Anyone who has ever attended a conference, seminar or church service, which I have addressed, will always come away with one clear and concise message—READ YOUR BIBLE!

I refer to it as my “cracked record”—get up early, get quiet before God, and get into the Word. Why? For at least four good reasons (and there are others):

• The Word leads us and guides us
  (Ps. 119:105; Ps. 32:8; Is. 30:21; Is. 48:17)
  
• The Word washes and cleanses us so that we can be clean and pure conduits for the “end-time wealth transfer”
  (Eph. 5:26; Prov. 13:22; Hag. 2:7; Is. 45:2-3; Is. 60:5-11; 61:6-7; Eccl. 2:26)
  
• The Word, as we meditate in it day and night and obey it, will cause us to prosper and have “good success”
  (Josh. 1:7-8)
  
• The Word is the “sword of the Spirit,” our offensive weapon in our never-ending spiritual battle against the devil and his forces of darkness
  (Eph. 6:17).

The significance of the “sword” in Ephesians 6 was brought home to me recently when I was reading Leviticus 26—a very powerful chapter. It tells us that if we obey the statutes and commandments (the Word) of God, we will be given rain in its season, our trees will yield fruit, we will live in safety and peace, and it says that God will look on us with favor, make us fruitful and multiply us. It also says in verses 7 and 8: “You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the SWORD before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the SWORD before you.”

I guess I have read this a hundred times at least, without the revelation hitting me that there is a spiritual significance to it, that our real enemies are the demonic forces unleashed by the devil against us, and that we can only fight them with spiritual weapons, which are the mighty “weapons of our warfare” that will pull down and annihilate the powers and strongholds of darkness.

And chief among our spiritual weapons is the sword of the Spirit—the Word of God. We are in a battle—a battle to the death for our eternal salvation. The devil has a “take no prisoners” policy, and there is no neutral ground for us to settle in.

Taking Up The Sword

C.H. Spurgeon, in a sermon given in April 1891, put it this way: “To be a Christian is to be a warrior … his occupation is war. Our defence and our conquest must be obtained by sheer fighting.

“Neither can we hope to gain by being neutral, or granting an occasional truce. We are not to cease from conflict, and try to be as agreeable as we can with our Lord’s foes, frequenting their assemblies, and tasting their dainties. No such orders are written here— you are to grasp your weapon, and go forth to fight.

“One note that rings out … is this: TAKE THE SWORD! TAKE THE SWORD! No longer is it “talk and debate”! No longer is it “parley and compromise”! The word of thunder is—TAKE THE SWORD. The Captain’s voice is clear as a trumpet—TAKE THE SWORD!”

The “sword” Spurgeon is referring to, of course, is the sword of the Spirit in Ephesians 6:17. He went on: “… The Holy Spirit has a sword … He wields a deadly weapon … the Holy Spirit has proclaimed war, and wields a two-edged sword … it is all edge, and whichever way it strikes, it wounds and kills.”

The kind of sword that Paul was thinking of when he talked of the “sword of the Spirit” is the Roman gladius or, in Greek, machaira—a short, razor-sharp, doubled-edged sword that excels in close-quarter combat.

When we fight our enemies, it is not a long-distance, impersonal conflict, like shooting high-power bullets long distances at an unseen assailant. Our warfare is personal, close-up, “down and dirty.” That is why our main weapon is short, sharp, two-sided and absolutely deadly in hand-to-hand combat.

Using The Sword Of The Spirit

The sword of the Lord appears in the Old Testament as well as the New, with the Israelites shouting “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!” when they fought the Midianites in Judges 7:20. It was a miraculous battle, with only 300 chosen Israelites fighting an overwhelming army of “Midianites, Amelekites and other eastern peoples” (Judg. 6:33, NIV). The Bible says “the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon,” and with just trumpets and lamps, and most importantly the shout of “sword of the Lord and of Gideon,” the tiny force attacked, and “the whole army ran and cried out and fled” (Judg. 7:21).

There is nothing so powerful in spiritual warfare as the sword of the Spirit—the Word of God, taken up and wielded in faith. Again, Spurgeon said: “In this combat, you will have to use a sword such as even evil spirits can feel, capable of dividing asunder soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow.

“Depend upon it, that in this struggle, you will be forced to come to close quarters. The foe aims at your heart, and pushes home. A spear will not do, nor bow and arrow—the enemy is too near for anything but hand-to-hand combat.

“A real war is raging, your opponents are in deadly earnest, and you must take your sword … we need this sword, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. We say with David: ‘There is none like that; give it [to] me.’ No other will match the enemy’s weapon.

“The standing orders are to take the sword of the Spirit, and no new regulation has ever been issued by the great Captain of salvation. From the days of Paul till now, the word stands: TAKE THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT.