistle to Timothy, according to 2 Timothy 3:16:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
When the apostle wrote all Scripture, he meant the OT Scriptures and other writings of the NT Scripture that were written at the time of his writing this sentence. Of course, the word “Scripture” as used in the NT refers also to the OT Scripture as indicated in several passages of the NT. For example, it is the OT Scripture that Jesus Christ called the Scripture as He quoted from Psalm 118:22-23, as recorded in Matthew 21:42:
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?
The Apostle Paul referred to the OT as Scripture, as he quoted from Exodus 9:6 in his defense of the doctrine of election in Romans 9:17:
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”
Of course, as we indicated previously, the apostle considered the OT and parts of the NT that have been written when he wrote his first epistle to Timothy as Scripture, as we can gather from 1 Timothy 5:18:
For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”
Here the apostle quotes both the OT Scripture and the NT. His first quotation is from Deuteronomy 25:4:
Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.
The second quotation of 1 Timothy 5:18 is from Luke 10:7:
Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
Hence, we contend that the written word of God that believers should take as part of the spiritual armor is the entire Scripture, that is, OT and NT, granting that some passages of the OT are not to be applied by believers but there are several truths in the OT Scripture that believers should have in their spiritual arsenal as part of their offensive weapon in the spiritual warfare.
The Holy Spirit through the apostle commands us to take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. But why should the believers take up the word of God as part of their offensive spiritual weapon? There are at least five reasons. First, it is because that is God’s command given to us in the Scripture. A soldier is supposed to obey his commanding officer as he prepares for battle. Therefore, if God commands us take up the sword of the Spirit, that is, His word, then we should as that is what He uses to fight our battle for us.
Second, God holds His word in high regard as the psalmist declared in Psalm 138:2:
I will bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word.
Third, we should take up the sword of the Spirit, that is, the word of God because of its nature. There are several characteristics of the word of God that speak to its nature. It is true, as the psalmist states in Psalm 33:4:
For the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does.
The fact the word of God is true is also affirmed by the Lord Jesus Christ in His priestly prayer, as we read in John 17:17:
Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
Related to the word being true is the fact that it is flawless. The psalmist described this characteristic of God’s word in Psalm 18:30:
As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the Lord is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.
The fact that the word of the Lord is flawless implies that a believer who is equipped with the word of God as a spiritual weapon has a weapon that cannot fail in the midst of spiritual warfare. You see, it is possible for a soldier’s weapon to fail in the battlefield, endangering his ability to protect himself but that will never happen with a person who has the spiritual armor of the word of God since it is flawless. Related to the word of God being flawless, is the fact that it is eternal, as Prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 40:8:
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.”
The eternal nature of the word of God is also described by Apostle Peter using the word “enduring” in 1 Peter 1:23:
For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
The phrase enduring word of God has been translated in different ways in our English versions. For example, the GWT reads God’s everlasting word and the TEV reads eternal word of God that say essentially the same thing concerning the eternal nature of God’s word. It is because of its eternal nature that God will continue to preserve His word even in the written form. The Bible, more than any book in the world, has been attacked and threatened with extinction, but the more people attack it, the more its circulation keeps on increasing. Anyway, the word of God is not only eternal but it is irrevocable, as Prophet Isaiah conveys in Isaiah 45:23:
By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear.
Because the word of God is irrevocable then a believer who has the weapon of the word of God can be certain that his weapon cannot be recalled. You see, in some military units, it is possible to rotate weapons or to remove, say, a rifle from a soldier once he is discharged from the military but such a thing will never happen with the believer equipped with the word of God. Once you have God’s word as part of your spiritual armor, you can be certain the word cannot be revoked from you. Another characteristic of the word of God is that it is “life-productive”, that is, to say that it is able to make things happen. It is this description that is given in Hebrews 4:12:
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
The words “living” and “active” are saying the same thing or we can say that we have a hendiadys where the author says something very important about God’s word using the word “living” and then elaborates on it using the word “active.” This passage also describes another characteristic of the word of God which is that it has the capacity to cut into someone’s soul or inner being efficiently like nothing else can on this planet. It is to underscore this property of the word of God that the human author makes the comparison given in the next phrase of Hebrews 4:12, Sharper than any double-edged sword. The word of God which can pierce the inner being of a person is a weapon that Satan does not like, as implied by the command for believers to take it up in the spiritual warfare.
