Stand Firm — Ephesians 6:10–24 | Season 2, Episode 15

Have you ever considered that the reason you're exhausted — emotionally, physically, spiritually — might not be because you're failing? It might just be because you're fighting.

In this final episode of Season 2, host Matt Dawson brings the Set Free Stay Free Bible study podcast's walk through Ephesians to a close with one of the most well-known passages in all of Paul's writing: the armor of God. But this isn't just a children's Sunday school lesson with felt boards. It's Paul's capstone to everything he's written across six chapters — and every piece of the armor points back to something he's already said.

The belt of truth. The breastplate of righteousness. The shoes of peace. The shield of faith. The helmet of salvation. The sword of the Spirit. Paul didn't invent these out of thin air. He drew them from the full counsel of what he'd already written to the Ephesians — and now he's telling them to put it all on, stand firm, and remember who they're actually fighting.

Using the SOAP method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer), Matt unpacks why the real enemy is never flesh and blood, what it means to pray in the Spirit with persistence, and why Paul — still in chains — asks the church to pray for his boldness rather than his release. He closes with a deeply personal story from his mom about why corporate worship is the one place every part of you is fully engaged — and why that's also why it leaves you spent.

This Ephesians Bible study is for anyone who is tired of fighting and needs to be reminded they're not fighting alone — and they're not fighting in their own strength.

In this episode:

• Why Paul ends with armor — and how it connects to everything in the letter
• The difference between offensive and defensive pieces of the armor of God
• What it means to pray in the Spirit with persistence — and why it matters
• Why Paul asks for boldness, not rescue, while writing from prison
• The story about corporate worship and why it fully engages every part of you
• A closing prayer of gratitude for two seasons of walking through God's Word together

📖 Passage: Ephesians 6:10–24 (New Living Translation)

🔍 Keywords: Ephesians Bible study, Bible study podcast, SOAP method Bible study, Christian Bible study, Scripture-first Bible study, Set Free Stay Free, Matt Dawson, walking through the Bible, Christian discipleship podcast

