Armor of God Seminar 2024
Part 5
Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
The Authority of the Name
Ephesians 6:10 APNT:
From now on, my brothers, be strong in our Lord and in the immensity of his power
The Aramaic word translated as power or “the immensity of his power” is used in the Old Testament when Esther goes to the king and he receives her. He then gives her the authority to make a new proclamation so that the Jews could fight against the people who plan to kill them. That word “authority” is from the same Aramaic word as “power” in Ephesians 6:10.
Jesus is our King. If he gave us his scepter to use, that would be the kind of power we are talking about here.
Ephesians 6:16 KJV:
Above all, taking the shield [thureos] of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
This shield quenches fiery darts. The first thing we see is that we must take it. If a Roman soldier left his shield behind in his tent, he’d be in trouble when the fiery darts came.
The Roman Shield
The word “shield” in Ephesians 6:16 is the Greek word thureos and comes from the word for door. The Roman shield was large and oblong, shaped like a door, four feet by two and a half feet, and sometimes curved on the inner side. The inner core was made of wood, with up to six layers of leather covering it. The leather in these layers was tightly woven together and tanned so that they became almost as strong as steel. The center of the shield often had a metal knob, called a boss, which could be used offensively.
The first characteristic we should note about the shield is that it covered the soldier’s entire body. Its second unique quality is that it was designed to be clipped or stacked tightly together to form various formations in the line of a battle. The soldier carried the sizable shield on his left arm and held his sword by the handle, with the blade down, in his right hand.
Because the Roman soldier’s shield was made of leather, it was important for the soldier to take good care of it.
Although the six layers of animal hide made the shield extremely strong and durable, that tough, thick leather could become stiff and breakable over a period of time if it wasn’t properly taken care of. Therefore, it was necessary for Roman soldiers to know how to care for their shields.
A soldier was given a daily schedule for maintaining his shield in excellent condition. Each morning when he woke up, he would reach for his shield and for a small vial of oil. After saturating a piece of cloth with this heavy ointment, he would thoroughly rub the oil into the leather of the shield to keep it soft, supple, and pliable. For a soldier to ignore this daily application of oil and to let his shield go without this kind of required care was essentially the equivalent of his inviting certain death.
Rick Renner, Dressed to Kill: A Biblical Approach to Spiritual Warfare and Armor (Teach All Nations, Harrison House Publishers, Tulsa, OK, 1991).
What does oil represent in God’s Word? Anointing and the Holy Spirit. For us today, we need both the Word and the Holy Spirit to prepare our shield.
Before going into battle, they would saturate the shield in water. Water represents God’s Word and spiritual life.
They had to have daily applications of both oil (Holy Spirit) and water (God’s Word).
Likewise, in order for us to keep our shield of faith in top-notch condition, we must give serious attention to the condition of our faith. We must make certain that we are allowing the Holy Spirit to freshly anoint our lives on a daily basis as we regularly saturate our faith with the water of the Word. Word-saturated faith will always extinguish the devil’s attacks! —Rick Renner, Dressed to Kill.
This information is intended to be very practical. Remember that Ephesians is a sort of summary of what is in the Epistles that pertains to us. So, now we need to understand what the shield of faith has to do with faith.
You might think that your own faith is not strong (like a door), especially when there are fiery darts coming at you. If a Roman soldier’s shield caught fire because it had not been properly prepared, he could throw it down, and his neighbor could cover him with his neighbor’s shield until he could pick his own shield back up again.
Faith here is not what we do, it is what we have. So it has to be a figure of speech, where faith takes the place of what we have faith in. This figure is called metonymy (of the effect). Faith or trust is always in something. It is the effect of something. The object of faith is God and what he has provided in Christ. God is often called a shield in the Old Testament. David relied on God for his protection and covering. His trust was in God, not himself.
In the New Testament, we have the name of Christ as the shield.
In Romans 1:5, faith represents the authority of the name of Jesus Christ. The faith of his name is the power to use the name of Jesus Christ. In Matthew 28:18, Jesus commissioned the disciples by saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go…” (NIV translation). And in Ephesians 1:20-23, it makes it clear that all things are under the feet of Christ, and he is the head of everything. His name is greater than “every name that is named.”
