How to Use the Sword of the Spirit, Part Two...

Chapter Twenty-six:

Gurnall continues in his warnings to us, and tells us of an area where we will face even stronger challenges, and these will be against those who he refers to as heretics and seducers.  He cautions us that these people are to be feared even more than persecutors!   Gurnall said, "It is far worse to have our souls damned by God than to have our bodies killed by man. If the martyrs had dreaded death more than heresy they could never have walked willing into persecutors' flames."

He then gives us a strong warning about the necessity of using our own, well-practiced sword, and not relying upon another to defend us when he says, "The sword of the Spirit in another's hand will not defend you. If you are to lift it up in victory against this dangerous enemy (heretics and seducers) you must first give yourself completely to the leading of the Spirit in God's Word. The outward expression of Scripture is only the shell, and the meaning is the pearl which you (emphasis added) must search for until you find it...we must listen to what the Spirit says in the Word as we hear or read it, for the one who has an ear for the Spirit will not have an ear for the seducer."

Gurnall goes on to tell us six ways to help make sure we are not taken in by the seducer or heretic:

First, to remember that the only way we will know the true mind of God, in His Word, is to be sure that the Holy Spirit reveals it to us. But we must first be sure that we approach this with a clean heart and a pure motive.  "The wicked have the Word of God but only the holy have 'the mind of Christ' (First Corinthians 2:16)", says Gurnall.  Paul was persuaded that we need to have a transformed mind, one that is no longer conformed to the ways of this world, if we are to receive the truths that the Holy Spirit wants to share with us. David begged for understanding of the Word when he made his desire for holiness, "Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law; indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart." (Psalm 119:33-34).

Second, we need to make sure we don't use our own reasoning power and apply it to how we measure the truths found in Scripture.  It is too easy to be talked into a heresy or adopt a distorted teaching from the Word of God if we aren't extremely careful of who teaches us or if we are using our own worldly reasoning about a subject.  God's Word reveals more to us than is above reason, and often is something that only faith can reveal.  We, who insist on remaining prideful, or follow people who are, will often find ourselves unable to understand the true meaning of what is found in the Scriptures as it takes a humble heart to see the truth. Gurnall believed that "This was the Sadducees' rationale for denying the resurrection of the dead, as it seemed impossible to their reasoning that our bodies, after becoming dust, should stand up in life again. And because their intellect laughed at this truth the Savior indicted them with a serious charge: 'Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God' (Matthew 22:29)". Pride is very often behind those who are heretics and seducers of weak spirits.

Third, we must not read the Bible in order to confirm our already-held beliefs, or validate erroneous beliefs we are being taught,  but we must read it to become informed. We cannot hold to our own beliefs and try to make Scripture agree with them. We cannot look at the truths God reveals to us and ignore them or God will give us up to a foolish heart. Gurnall reminds us that "foolish men are desperately trapped in their own hearts by being ensnared in the errors which their own minds weave." 

Fourth, we need to pray to God to unlock the mysteries found in the Scriptures. We should be careful about what men tell us about God's Word and be in prayer so that we recognize error when we hear it. Scripture reminds us that it is the Holy Spirit that will guide us in all truth (John 16:13). We must pray that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth, rather than being lazy and allowing ourselves to be taught by those who have selfish or deceitful motives.

Fifth, in order to protect ourselves we must be able to compare Scripture with Scripture. "False doctrines, like false witnesses, do not agree among themselves. We might name them 'Legion', for they are many. But truth is whole, and one Scripture harmonizes sweetly with another, Thus, although God used many different men to pen His sacred Word, He made sure they all had but one mouth: 'As He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began' (Luke 1:70). The best way, therefore, to know the mind of God in a particular text is to compare it to another text. The stonecutter uses a diamond to cut another diamond.", says Gurnall.

Sixth, if necessary we must seek out an authority within the Church whom we trust for wisdom and insight. This is one of the areas where Gurnall tells us that we have to do it using much prayer and discernment as there are many even within the Church that are heretics or seducers, wolves in sheep's clothing. However, it is also one of Satan's best strategies, to send away the shepherd so he can snare the sheep. We must not allow our hearts to become so untrusting of men of God that we follow after strangers who corrupt us with unsound doctrines that appeal to our flesh.  Gurnall tells us that if we really want to be protected from error, we must use the sword of the Word which is in our hands, a sword that must be kept sharpened and at the ready. 

In Second Corinthians 11:13 we are told to not be shocked to find false teachers masquerading as apostles of Christ. In First Timothy 4:1 we read, "The Spirit clearly says that in later times  some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons."  Spiritual deception is not something that many believers have been taught to discern, nor the need to be cautious in what they expose themselves to, and to that end the enemy has, and will, fool many with seemingly supernatural experiences.  Many Christians are too eager to accept anything that appears supernatural as being something from God, something divine, and so it is accepted without any second thought, even though it could very well be a counterfeit and not from God at all.  Counterfeit supernatural events have happened all throughout the history of the Church and yet Christians are still allowing themselves to be misled.