Transcript

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Welcome to the Set Free Stay Free Bible Study Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Dawson, and we are doing our final episode of the book of Ephesians. This is the second season of our podcast. We've gone through the book of Galatians. Now we've gone through the entire book of Ephesians, this letter to the church in Ephesus. But as always, I want to start with this question. What if the reason you're exhausted emotionally, physically, mentally, maybe spiritually, isn't simply because have you ever considered the reason you're exhausted emotionally, physically, spiritually, may not be because you're just tired, worn out, or even failing in the Christian life. It could just be because you are fighting, right? You are engaged in a battle, and the fighting itself, it's not an issue of willpower, it's not an issue of experience, not an issue of know-how. It's an issue of fighting the good fight. Paul ends this letter with one final command to be strong in the Lord. And we're going to look at this part of Ephesians 6 together. And this is our final episode for this podcast. And as always, I'm using the SOAP framework, Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer to walk us through each passage we read. And so if you don't know anything about that, you can click the QR code, get a free download. It's in the description below. I'll put it in the pinned comments as well. We'd love to give you some resources on how to read the Bible every day and actually enjoy it and get something out of it every time you approach the Word of God. But before we dive in today, let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your word. As we finish out this letter, just reveal to us what you'd have us uh learn, observe, and apply in our lives. And we're so gracious for your Holy Spirit that is always able to do this for us. In your name, Jesus, amen. All right. As we approach last week, we talked, we kicked off chapter six of the book of Ephesians, and we talked a little bit about he was following up chapter five in terms of how does living out this faith that we live, how does this affect right everything in our lives and all the relationships in our lives. But here's where he makes a turn. This is in verse 10, and we're going to read till the end of the chapter. I might break it up a couple spots for us, but here we go. The whole armor of God, verse 10. A final word. Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. For we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Therefore, put on every piece of God's armor so you'll be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God's righteousness. For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the good news, so that you will be fully prepared. In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil, put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere. Paul then says, And pray for me too. Ask God to give me the right words, so I can boldly explain God's mysterious plan that the good news is for Jews and Gentiles alike. I'm in chains now, still preaching this message as God's ambassador, so I pray that I will keep on speaking boldly for him as I should. To bring you up to date, Tychius will the tea man, will give you a full report about what I am doing and how I'm getting along. He is a beloved brother and faithful helper in the Lord's work, and I have sent him to you for this very purpose, to let you know how you were how we are doing and to encourage you. Peace be with you, dear brothers and sisters, and may God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ give you love with faithfulness. May God's grace be eternally upon all who love our Lord Jesus Christ. I went ahead and read all of it because I just felt kind of the flow of that portion of Ephesians 6. Although there are many, many things to observe, I'm gonna go ahead and pull up what I have here in Ephesians 6. I think there are many things to observe in this passage, and I'm gonna list them out just a few of them. But understand that for me, this uh this passage is fairly well known. I grew up in the church, and even as a child, we sort of learned about sort of the armor of God, is what they called it. And so the passage was always and I grew up with felt boards. I don't know if you know what they are, but like you stick a little person on here, and then you'd be like, okay, everybody, let's put on the breastplate of righteousness, and let's put on the shoes of peace, and let's, you know, and so we'd have these little things to sort of identify what what you know, again, the visual was of a of spiritual uh spiritual words, but to battle armor, or you know, we'd think of like a soldier in Roman times and those kinds of things. Um, Paul is actually using for this Greek audience similar language so that they can kind of picture kind of what Christ as a messianic king, okay, because we already talked about the power of God throughout all of Ephesians. He's kind of talking about this idea of like, well, how can I give you some of this uh this language around the visual of this uh king or or a soldier of this royal priesthood, as we know he's called us? How can we talk about this in a physical way? And so I look at all of this, especially in the early part, and then when he starts describing the armor as kind of a recap of Ephesians. So understand, like he everything that he talks about as a physical piece of armor, he has already addressed in the letter to the church in Ephesus. And it's so it's sort of like him saying, Establish yourself, stand firm in and put on everything that we've talked about, every single thing that we've done. Don't miss the beginning part. The beginning part is the why. Okay, the why, and I'm gonna go back to these these verses. Final word is to be strong in the Lord and his mighty power. So it's not about our willpower, it's not about our effort, right? It's all about him, and that God's armor, okay, we we will be able to stand firm against the strategies of the devil. So the why here is the fact that we have an enemy. Matter of fact, one of my favorite books recently is Every Story Has a Villain. That's by uh Jay Pakluda, and uh, it's a phenomenal book about spiritual warfare and just understanding this passage and understanding better. If you want to do a deep dive, that's a great book to kind of help you point to scripture. But right now, I mean, I'm he's just saying there are strategies of the enemy, your villain, in your story, working against you, working against what God has for you, working against everything that Paul says he's just shared with all of you, right? And he's very careful to note this, and this is a very important verse in verse 12. We are not fighting flesh and blood enemies, right? So he wants them to understand this is not so much a physical battle, even if evil takes form physically, even if evil agendas are being carried out by people. This is not the actual battle that we're fighting. The fight that we have, he goes on, is it's evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, and against powers in the dark world, and against evil spirits in heavenly places. So he's helping us understand. There's a realm of which spiritual battle is sort of always at work. There's an enemy, there's a villain in your story. Um, and this our enemy is Satan himself. And everything