2. The Plan of Attack (Ephesians 6:11b, 13c, 14a)<\/h2>\nEphesians 6:11b. \u2026that you may be able to stand\u2026 <\/strong><\/p>\n
Ephesians 6:13c. \u2026that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. <\/strong><\/p>\n
Ephesians 6:14a. Stand therefore\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n
A humorous saying which I used to quote says, \u201cDon\u2019t just do something, stand there!\u201d And that is exactly what Paul calls Christian soldiers to do here. And he wants to emphasize it so much, he doesn\u2019t say it just once, not twice, not even three times, but four times in these few verses. He wanted to get it pounded into our minds that the best thing we can do in Spiritual Warfare is simply to stand our ground.<\/p>\n
In the movie Braveheart, there is a scene where the enemy cavalry is charging down on Wallace and his band of Scottish soldiers. The scene keeps cutting back and forth between the charging horses and the standing soldiers. Wallaces\u2019s men are clearly getting nervous seeing these riders racing toward them, and we wonder why they don\u2019t do something? Why don\u2019t they charge? Why don\u2019t they run away?<\/p>\n
But then Wallace shouts out, \u201cSteady men! Stand your ground! Steady!\u201d<\/p>\n
And we\u2019re thinking, \u201cStand your ground? You\u2019ll get pulverized as soon as that cavalry gets to you. Don\u2019t stand there. Run!\u201d<\/p>\n
But Wallace and his men do stand there. And the horses pound closer. And just as the cavalry is about to come in a slaughter them, Wallace shouts out, \u201cNow!\u201d and all of men bend over, and pick up long poles, sharpened to a point on one end, with the blunt end planted firmly in the ground. The cavalry, which has too much momentum, cannot stop in time, and most of them get impaled on the ends of those poles.<\/p>\n
The battle scene continues from there, but Wallace and his men are victorious, because they stood their ground.<\/p>\n
That is what Paul is calling to us to do also. Like Wallace, he is shouting out, \u201cSteady! Stand your ground. Stand there! Don\u2019t give up ground. Don\u2019t retreat. But don\u2019t try to advance either.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why would we get such orders? What kind of plan of attack is this? Who has ever won a war by just standing their ground?<\/p>\n
Well, first of all, we\u2019re not trying to win a war. The war has already been won. Jesus won the entire war for us when He died on the cross and rose from the dead. We don\u2019t have to march out to meet the enemy, because the enemy is already defeated. The enemy has already been vanquished. The enemy has already been conquered. Thankfully, God didn\u2019t tell us to go out there and defeat Satan, because we never could have done that. That would be a suicide mission. He is much stronger and powerful than any one of us. God knows that we would be easily defeated, just like those villagers trying to stand up to Hitler. So, we\u2019re not trying to win this war; we\u2019re just trying to survive the battle, and hold on to the ground God has given to us to defend.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s another reason that we are just to stand our ground. Aside from the fact that on our own, we cannot defeat the enemy, it is also true that God has not given us the right weapons to go on the offensive. In the list of spiritual armor, we read about the sword, but as we will see when we study that item, it was a short sword used primarily for defense, not offense. The primary offensive weapon of the Roman soldier in Paul\u2019s day was a spear, or javelin. And guess what? God didn\u2019t give us one. There is no \u201cspear of spiritual attack\u201d in the spiritual armor.<\/p>\n
Why not? Because we are not to attack. We are not on the offensive. We are standing our ground. We are just defending ourselves from the retreating enemy.<\/p>\n
But this is actually a very good plan of attack as well. As we often heard it said in sports, the best offense is a good defense. And this is true in war as well. When you have a good defense, all you really have to do to win a battle is simply stand there and let your attackers destroy themselves against your impenetrable walls. This is what Paul had in mind here, because this is the way the Roman Empire conquered the world. This seems backward to us, because we think, \u201cWell, how could the Roman empire conquer the world if all they did was defend themselves?\u201d<\/p>\n
Let me explain to you how. The Roman army was so powerful because of their military formation. The Roman military historian by the name of Vegetius, which I talked about last week, tells us that the smallest Roman security force was a guard unit made up of 16 men. These 16 men were spaced evenly over 36 square yards, or in other words, one every six feet. And they were trained to focus on one thing and one thing only\u2014do not let a single enemy soldier enter into their six feet.<\/p>\n
In other words, each individual soldier was told to do one thing: stand your ground. Do not let the enemy into your six foot square area. How big is a six foot square area? If you stand up, and hold your arms out straight, that is about six feet from fingertip to fingertip. That\u2019s not much ground to protect, is it?<\/p>\n
If you were a soldier and you were told that all you had to do in any war was cover one little six foot by six foot section, that doesn\u2019t seem too hard. Especially if you had a thousand soldiers in every direction of you who were doing the same exact thing. They were all just standing their ground, protecting their little piece of land.<\/p>\n
This was the genius of the Roman military. Vegetius tells us that when arranged in this way, and when each soldier understood that all he had to do was stand his ground, his little six-by-six foot section of ground, that those 16 men could stand up against 500 attacking enemies! [2] You\u2019ve probably all heard of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartan warriors who held their ground against the invading Persian army of over 240,000 men.<\/p>\n
That is impossible odds, but they did it by finding a narrow ravine which could be easily defended, and then they just stood their ground. Eventually, the 300 Spartans were killed, but only because they were betrayed. However, Herodotus reports that when the battle was over, those 300 Spartans had killed 20,000 Persians. It\u2019s one of the most amazing accounts in military history. Now, of course, the Spartans were Greeks, but the Romans gained most of their military ideas from the Greeks, especially the greatest Greek General of all, Alexander the Great. The Roman army would advance into a region where there was an enemy, set up in their defensive formation, and then let the enemy come to them and throw themselves against the impenetrable wall.<\/p>\n
When viewed this way, the battle before us is really not that hard. I think sometimes we look out at all the sin and corruption and evil in this world, and we get scared. We think, \u201cHow can I, one single person, do anything to fight against that? If I try and stand up against those waves of darkness, I\u2019ll get overwhelmed!\u201d But Paul is telling us here to take heart. God does not expect you to fight the swarming hoards all by yourself. It is not you against the spiritual realm of darkness.<\/p>\n
No, Paul says, it is so simple. You have been given a little tiny bit of ground. Just a tiny little 6 by 6 foot section. Stand in it and defend it. That\u2019s it. Do not let a single enemy enter into your space. That is the area God has entrusted to you, and he wants you to stand your ground. Your ground may be your home, or your workplace, your thought life, what you allow your eyes to see, or the words that come out of your mouth. Everywhere you go, you must be on the defensive, ready to stand your ground. Your six by six foot section of ground to defend may be your own life. What you see. What you say. What you think. Protect your life from sin at all costs, by simply standing your ground.<\/p>\n
Now, to stand your ground, it will be helpful to know what tactics and strategies the enemy will come at you with, right? What are the ploys of Satan? Well thankfully, God tells us this next in Ephesians 6:11.<\/p>\n