Paul warned Timothy how to stand in defense against seducers by telling him to shut himself up with the Scriptures (Second Timothy 3:14).  As I said in an earlier chapter, Gurnall tells us "We can load ourselves down with other arms by stumbling over many authors; but whoever has the sword the Spirit (God's Word) has all he needs to encounter the fiercest champion of error the devil can train up and command. Persons in error can no more stand before us holding this sword than a child with a wooden dagger could stand against a giant armed with deadly weapons. All error dreads the light of the Word and is more afraid of being examined by it than a thief dreads a strict judge. To expose the doctrines of heretics is to overcome them. When they come face to face with the Word they must hang their heads like Cain; they are put to shame. This is the only way to test suspicious teachings - if they can walk upon this fiery law unhurt and unreproved, they may safely pass for truths. Paul tells us that some 'will not endure sound doctrine' (Second Timothy 4:3). These want a doctrine which will suit their own preferences, and the Word will not do this."
 
In the two last chapters, Gurnall will tell us how to use the sword of the Word against the lusts that dwell within us and which Satan could use to bring us to our knees in defeat. He will also teach us what he learned about using the sword of the word against afflictions, trials and struggles.

How to Use the Sword of the Spirit, Part One...

Chapter Twenty-Five:

This last part of Gurnall's book is perhaps the most important section, as he passes on to us what he learned living and walking as a Christian in this world where battles are constantly fought against one's self, the world and Satan.  He passes on the insights he learned on not only how to skillfully use one's sword to defend himself against Satan's bloody attacks, but also how we can control our fleshly desires and resist the call of this world, the Sirens call that constantly tempts us to leave the narrow path that leads to eternal life.

Gurnall starts out by insisting that we do a serious self examination and see if we are yet ready to wield the sword of truth. 

First, he has us ask ourselves how willing are we to stand for the scriptural principles and practices to which we say we embrace?  He says, "It is important for a man to know that Christianity is not a problem-free walk. Even the most valiant soldier loses courage when he must fight in a mist and cannot tell the difference between friends and enemies. But it is even more urgent for the Christian to know what principles he suffers for."  

Satan will put all his effort into trying to get us to defile our consciences and cause us to renounce our faith.  When the accusations and persecutions come, and they will, will we be able to ignore them and not allow them to destroy our peace, which is his true goal? Our enemy gets great satisfaction from watching a persecuted Christian being looked upon as receiving just punishment from those in the world. He wants Christians to be seen as being punished for the evil-doers that they are.  If we are not fully persuaded in our own minds that we are suffering for a true cause, we will not be able to stand up against false charges. What onlookers will say or do does not matter, it is what we, ourselves, think about the matter that is the most concerning. Will we be able to stand as the Thessalonians did "in much assurance" and walk in joy, though affliction and persecutions came upon us (First Thessalonians 1:5-6)?

Second, have we developed our fear of God so that it has become bigger in our lives than our fear of man? "Every man dreads falling into the hands which he fears most. So if God has gained the supremacy over your fear (of man), you will rather run into the hottest flames the persecutor kindles than make Him your enemy", says Gurnall. Have we come to the place where we see the fear of man being a weak, frail thing compared to the anger that can be found in our righteous God?  Gurnall goes on to encourage us when he says, "If you have God's good Word, you do not have to fear the world's bad words. A dog can bark all night long but the moon will never change color because of the noise he makes. And the saint need not change his countenance because of his persecutors' abuse."

If you find that you are lacking in the fear of God, look to the Scriptures and they will teach you. David said in Psalm 119:161, "Princes have persecuted me without a cause; but my heart stands in awe of thy word." David compared the anger of man to the anger of God and found the fear of man to be nothing to worry him. As Matthew 10:28 tells us, "Do not be afraid of them who kill the body. They are not able to kill the soul. But fear Him Who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

Third, we must make sure that we are free of our lusts and have surrendered them to God. "The person who cannot endure the edge of the Spirit's sword to mortify his lusts will not be free of his flesh for Christ's sake when persecution comes. Can you be willing to lay down your life for Christ and still lodge an enemy in your heart that tries to take away His life at every turn? Persecutors tempt as well as torture; they promise honor as well as threaten hardship and devouring fire. And if your love of the world has not already been laid down, it is easy to predict what choice you will make when trouble comes - you will embrace the present world and leave Christ outside your chamber door", warns Gurnall.  If we are to be willing to die for Christ, it must be because we have already established in our hearts that we have abandoned all for Him. No trace of love for the world and what it has to offer must be found in us. 