we do, like Ephesians 4 on, you know, the practical stuff, even the first three chapters, which are great, the four on the practical stuff, everything we do to try to follow in what Christ has commanded us to do, we are gonna have opposition in our life, right? And it may come in the form, you may think it come in the form of this person who's rejecting you, or this person who is mocking your faith, or this person who is trying to draw you astray. But Paul's wanting to be very clear, it is not against those people. Those are people, those are flesh and blood people whom Christ died for, whom he loves. He's like, This is not your war with them. It is a spiritual battle. So before we get into the armor, just hear that. Just take that observation, understand there's a bigger piece playing here that every time we think about the battle itself, there is so much more than what we can see, which is why we're called to do stand firm in the Lord's strength. It's his armor. And he then he goes on to the pieces. So just a quick reminder, right? You're gonna resist the time of evil, you're gonna resist the enemy. A lot of the same words, standing firm, right? You stand in the ground, sort of speak, with the belt of truth and the body armor of God's righteousness, going back to the first few chapters. It is the truth that sets us free. It is the body armor of righteousness, it's the fact that Christ made us righteous, uh, give us a right standing with God, and we can live righteous lives because of that. He goes on to the shoes. There, they're gonna be peace, like that. This idea that your shoes are gonna bring about the peace that comes from Christ that passes all understanding. This is the peace that's promised to us. And then he goes on to say, we be fully prepared, right? Because we're gonna share the good news. The good news that comes from us, we need to be prepared to share with others. He says, in addition to all these things, we have a shield of faith. That's our trust in God, that's our trust in Christ. Again, the power of God, it's the armor of God. Our faith is that He is the strength by which we are leaning into. It's not us. It's not us checking boxes, it's not us doing all the right things. It is our faith in him. And that is what protects us. He goes on to say, protects us from those fiery arrows of the devil. Every intrusive thought, every fearful thing, everything he uses to kind of throw, just picture arrows and darts and like everything to try to get through the cracks in our in our life, the cracks and things that we leave exposed because of sin, he's gonna try to get to those, right? He's gonna try to increase those wounds, and yet we have a shield of faith that can help extinguish, that's the old KJ Jim version, extinguish those things. Then he says we have a helmet of salvation. So going back to chapter three and to four and helping us understand what we look like, living children, the children of light, it is because of grace that we are saved. Okay, that's Ephesians 2. Going all the way through four, it's only by his grace that we can accomplish the things he's called us to do. It's the helmet of salvation, it's the thing that dra that guides and directs us so we can see clearly. And I do love this. This is the offensive weapon we're given. Okay, the the offensive thing. Everything else is defensive that he that we talked about. It's it's it's all about us being prepared and being able to stand within the fight that we're in. But the offensive weapon we're given is for offense, is the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Right? I love I love that because it is the word of God. Let me pick it up. It is the word of God that helps us through everything. And it is what, as this Hebrew says, it is like a dagger, two-edged sword, right? It like cuts through the noise and the nonsense and the garbage and the ideology. It cuts through it like a two-edged sword, like it just nothing, and it goes right to joint and marrow, it goes right to the deepest parts, which is why I love this the fact that the word of God is given to us. Now, hear me say this. I've probably said this a thousand times. It is not given to us as a hammer to just beat the snot out of everybody else. It is not given to us to bludgeon our our flesh and blood enemies to death, okay? And to true pointly draw them away from the the call of Christ, draw them away from the love of God. It is given to us, it's a sword. It is incredibly powerful. And if you understand what the word of God does, as it again, as that Hebrews passage, it underst you understand that the Word of God is going to the things you want to do in your own flesh, beat people up, knock them, you know, throat punch people, all that stuff, that's all flesh because we think we're fighting flesh and blood enemies. He's like, There's a spiritual battle, and the sword I give you that cuts through all of it is the sword of the spirit. And then he says to pray in the spirit on every occasion, meaning that even beyond what we and our own human spirit and our own human flesh even know what to pray for, as he says in Romans, the Spirit will interpret for us. We pray in the Spirit of God. Uh, one of my friends in Kenya, Pastor David, what he gave a great uh example to me. He said, talking about what it means to pray in the spirit, he said, praying in the spirit happens when I've run out of all the words my human flesh can think of. So for him, one of the reasons that prayer takes a while for him is because he's praying everything he knows to say and everything he thinks to pray, and he's praying all of those things. And he's like, I get to the very end, and all I have left is the spirit. All I have left, and he's like, you know what? That's the stuff that's the most powerful. Praying in the spirit is is for him the part that really engages him with the heart of God because it's no longer you know muddy with this human, uh, human thoughts, human feelings, human words. He's like, No, I'm praying in the spirit and I'm persistent, is the word he uses. Persistent in these prayers, even for God's people everywhere. And then Paul says, Pray for me. Just pray, he just adds this little thing on the end. Why? Because I'm in chains. He hasn't leveraged this up to this point, he hasn't tried to overstate his situation. He just says, Look, I'm in chains. I'm I'm currently in prison. I'm letting everybody know about my faith, but continue to help me be bold. Pray for me. That even though I'm in this particular space, I'm still preaching the good news of God. I'm still preaching, I'm still God's ambassador. I want to continue to be bold and up to date. The end of the uh chapter is, of course, usually happens. This is a shorter one, is where he talks about Titius. Uh, he says, you know, he's gonna bring the report, and I love this guy, and he's doing a great work, and he's a great helper in the Lord, but peace be with you. Um, I'm praying for you. I want God's grace to be eternally on you. And then he closes his letter. I don't know what you needed to hear today, and maybe I don't know what this entire book of Ephesians has done for you, or maybe helped you process or think through. For me, the biggest observation today is to continually remind me, and again, this is just me. I've I grew up hearing about and learning about the armor of God. Maybe this is the first time you've ever heard of the armor of