Soldier No.8 The Devils Quiver

Our morning reading this morning is from Psalm 91 beginning at verse 1, Psalm 91 beginning at verse 1. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. Surely he will save you from the fowl of snare and from the deadly pestilence, he will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge.

His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.

You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. If you make the Most High your dwelling, even the Lord who is my refuge, then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent, for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

You will tread upon the lion and the cobra, you will trample the great lion and the serpent. Because he loves me, says the Lord, I will rescue him, I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me and I will answer him, I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.

With a long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation. May the Lord add his blessing to his word. Please be seated.

Now let's go to Ephesians in chapter six and let's read together the verses that we all must know by heart from the fourteenth verse through to the eighteenth, inclusive. Ephesians six, verse fourteen to eighteen, read them with me, will you? Stand firm then, with a belt of truth buckled around your waist, with a breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and pray in the spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. I don't know if you're aware that the oldest sport in the world is not golf, it's archery.

And I can say that with some authority, not because I've ever shot a bow and arrow, at least, if you make the exception of the thing my mother brought me from Woolworth's when I was a kid some years ago. The Encyclopedia Britannica goes into great details in the history of archery, a very fascinating article indeed. And within the essay that's written at length, it says that the invention of the bow and arrow was as revolutionary in the ancient world as the invention of the wheel.

Obviously, a great deal was to change in terms of warfare, when primitive man was able to fashion a bow and put a string to both ends of the bow, take up the tension and put a stick capped with some stone or metal on the end and send it in the air in the direction of the person or people who he considered to be his enemy. Now, the thought of bows and arrows actually does come up from time to time in the Old Testament, because that is a book of religious, inspired, but ancient history. And you would anticipate that when it refers to the dealings of men and women who lived centuries back, then occasionally you might find a reference to bows and arrows, the weapons of conflict.

And if you were listening carefully to that reading so well given to us by Barbara this morning in Psalm 91, references made by the psalmist there to the terror that strikes his heart as someone who is up against evil forces in the world. He might be referring to physical ones, he might be referring to spiritual ones, that does not really matter. The point is, by way of illustration of my opening part of my address this morning, what the psalmist has to say, you will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day.

If you were fighting in days gone by, then the darkness would bring with it incredible danger. You didn't have the illumination that is available for us today. Obviously there was no such thing as electricity, no such thing as torches.

There may have been fire, but that is somewhat restrictive as a means of illuminating. And therefore the night would bring its dangers if you were a military man in days gone by. But not only the night, but also the day, particularly when the bow and arrow had been invented.

Because the arrow that travels by day comes, as I shall show you in a moment or two, with great danger. Because by and large it's noiseless. And invariably, in ancient times it was tipped with poison.

And if you got that in your system, even if you were not affected by the arrow's tip in a vital organ, the very poison could inflame and outrage your nervous system, and ultimately cause your death. Well you say, oh this is very interesting, here I am as a holiday maker, and I've come into the tabernacle, and for the first five minutes he's done nothing but take us into bows and arrows. What does he think I am, Robin Hood reincarnate? No.

The reason why I'm bringing you to this little bit of background information is that you need it to be able to seize upon something which I argue is vitally important. As the Apostle Paul is directing remarks to Christian people and saying, yes you are involved in a warfare, yes you have in front of you a literal enemy, and yes his ability to create havoc in your life is enormous. But over against this, there is for the Christian person the mighty army, armour of Jesus Christ.

A recognition that you go out as a disciple of the Lord into the world which is largely hostile to his gospel and to the life that he wants other people to live. You go out not vulnerable, not weak, but strong, equipped with the mighty armour to which Paul makes reference. Three pieces we've been looking at during the last few weeks, and then I moved you from the third piece to the fourth, which is the shield of faith.

And I said that this is distinguished from the other pieces, the belt and the breastplate and the shoes, in as much as it's manoeuvrable. It's something that the soldier takes up, it's not fastened to him. To use it to its fullest extent, then there must be a degree of expertise upon the part of the soldier.

And so I spent one week and then felt I ought to come back to another week in showing you just how vital the shield of faith is for the Christian who's following the Lord Jesus. So the apostle says in the beginning of verse 18, in addition to all this, take up the shield of faith. Or in the authorised version, above all, as though this piece of armour is spectacularly significant.

Well, all that we've dealt with. And I was going to go on, but I'm risking straining your patience for this reason. The latter part of that text does not let me go this week.

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And into my mind last Thursday flashed, and it wouldn't go away, the very significant thought, the devil's quiver. The devil's quiver.

You know what the quiver is. That's the reason why I took you into a historical excursion into ancient history and its weaponry. The quiver is the receptacle where the arrows are placed.

And the well-armed man, bowman, will have his quiver strapped on his back so that it is convenient for him, having shot one arrow, to take another and put it into the bow and send it, and so forth. And the Bible tells me that the devil is someone like the ancient bowman who has an arrow and who has a bow and who engages in shooting. The Hebrew term for the devil, well we've no need to go into it, it's somewhat complex and I did make reference several months ago when preaching on the subject of the devil.

But one of those words, some of you may remember this, I told you one of the original words could be translated outlaw. The adversary, the outlaw. And what is incumbent upon an outlaw, what fills your mind as you reflect upon stories that were read to you as a child or films that you saw, in terms of Robin Hood and his men? Well, the outlaw, he has his bow, he has his arrow, he has his strategy.

This was Robin Hood's case, was it not, over against the Sheriff of Nottingham. I know not whether the stories are mythological, it doesn't really matter. What is no myth, what is no legend, is this.

The Bible says that the Christian is engaged in a warfare and the warfare is encapsuled, is, is, has as its headquarters the evil one, the devil himself. Verse 12, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, their forces. Therefore, when you take up your shield of faith, remember this, that it is that and that alone which will help you, when you have to cope, as cope you must, with the quiver of the devil, which is full of arrows.

How does the devil come along and shoot? Well let me say this, that he does it, first of all, swiftly. That's the thing about an arrow, isn't it? It comes with an enormous velocity, with tremendous speed, to the extent that if you were to check up a metaphor in which the illustration of the arrow is well used in scripture, you will find it likened to lightning. In the 18th psalm and the, and the fourth verse, actually I've got the wrong reference there, but carry on reading that psalm at your, at your leisure and you'll discover the reference to the arrows of the Lord, like lightning flashes, the arrows of the devil, like lightning flashes, the lightning flashes of the Lord.

A good bowman was able to take twelve arrows, place them in his bow and deliver them within the compass of one minute. Those arrows, they come so very, very swiftly. Here is David, you remember? That great king of Israel, and he's where he shouldn't be, he's at home when he should be at the front of the battle, when he should be with his army fighting against the enemies of, of Israel.

And he gets up from an afternoon sleep and he looks out over Jerusalem and, and he sees Bathsheba bathing and that one look of David towards Bathsheba gave the devil chance to put the arrow in his bow and send it to David. And before David could recover from one arrow, there was another arrow and another arrow and another arrow. Twelve inside one minute.

David, lusts, covets, brings the woman to himself, adultery results, to cover it up, he connives some sort of plot to try to ensure that her husband doesn't realize that she's pregnant by him. When that doesn't work, he connives murder, he brings his commander of the army into his confidence, writes an implicating letter to him, which will always have him, so to speak, within the power of Joab, the, the commander of the army. One arrow after another arrow after another arrow and they come in so swiftly, David doesn't know what has hit him.

Now do you find that yourself, my friend? The great Puritan preacher says this, it needs no more than the look of an eye for the dispatch of a temptation. The arrows of the devil, they come swiftly and what's more, they come subtly. Joab, you might recall, has great problems in his life and on one occasion in the sixth chapter and the fourth verse, you will find Joab trying to understand why it is that, well he's lost his sons and he's lost his land and he's lost his health and he says, the arrows of the Almighty, they've struck me.

Now Joab was right and yet he was wrong. What happened was within the providence, within the permission of God, but the arrows were not shot by God. Satan can sometimes borrow the bow that belongs to the Lord and shoot the arrows, does that alarm you? Well whether you'd never thought of that before or not, I in no way will qualify my comment.

The devil can take the bow of God and use it for his advantage. One after another, after another, the arrows rain in upon Joab and he says, the arrows of the Almighty, they've pierced me. And I say he was right and yet he was wrong.

The one who sent them was not God, though God allowed them. The one who sent them was the devil. You see the devil has got incredible cheek.

The bow of God is so to speak, if you please, for our purpose of illustration right now, his word. Who can use the word of God? Oh you say an evangelical Christian, that's why they come along to the tabernacle or similar churches and they listen to expository ministry, sometimes going into minute details. Because the word of God, it's so strong and it's so powerful and you're right my friend, it's exactly that.

But the word of God can be used by other people apart from those who are following the God of the word. The devil's a great theologian. He came along to the Lord Jesus on one occasion.