 

Fourth, have we strengthened our faith by way of devouring God's promises regarding His help that will come to us during our times of trouble? The only way we will have victory over this world is by having strong faith. We must be like David, who when driven from the court of Saul and into the cave said, "My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise" (Psalm 57:7). Even though his enemies tried to take his life, David was free of worry during a time when he should have feared for his very life. Faith in the promises of God will not only abolish the pull of worldly cares, but will also give us unspeakable joy. 

After challenging us to do a time of serious soul searching, Gurnall changes his focus and begins to encourage us to consider how sorrows can rob us of our joy during times when we will suffer for following Jesus Christ.  He reminds us that "God's promises are many, and fitted exactly to each particular personal problem; but it requires diligent study to gather them all in. God has purposely scattered these promises throughout His Word rather than clustered them in one place, so we must search every corner of Scripture - and then rejoice at what we have found!"    

There is a promise for every time of trouble in God's Word. For instance, if we are afraid of being imprisoned or that our strength will be too weak or we'll be too fearful to get us through those troubling times, First Corinthians 10:13 tells us, "God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able....".  We are reminded that when God led His people out of Egypt there were two routes from which to chose. God purposely chose the longer of the two routes because He knew their weakness. He knew that they were not ready for war and He didn't want them to be tried until they were strong enough to endure it (Exodus 13:17).

However, if God does call us into fiery trials, He promises that He will take the responsibility. Matthew 10:19,20  tells us, "...do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak,  for it is not you who speaks, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.".   As Gurnall says, "There is no mouth which God cannot make eloquent, no back so weak that He cannot strengthen it. And He has promised to go with you wherever your enemies might force you to go; neither fire nor flood can take you away from the Father. These promises make such a soft pillow for the saints' heads that many have experienced marvelous rest when roughly handled by cruel enemies."

As believers we will have our share of troubles simply because we are disciples of Jesus Christ. Christ warned us that just as He had trouble, we, too would have trouble in this world (John 15:18).   Our only source of security has got to be the everlasting message of the Gospel! We know that heaven and earth will pass away but not one word of this Gospel will perish. First Peter 1:25 reminds us, "The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever."

In Parts Two to Four, the last chapters of this blog, we will complete our reading of Gurnall's instructions on how we are to use our sword, the Word of God, against Satan's teachers of deception (heretics and seducers) and our own fleshly lusts. He will also tell us how to use the sword of the Word against afflictions, trials and struggles.

 

The Sword of the Spirit, Part Two...

Chapter Twenty-four:

In this chapter, we will continue looking at the ways Satan tries to overcome us as we have our sword ready for use. The fourth way that Gurnall describes, has to do with one of the most destructive means that Satan uses, with the intended purpose of at best disarming us of our sword entirely, or at least making it so ineffective that it poses little threat to him.  Gurnall has us consider the various religious systems that are in operation within the world, and how they either help reinforce, or minimize how well we know the Holy Bible, the Word of God.

He says, "Is the Word the sword of the Spirit with which the Christian can vanquish his enemies? Then we must charge with cruelty any religious system which disarms people of the only weapon which can defend them against enemies which seek their eternal death. It is true, these leaders have a few fig leaves to hide this shameful tradition, making the world believe they are merciful not to want their parishioners to wound themselves with this weapon." Gurnall is referring to the practice of certain religions of treating the Scriptures as though only a few people are chosen by God to understand them, so if a layperson sitting in the pew were to be unsupervised in their reading of the Bible, that they could do harm to themselves. 

This is the excuse they use to withhold the Scriptures from people, Scriptures that would actually bring light, knowledge and freedom to the reader if they were allowed to have it to study freely, with the help of the Holy Spirit. But, the Holy Bible was not meant to be read by only a few, it was inspired by God to be written by the hands of what we would consider average men (except for Paul, the writers of the Bible were not "seminary-taught", educated men).  Thus, keeping the Scriptures out of the hand of a believer, is to have him armed with a very weak sword, and that is to his detriment.

"How wrong for teachers to want the people to learn this knowledge solely from their preaching, and not from the Bible! How can a congregation be sure they are hearing truth unless they have Scripture, the only touchstone to try the purity of the doctrine? God Himself directs His Word not to any one honored group - not to a select few - but to every man (Romans 1:7, Second Corinthians 1:1)...By the same authority with which the apostle wrote his epistles, he commanded them to be read in the church. Did ministers of the early church hide God's Word from the people instead of encouraging them to hide it in their heart?", asks Gurnall.

We see from reading Acts 17:11 that the Bereans "... were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." They could not have done this if they did not have access to the Scriptures themselves. And if one doesn't have access to Scripture, one can easily become spiritually under-fed and ultimately deceived by erroneous teachings that weaken and potentially destroy his sword, rather than building him up so that his sword reflects the strength he has within him from his knowledge of the Scriptures.   