Fourth, we take up the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, because it is powerful. To convey to us the power of the word of God, it is compared to a hammer in Jeremiah 23:29:
“Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?
The power of God’s word is evident in several ways. Its power is evident in that it restrains sin in the believer who has the word in his soul, as the psalmist stated in Psalm 119:11:
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
The power of God’s word may be evident in that it can build up the believer spiritually in the sense of bringing blessing on the believer as the Apostle Paul implied in Acts 20:32:
“Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
Here the word of God is described as the word of his grace that probably refers to the teaching of the apostle concerning God’s grace. This word of God is said to be able to build up the believer spiritually in the sense of God’s blessing being bestowed on the believer. So, the word of God is powerful that it can confer God’s blessing on the believer while on this planet. The power of God’s word is evident in creation. It is the power of His word that is demonstrated in original creation, as the Holy Spirit reminds us in 2 Peter 3:5:
But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water.
It is not only that creation reveals power of God’s word but so also is the maintenance of order in creation reveal the power of His word, as stated in Hebrews 1:3:
The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.
In any case, because the word of God is powerful, as we have noted, it is important that the believer be equipped with it for the spiritual warfare that is raging on around us.
Fifth, we take up the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, because Jesus Christ has demonstrated to us that it is the means of defeating Satan. We have mentioned this truth previously but it is worth repeating at this point in our study by focusing once more on how the Lord used the word to defeat Satan during His spiritual battle with him. The first temptation of Satan was intended primarily for the Lord Jesus to obey his instruction since there is nothing morally wrong with turning stone into bread. The Lord could do this but He did not because it was a suggestion from Satan. In response, our Lord used the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, in its written form because He quoted the Scripture, as we can gather from His answer to Satan in his first temptation recorded in Luke 4:4:
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.’”
In Satan’s second temptation that is primarily concerned with worshipping him, the Lord defeated him using the sword of the Spirit, as He quoted the Scripture, according to the record in Luke 4:8:
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
We see again the Lord using the sword of the Spirit when He corrected Satan’s misapplication of the Scripture in order to get Jesus to jump down from a highest point in the Temple in Jerusalem, as we read in Luke 4:12:
Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
We know that the Lord Jesus corrected misapplication of the Scripture by Satan because in this third occasion of His temptation, He did not use the formula of quotation from the Scripture, that is, It is written instead He states It says. Thus, it should be clear that Jesus Christ used the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, to withstand the spiritual assault of Satan during His incarnation. This being the case, there should be no doubt that a believer who would hold his/her ground in the spiritual warfare must be equipped with the sword of the Spirit, that is, the word of God. By the way, equipping oneself with the word of God is useful in dealing with attack on the truth of the Christian faith. It is because the Apostle Paul equipped himself with the word of God that he refuted the Jews regarding the identity of Jesus as the Messiah or Christ, as we read in Acts 18:28:
For he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.
Anyway, we have given you five reasons you should take up the sword of the Spirit, that is, the word of God, if you are going to be successful in the spiritual warfare. This leads to the question of how a believer goes about to equip self with this offensive weapon of the spiritual warfare.
We ask: How should the believer take up the sword of the Spirit, that is, the word of God? To begin with, we should be clear that the instruction to take the up the sword of the Spirit, that is, the word of God does not mean to carry the Bible around. This point is important because there are those who think that carrying the Bible with them or putting it under their pillows during the night means that they have taken up the sword of the Spirit. In addition, there are those who take the Bible on one hand and a cross on the other when they try to carry out what they call exorcism. This is not what it means to take on the sword of the Spirit, that is, the word of God. Instead, to take on the sword of the Spirit involves two related actions with respect to the written word of God, the Bible. The first action is to listen to it being taught by a teacher of God’s word. This, of course, will include the reading of the Scripture since the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul mentioned both reading and teaching of the word of God in his instruction to Timothy as a typical pastor in 1 Timothy 4:13:
Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.