God and how it applies to everything we just read in Ephesians. And maybe you need to go back to Ephesians, back to Ephesians 1, and look for all of those things to pop out to you, right? The the shoes of peace, the the belt of truth, the right, the breastplate of righteousness, like the helm of salvation. Maybe you need to reread it, just think about all those things that he just already said through this letter, and maybe one sitting, and just watch it come to life. For me, it's a constant reminder that we always have a villain, and then and that really that exhaustion, that time in which maybe you feel a little thin, you feel energy is a little thin, spiritually, you're a little thin, mentally, you're a little thin. It's because you're in a fight. It's because you're fighting. You're you're doing what you need to do to stand firm, but we're all doing it in God's strength. I'll close with a quick story. My mom told my wife and I years ago, because we would talk a little bit about Sundays. We would talk about the interesting dynamic of Sunday mornings, especially in our lives. And uh, my wife grew up in a nap culture where you sort of drove down to your grandma's house and everybody eventually fell asleep and those kinds of things. And and we got married and we were serving and being involved in church and doing our thing. And, you know, my mom simply said this: she said, Where else in life is every part of you fully engaged mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. Like maybe at work, it's not the same. Maybe parenting it's not exactly the same, maybe your hobbies, maybe your relationships, parts of you show up in greater numbers than others, parts those parts of you are more impacted than others. But where else? But worshiping with God's people is all for the entire being fully engaged. Physically, you're present and you're serving, hopefully, and you're worshiping, and you're and you're there to serve others and engage with others mentally, you're being sharpened, you're being you're listening, you're paying attention to the word of God, you are you are letting the word of God renew your mind. Emotionally, between the music and the prayer and just connecting with loved ones and and people that you your chosen family, there's an emotional component that that that sometimes you you are filled up, sometimes you're pouring out, but emotionally you are engaged, and again, spiritually, you are celebrating the greatness of God with others, and there is something supernatural, there's something that supernaturally happens in corporate gatherings, in corporate worship. Where else are you gonna engage with all of you than with the people of God and the church and the body of Christ? So I'm looking at what Paul said, and he encourages them with this spiritual battle and all that kind of thing. I think he's encouraging the church in Ephesus that in this season of your life, living as the new people of God, the church, the kingdom, you're engaged in this fight. And all of you in these moments are gonna be fully engaged. And yeah, you're gonna be maybe sometimes pretty tired, pretty exhausted, pretty, you know, spent in terms of those moments. And and there's times, which is why I love part of Sunday, part of the the teaching of God, is to have time of rest, right? Time of Sabbath rest. My Sabbath for me runs usually after church on Sunday to about midday on Monday, just because that's the time in which I sort of pour out on Sunday mornings, finish that, and then my true rest usually comes in that next 24-hour window. That rest that I I mean I truly need. My wife doesn't, she's so great, she doesn't expect a ton from me on Sundays, you know. She knows I've been up early, you know, I'm I'm pouring myself out. But every Sunday, it's a battle for somebody. And every Sunday we're fully engaged, and and we all have the same villain who knows how to throw those darts, throw those arrows, try to take us out in the angles and the exposed ways in which we are still working through the sin nature in our life and surrendering those things to God continually. We're in this battle. So I really do appreciate my mom uh sharing that word, those words of wisdom with us. It's given us a great deal of an appreciation for naps on Sunday and just true understanding of rest, especially engaging in the church, engaging in the work that He's blessed us and privileged us to do and be a part of. It's been really cool to just reread this together and think about not having a physical enemy, but understanding the fullness of what God has given me and what's fully engaged when I'm in the spiritual battle. And sometimes why I am exhausted, why I am tired, why I do need to follow the Sabbath rest that He's also blessed us with. So let me pray for all of us as we close out this whole season. Father God, thank you so much for your word. Thank you so much for um the the the way in which you challenge us today to understand not just our enemy and his strategies, but to stand firm in your power, in your strength, and with your armor. You made it very, very clear through Paul. And as Paul kind of summarizes and capsizes with physical items and language about the armor, everything that he wrote through this entire letter, I pray that we would all hear that, that we would all understand the importance of that. And whatever needed to be kind of you know realized and observed and and and seen today, may we now be able to apply this to our lives. That's our prayer today, God, that we would put this into action. And maybe, again, maybe it's understanding that it's your strength that we stand in, that it's your armor that we stand in. And maybe we can take a breath in that and understand, God, that it's that it's all of you and that we are just here to surrender to. And so, God, I pray, thank you again for your word and this letter. And I pray for everyone who's listening and following along that you would continue to bless us as we try to put these things and apply these things to our lives. We pray all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. All right, guys. I know this was a little bit of a longer episode today. If you're listening to this via podcast through Spotify or Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to your podcast, please rate and review the podcast. It does help us. We're gonna take a couple week break and then we'll be back with the next prison epistle uh that we're gonna be studying. That's gonna be season three coming back. If you're following on YouTube, here's what I would love for you to do. I would love for you to not just maybe like or uh whatever the case is on this, on this particular one, if you would go to YouTube and you would engage, you would write a comment, you would maybe mark on something all of chapter, uh, all of the book of Ephesians, maybe chapter six. What is it that God was saying to you? What is it that God wants you to do? Maybe some maybe a word of application. I would love for you to put that in there. Why? Because we're learning more and more that the engagement on YouTube is what helps YouTube, you know, continue to share this with others who may also be wanting to study God's word, who may also want to know better ways to read it every day and engage with it. And again, I look forward to seeing you in the next season of this Sep Free Stay Free Bible Study Podcast. Love you guys. See you later.