Our Savior had spent forty odd nights without food, without water. There he was, right at his end, so to speak, nervously, at his end as far as his physical strength is concerned. And it's at that time that the devil always comes along and he takes the arrow and he puts it to the bow and he shoots.

But what bow was used? It was the bow of God's Word. Three times the devil used the word of God wrongly. But a greater theologian than the devil is our Lord Jesus and he put him to flight.

Why? Well he took the shield. It wasn't a paper shield, it was the shield of faith. Well made, you remember the Roman shield I told you was made of wood overlaid with metal.

It wasn't a cheap thing. You never save a few shekels on your shield, not if you're a Jewish soldier, nor even more so if you're a Roman soldier and if you're a Christian soldier, it is vital that you appreciate that your shield is the Word of God and that your mind is saturated in the Word of God because the devil can come with God's bow and send an arrow that seems to suggest a scriptural passage and it is so perverted in its use that if you take that into your soul, you'll inflame your personality and you'll be into a heresy before you can almost blink your eyes. Do you know that the founder of the Mormon Church was at one stage an Orthodox Christian and the Mormons claimed to be people of the book? Do you know that Russell and Rutherford of the Watchtower Society came into Christianity in an Orthodox fashion? And the JWs are people claimed to be of the book.

But you see you can get the bow and the arrows can be sent and if the arrows are perverted in the way that they're sent, then they can inflame the whole system and your theology becomes not a biblical theology but a heresy. Oh my friend, the devil is so subtle, swift are those arrows, clever is his use, and the whole thing is made worse because as I indicated before, the arrows come so silently, so silently you can hardly hear them whistle by, but there they are and they rain in upon the Christians. When you think of an outlaw, what else do you think of? You think of an ambush, don't you? That you have in mind again from your Robin Hood reading and your knowledge of the exploits of that man in Sherwood Forest.

Well here is not Robin Hood, here is something that's literal and true, Psalm 64. Here is a psalmist and he's concerned. Why is he concerned? Well because he feels so vulnerable.

He's a man who is in great difficulty, spiritually there's a conflict going on and there are those who want his life. And how does he describe them? Well look at verse 4 of Psalm 64. They shoot from ambush at the innocent man.

They shoot at him suddenly, without fear. They encourage each other in evil plans. They talk about hiding their snares.

They say who will see them. They plot injustice and say we have devised a perfect plan. The silent, subtle, swift ways in which the outlaw, the devil, connives to robbers of our salvation.

It's so dangerous my friend, that were I to have gone on this day and dealt with another part of the armour and not warned you against the devil's quiver, I believe I would have been flying in the face of what God was placing in my mind to say to you. The devil's quiver. The way that he shoots.

The way that he selects his arrows. You see as with golf, so with archery. With the former there is a club for every type of shot.

Now those of you who think I'm totally ignorant of that attractive sport, notice this, I do know a little about it. You can putt on the green and the club that you select is completely different when you take the savage blow. And if you're me you send a piece of grass about a yard, but if you're like my brother you'll get the ball right to where you want it to go.

There's a club for every occasion in golf, is there not? There's an arrow for every target that the devil uses. The devil's quiver is full of arrows and they're not all the same, though they're objective. What they want is precisely the same.

Now last week I know I touched on this subject, but I touched on it personally. I tried to show you how as an individual you could take the shield of faith and you could bring that shield up against the arrows of the devil and thus deflect them or extinguish them. But you see my friend, the whole point of Paul writing to the Romans is not just to isolate the Christian as an individual, but to tell the Christian that he is part of an army.

You know this isn't just David going down the valley of Elah, this is the whole Christian army getting together prepared to fight the battles of Jesus Christ. And we link arms with one another. This is why Paul when he's writing to the church in the fourth verse makes reference to the oneness of the faith and the oneness of the spirit and the oneness of baptism and so on.

Because within the oneness of Christianity there is its strength, within its unity there is its solidarity, within its solidarity there is that which God can use so that the Christian church can become the most powerful agency in the world today against sin and evil. So it's not just the individual soldier that Paul is referring to, it's that coupled with the others. And it's against the church as such that the devil takes his arrow and he puts it in his bow and he sends the arrow into the ranks of Christendom, endeavoring to destroy the effectiveness of the testimony.

He's concerned with you as an individual but he's concerned with his church as a whole. Here's Paul and he's taking his leave of the Ephesian elders, you'll read of it in the Acts of the Apostles. And he's by the seashore of the Mediterranean, he'll never see them again, this side of glory.