Every believer should endeavor to read the Scripture daily but that activity does not mean that the believer will understand it or grow by such. No! It means that the believer would become acquainted with the Scripture and learn few promises that should be committed to memory. Fuller understanding of the Scripture requires the teaching of the word by those who are gifted to do so. If every believer could understand and grow spiritually from reading of the Scripture, then it was needless for the Holy Spirit to give some men the gift of teaching the word. This aside, the fact remains that the first action in taking up the sword of the Spirit is exposure to the teaching of the word of God.
The second action necessary to take up the sword of the Spirit is studying of the word. When you hear the teaching of the word of God that is the beginning of your equipping yourself with the sword of the Spirit. You must take the next important action of spending time to study what you have been taught in that you meditate on the word of God, as indicated in the instruction of the Lord to Joshua in Joshua 1:8:
Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
Meditation is an activity in which a person thinks intently and at length regarding a given information. Thus, when a person hears the word of God, that person must carry out this step of meditation. For without it, it is nearly impossible to be effective in the spiritual life. I am saying that one of the reasons people attend Bible studies on a regular basis but there seems to be no effect of the word on them or a sustained effect is in part because they do not meditate on the word of God. A believer who must be equipped with the sword of the Spirit should spend time meditating on the word of God that has been taught to the individual. In practice, this means that if you take note in Bible class then you should go over your note repeatedly, thinking seriously about what you wrote, that is, you ponder on what you wrote. It is not something that you do haphazardly. No! You must take time to ponder over the material, going over it repeatedly. Sometimes you may even have to read some points out in a low voice to yourself so you get it. Of course, if you do not take note then you need to listen to the lesson over several times. Even if you take note, it is still advisable to listen to a given lesson over and over until you get it. In stating this, you should become aware that meditation requires devotion of time to the word of God. Therefore, you should set out a time that you should do this. Again, I know that I sound like a broken record in this matter. But let me put it to you bluntly. If you do not spend considerable time over any lesson that we go over in Bible class, I submit to you that you have not completed what you need to equip yourself with that portion of the word of God that should be part of the sword of the Spirit in your spiritual arsenal. A believer who meditates on the word of God stores that information in the soul which is how to take up the sword of the Spirit. Hence, it is through meditation of the word of God that you store the word of God in your soul that you can pull out in time of spiritual warfare, so you can tell Satan that such and such is written. Without you having the word of God stored in your soul through meditation then you have nothing to rely in time of attack of satanic forces. Furthermore, it is as you meditate on the word of God you have been taught that you will think of how to obey or apply the given lesson to your daily living. For meditation is not an end in and of itself, it is a means to a goal of obeying God’s word. Notice what the Lord said to Joshua in the clause so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. The word of God cannot do you any good if you do not apply it. In effect, it can be said that you do not have the sword of the Spirit if you are unable to carry out what the word of God requires of you. Anyway, the importance of meditation and obedience to the word of God is conveyed in the instruction of Proverbs 2:1–5:
1 My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, 2 turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, 3 and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, 4and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, 5then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
All in all, you take up the sword of the Spirit, that is the word of God, by hearing it taught and then meditating on it so that it becomes a part of your soul. The word stored in the soul is of great help in time of satanic assault on the believer. It is only if you have the word already in your soul that the Holy Spirit will remind you of it when you are under attack by satanic forces. Of course, the word of God serves both as defensive and offensive weapons. It serves as defensive and offensive weapons whenever you use it to withstand the assault of satanic forces. You use it primarily as offensive weapon when you proclaim the gospel. In any event, you should strive to get the word of God in your soul as we have explained if you expect to be successful in the spiritual warfare.