As Gurnall tells us, "Can there be a greater blasphemy to our God than to imply His Word fails to contain everything necessary for salvation? Would God send His people into battle and put such a dull sword into their hand that it could not defend them and cut their way through their enemies' powers to heaven, whither (wherever) He commands them to march? Why would the Father give arms that are not fit to oppose any enemy that comes, since He knows how to furnish us with the best weapons? Would He give us weak and insufficient weapons for defense and then warn us to use nothing else? He would be sending His unknowing sheep to the slaughter to have their throats cut by the enemy...And does He not forbid us to use any other weapon than that which Scripture supplies? He sees it as renouncing (our) allegiance to Him to go anywhere else for counsel or protection except to His Word. Scripture is sufficient for God's purposes, and is able to furnish every true Christian in the world with wisdom enough to find salvation for his soul."

The fifth way that Satan uses is to have us look for places in Scripture that we believe give us license to commit wickedness and to defend our acts of willful sin.  The enemy loves it when we use our knowledge of the Word of God to ward off much-needed reproofs from another. Many use their knowledge of the Word in order to protect their ungodly lifestyles or attitudes. In an attempt to justify his corrupt ways, a heretic will choose particular parts of God's Word to use to his advantage, in order to do as he pleases. 

Gurnall warns us, "Man's heart is desperately wicked when he steals such sweet portions of Scripture to disguise his lusts. Verses declaring God's free grace, given to melt sinners' hearts and draw them to Christ, are often used as a wedge to keep a hard heart from bowing before the Savior. God gave examples of holy men's downfalls to encourage us to fear and to stand, and to take hope in His mercy. Yet many choose to wallow like animals in their own wasted lives. They insist that everything will be all right because some very important saints had a dreadful fall and yet had their sins forgiven and their souls saved...Satan madly uses the few instances of late repentance in Scripture to beg time of the sinner and make him stay just a little longer in the Sodom of his sin...No sin is small, but the least sin amounts to blasphemy when you commit it on a pretense of Scripture. The devil cannot think of anything he had rather glory in than to wound God's name with His own sweet sword. He coaxes man to sin and then brags that God made him do it. If God ever singles out a man on the face of the earth for His utmost wrath, it will surely be the person who shelters his sin under the wing of holy Scripture."  

Rather than allowing Satan to tear the knowledge of the Scriptures from us by his deceitful, sneaky strategies, we should be excited and thankful to God for this sword He has furnished us out of His grace and love for us! We live in a world where we are not safe unless we are fully armed with the armor He has provided. There is no other way of reaching heaven without going through the enemies' territory, and this has to be uppermost in our minds as we consider how much we need to make sure that our sword is well sharpened, ready for quick grasp and has been used in training to such a degree that it is carried in the hands of a skilled warrior, ready to be used whenever necessary.

It is important to make sure we have our sword at the ready all at times, and we do this by being sure we understand the importance of studying the Scriptures for ourselves. It is easy to allow another to read and interpret the Scriptures for us, but we do ourselves a disservice because not only do we not  get the Word into our hearts, but we also can be tricked or manipulated very easily by someone with impure motives.

As Gurnall said, "God has left only one book to the church, and can we refuse to study it? There is an immense treasure in a nearby mine but too often we remain paupers because we will not put on work clothes to dig it out...What has happened to the hunger of saints to study the Scripture? In years past they gave all they had - even the blood of their veins - to purchase a few pages of it. Either these people were fools to pay so high a price for this knowledge or you are greater fools to refuse it when it is so readily obtainable."

One thing that is very important for us to remember when we study Scripture is that we cannot attain the knowledge found in God's Word without the Holy Spirit's help. There have been, and continues to be, many people who think themselves wise and feel no need for God's help in studying His Word. These people are compared to the Pharisees of Jesus' day because they are full of head knowledge of the Word but have no truth in their hearts. 

Many who would be considered ignorant by this type of person are the actual ones to who God gives knowledge when they study the Scriptures. As Gurnall tells us, "Now the more aware you are of your weakness, the more fit you are for the Spirit to shape you into the likeness of Christ; for a proud student and a humble teacher will never agree... He (God)  has no pleasure in the arrogant person, but He has patience with the humble and diligent." Pray that God finds you a humble student who is teachable and ready to be taught!

In the next chapter, we will begin to look at how we are to use this Sword of the Spirit, which is the Holy Word of God.  Gurnall finishes his book by explaining to us how we are to use our sword to handle the different enemies that will come against us, those without (Satan and the world), and those within (our flesh). At the very end he gives us words of encouragement and wisdom on how to use the sword of the Word against afflictions, trials and struggles.