And so he uses an illustration, he could have taken the bow and arrow one but he doesn't. He uses that of wolves and he says look, as he addresses the leaders of the church, after I've gone, after my departure, wolves shall come in amongst the flock. Now a wolf also is conniving and subtle and waits in ambush, stalks its prey.

And this is what the devil was concerned, this is what Paul was concerned about would happen in Ephesus. Here is Paul and he's writing one of his majestic letters, right at the end of the Bible. How grateful we are to God that Paul's letters were incorporated into the New Testament.

And he too speaks of the devil, again not as the archer but as the lion, seeking whom he might devour, this roaring lion, waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting Christian community. Now it seems to me that the devil's having a field day communally with the church in the 20th century, a field day. You see he's got the arrows of what I've called a respectable unbelief.

I love the Anglican church. That's not a patronizing comment, if I'm in Chichester I'll go to Evensong, if I've got the time available in an afternoon, I love the Anglican liturgy and the Anglican prayer books. In many ways I'm attracted to Anglicanism and the historic position of the Anglican church.

So I say that because of the comment that I'm now going to make, I weep for Anglicanism. A survey of the bishops recently taken reveals so many who deny the very fundamentals of the faith. The Muslim community in Brighton last week had an evangelistic meeting in which people were conned to come along, they were going to give the Christian presentation of the leaping Christ and the Muslim presentation.

They forgo the former and they zoomed in on the latter. And one of the most powerful pieces of literature that they were giving out in the Friends Meeting House in Brighton last Tuesday or Wednesday, whenever the meeting was, was literature based more or less on the testimony of the Bishop of Durham, a man who denies the uniqueness of Christianity. And within that tract they were saying how many other bishops are following him.

We need to pray for the conservative evangelicals and thank God there is a large and increasing community of conservatives in the Church of England. But we need to pray. Why? Well because the arrow of the devil, you see, it's being shot.

And here is what I have called a refined and what I have called a respectable unbelief that is being taken into the ranks of Christendom in some areas in our country. And then there is the arrow of what I call a refined and unrefined heresy. You say, what do you mean by refined heresy? Well, I've quoted one Mormonism.

I'll give you a modern example, a more modern example, the Unification Church. I'll give you an older example, the Church of Science. I'll give you a more modern example, though they're not connected, the Church of Scientology.

These are very refined. These are churches which have got their own theology, but it's not a theology that is derived from the Bible at all. In fact, it is against what the Bible is teaching.

There's this refined heresy that people are buying up. Now, I'm not being an alarmist. They're buying this up in their thousands, in their tens of thousands.

Through my office just two weeks ago, I had a whole load of rubbish from the Church of Scientology offering courses in Scientology. The most expensive one was £1,200, so I sent it to my secretary. The cheaper one was £25.

Unrefined heresy? More witches in England than there are Baptist ministers. Did you know that? Astronomy and so on. The refined and the unrefined, and it's being bought, my friend.

Why is it being bought? Well, you see, here is the connection between the arrows. The first arrow dislodges truth, uncertainty, but man is born for certainty. A great Anglican theologian says that, Dr. James Packer.

Man is born for certainty. If he can't find certainty in the historic church, he'll go elsewhere for his certainty. And the cults are booming as a result of the authoritative, though wrong, message that they are proclaiming.

And I say it's the arrows of the devil that are zooming in, reigning in upon people in these days. The arrows of refined and unrefined heresy. The arrows of respectable unbelief.

The arrows of a basic goodness of man. Now this is what is being taught in our universities. It's basic to the philosophy of education.

I'm not speaking as an idiot. I can take you to the very books. I was absorbed, or had to be absorbed in it.

The idea that man is good. You take a little child, and by a right environment, you bring out of that child the innate goodness that is there. And this is basically what the cults are saying.

You take some of these weirdy cults in India in particular, bring out what is inside of you. Martin Lloyd-Jones says, God forbid, God forbid that men bring out what is inside of them. As a sociologist turned Christian because of his disillusionment with leftist philosophy in the 1930s said, with inside every man there is a potential Hitler, as well as a Nightingale.

You see the Christian message doesn't in any way compliment man. It says that man is a sinner, he's sold in unbelief. That man needs to be born again from on high the spirit of God, descending upon him, him becoming a regenerate person, reflecting the very image of God.