Romans 1:5 APNT:
by whom we have received grace and apostleship among all the Gentiles, so that they would obey the faith of his name.
We are now part of the body of Christ, so all things are under our feet also, and we have the authority to use his name and the power behind that name. The name actually is power!
The Aramaic word picture for the name Jesus is “the power of change completely experienced.” Change is accomplished because of Jesus being the deliverer.
Chris Tomlin has written a song about the name of Jesus that summarizes the freedom available with the faith of his name. The name of Jesus Christ changes everything.
The Name of Jesus by Chris Tomlin
The name of Jesus is a refuge
A shelter from the storm, a help to those who call
The name of Jesus is a fortress
A saving place to run, a hope unshakable
When we fall You are the Savior, when we call You are the answer
There is power in Your name, there is power in Your name
In the name of Jesus
There is life and healing
Chains are broken in Your name
Every knee will bow down and our hearts will cry out
Songs of freedom in Your name, oh, in Your name
Fiery darts are arrows that are lit with fire. In the Roman wars, the enemy would rain down fiery arrows on the lines before and during the attack. They were designed to cause confusion and to prepare the way for the enemy to move in. The first important thing to know is that the attack is coming from the Evil one – not people (we wrestle not against flesh and blood), and the second is that the shield quenches the fire. The utilization of the power of the name of Jesus Christ, with all the manifestations of the spirit, renders null and void any kind of attack.
Acts 3 describes an exchange between Peter and the religious leaders when Peter was confronted for healing the lame man. He boldly proclaimed that he had healed the lame man by the “faith of his name.” The NET Bible clarifies the account even more.
Acts 3:16 NET:
And on the basis of faith in Jesus’ name, his very name has made this man – whom you see and know – strong. The faith that is through Jesus has given him this complete health in the presence of you all.
Acts 3:16 APNT:
And by the faith of his name he has strengthened and healed this [man], whom you see and know, and faith that is in him [Christ] has given him [the man] this wholeness before all of you.
It’s not our faith!
We raise up the shield which is the power of the name of Jesus Christ, to command deliverance from ALL the fiery darts of the Evil One. The principality that this piece of armor goes against is Satan. We can understand some of his tactics when we look at the characteristics of the fiery darts that he launches. In Roman battles, darts were long pieces of cane shaped into arrows filled with combustible fluids that exploded on impact. The purpose of the fiery arrow was to alarm the soldier, making him afraid of what was happening to his shield so that he would throw it down and try to run away from the fire.
Remember, both the oil and water are needed?
Many believers are being hit by the Enemy’s fiery arrows every day because they are not raising their shields and using the name of Jesus Christ. They also have not anointed the shield with the “oil” of the Spirit or saturated it with the “water” of the Word. One target Satan aims at is our emotions. The flaming arrows are designed not only to hit us, but also to enflame us, like a fire that is burning out of control. For example, we get hit with some kind of sickness and it bursts into flames of fear, worry, anger, and rage. In one description of a battle, a soldier had 200 arrows stuck in his shield at the end of the siege, but not one of them had burst into flames!
Jesus Christ is the name to which every knee must bow (Philippians 2:10). The shield of faith is the authority to use the name of Jesus Christ against the fiery arrows that will inevitably come our way. The “faith of his name” will absolutely quench ALL these attacks.
Love Casts Out Fear
One kind of attack comes in terms of confusion regarding our place in the body of Christ. Then other areas of attack are physical and emotional and have to do with relationships. Our health is challenged in every category. The practical application comes in believing we have the authority to receive direct revelation regarding any and every situation and the authority to use the name of Jesus Christ to command deliverance.
The reason I know that this is not our faith or believing here, is that the antidote to fear is not faith, but love.
1 John 4:16-21 APNT:
And we believe and we know the love that God has toward us, for God is love, and everyone who remains in love remains in God.
17 And in this his love is completed with us, so that we would have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he was, so are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love, but complete love throws out fear, because fear is dangerous. Now he who fears is not completed in love.