This is what the Bible is speaking. This is what Christianity is about. But when the devil comes with his quiver loaded, he sends the arrows to arrive at the final conclusion as far as man is concerned.

That he's good, and he doesn't need outside help whatsoever. My time is nearly gone. How do you resist? How do you resist the devil when he shoots at the Christian community, when he sends these alarming corporate arrows? Do you know what the Roman phalanx was? See the Roman soldier was never on his own, and the Roman's army wasn't dad's army, it was a brilliant army.

And so they'd get their centurions, a hundred of them or a thousand of them. They had these great shields, you remember my description of them? Large enough to cover a man's body. And they'd all group together in a sort of rectangle.

And if you're in the middle, you'd lift your shield up high. If you're at the side, on the left, then you'd have your shield on the left. If you're on the right, you'd have your shield on the right.

If you're at the front, then you'd have your shield on the front. And some of the people who were at the back. And so you had this sort of moving rectangle, almost a weird description, but have you got it in your mind? You should have, I've run out of words to get it any more clear.

And these Roman soldiers, they were cautiously moving towards the enemy, and the enemy was in tremendous distress. They railed their arrows, but they were non-effectual. They sent their spears, but they couldn't harm them.

They even shot their wads of fiery material from their primitive catapults, but they just landed on the shields and they were extinguished. And the Roman army continued to advance and to advance and to advance. And that's how Rome became a great empire.

Now how does the Christian church become a great empire? Become a great kingdom? By men and women, boys and girls, arms linked together in faith, each one having the breastplate of faith and using it rightly. Rome collapsed when Rome was broken with schism and faction. When they were vying for the purple, when you got more than one candidate for emperor.

When the generals were falling out, that was the collapse of Rome, coupled with its immorality and its increasing paganism. The Christian church is not to be like Rome. Not Rome at its worst.

But Rome at its best. Here's a biblical illustration from the Old Testament. The Hebrews are going across the Red Sea.

The sea has opened up. They're going in faith. Moses has spoken.

And for a moment they believe what Moses says in the name of God. And together, the tens of thousands of them, they cross. And then the Egyptians come, you see, and they try the same thing and the waters roll back and the Egyptians are drowned.

You read the summary in Hebrews chapter 11. Now I say to you that when the Hebrews were at their best, as they moved through the Sinai Peninsula, then they were illustrating what I'm trying to teach from Scripture. Godly people, with a breastplate of faith, going on and on in the purposes of God.

My dear wife Rowena comes from South Africa, as many of you know. This is my last comment. In South Africa, 300 years ago, you've got the Dutch settlers, the Voortrekkers.

At times they would be attacked by hostile tribes. And there was developed what was called the lager mentality. They'd get their ox wagons and they'd put them round in a circle.

And you couldn't break the circle because it was as large as the ox wagons would allow or as small as it required. And within the circle were the women and the children and it was safe. And as a result of that strategy they opened up the whole of the Transvaal and took it for themselves.

The rights and wrongs of that I'm not debating, I'm just stating a fact of history. Now what I'm appealing for is the lager mentality, in resisting the devil, the phalanx mentality. Christian churches in Worthing, Christian churches in this country, too small to be opposed to one another.

They need to be linked together with a breastplate held at the right point, realising that they're fighting for the Lord Jesus. And against them there is an adversary so evil you don't have words to describe the wickedness of his nature. But on the side of the Christians there is the armour of God granted to them deliberately to enable to offset the fiery arrows of the devil even when he empties his whole quiver upon them.

Now that's what Paul had in mind when he says, take above all, take the shield of faith whereby you, all of you, in Ephesus, together are able to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. May this message live on in your mind, I pray God, for Jesus' sake. 518, Thy hand, O God, has guided thy flock from age to age.

Here's a lager mentality, here's a phalanxed approach to Christianity brought through in this hymn. The third verse, very interesting, speaks of the difficulties of the past that our forefathers had. And then it goes on to the triumph of one day being with the Lord Jesus in the church of the redeemed in the glory that's yet to be revealed.

518. By the emotion of that hymn, the Father, we want that emotion to be translated into reality. One church, one faith, one Lord, to be able to combat the terror of the night and the arrow that flies by day.

Lord, make your church increasingly invulnerable and grant for this local, this tiny expression of it here in the tab, that we can work out the implications of what we've been taught through these messages in Ephesians we ask of you. And help us always to be willing in the day of your power to show that unity, that we might be able to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ and having done all with our brothers and sisters to stand until the moment when he comes. For his sake.

Amen.