21 And we have received this commandment from him, that everyone who loves God should also love his brother.
2 Tim 1:7 KJV:
God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love and sound mind
Standing in the Gap
Ezekiel 22:30 KJV:
And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.
Making up the hedge means restoring the wall. And to stand in the gap before whom? Before me. See, it’s not before the problem.
And that’s why it’s often easier to pray for people we don’t know because we don’t know that much about the situation. So it’s so much easier to look to God for the answer because we don’t know all the details, right? But when we do know the details or it’s somebody really close to us, then we’re like the problem, the problem, the problem. See, because it’s so overwhelming, you have to really specifically say no, I am going to turn and stand before God and pray to him and seek his face so that his answer will come to pass.
Restore is the same idea as filling in the gap. You build the wall, you mend it back together again. First, you pray, then you restore.
Mark 9:17-20 APNT:
And one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, because he has a spirit that does not speak.
18 And sometimes it grabs him, it knocks him down and he foams and gnashes his teeth and he languishes. And I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.”
So now first you see that the disciples were looking at the problem. The boy is wallowing on the ground. All these people are staring at them. Why can’t you heal him? The scribes are accusing him. What’s the matter with you?
19 Jesus answered and said to him, “Oh faithless generation! How long must I be with you and how long must I endure you? Bring him to me.”
20 And they brought him to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it knocked him down and he fell on the ground and was violently shaken, and he foamed.
The spirit tries the same thing when Jesus comes on the scene. And Jesus doesn’t pay attention but turns to the father. He asked his father how long ago is it since this came into him. And he said of a child and oftentimes it has cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy him. But if thou can’t do anything have compassion on us and help us.
Mark 9:21–22 APNT:
21 And Jesus asked his father, “How long [has it been] since [he was] this way?” He said to him, “Since his youth.
22 And many times it has thrown him into the fire and into the water to destroy him, but whatever you are able [to do], help me and have compassion on us.”
So you see right here that the father was looking at the problem. That’s all he could see. And we can have great compassion for that because if it were your child and you were in this situation, it would be extremely difficult not to look at the situation, especially because it had gone on for a long time.
That’s why we need each other. That’s why when it’s somebody who’s close to you and you haven’t been able to just deal with it right then that’s when you go and you involve the greater body of Christ because they’re not so intimately close to the problem and they can do what Jesus did here. You can do what Jesus did here.
Mark 9:23 APNT:
Jesus said to him, “If you are able to believe, everything will be possible to him who believes.”
Mark 9:23–24 NET:
23 Then Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you are able?’ All things are possible for the one who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the boy cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
Mark 9:24–29 NIV:
24 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
25 And when Jesus saw that the people ran and gathered about him, he rebuked that unclean spirit and said to it, “Dumb spirit that does not speak, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again.”
26 And that demon cried out and he bruised him much and came out. And he was like a dead man, so that many said, “He is dead.”
27 But Jesus took him by his hand and raised him up.
28 Now when Jesus entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why were we not able to cast it out?”
29 He said to them, “This kind cannot be cast out by anything except by fasting and by prayer.”
Jesus demanded faith in his authority to heal and then because of that because the man was able to respond to that there was grace poured out and the boy got healed. He nipped it in the bud when more people come running to give their opinion. Jesus continued to stay his mind on God and on his answers.
What is the true fasting? Building up the wall, letting the oppressed go free, doing everything and anything that it takes to help a person believe, teach them the truth, show them the error of whatever it is that they are not believing, stand and proclaim testimonies about other people so that they can believe. See the true fast is to make up whatever it is the difference is so that the person can believe.
Isaiah 58:6-12 ESV:
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
8 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
10 if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.
11 And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.
12 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.
We stand in the gap by looking away from the problem and looking only to God. Trust God by doing only what He says to do.
Go in with authority using the name of Jesus Christ. Stand in the gap and build up the wall. You fill in what was missing. Put up the shield of faith because it quenches all the fiery darts of the wicked one. Let’s lock our shields together and use the name that changes everything!
See Also:
Authority of the Sons of God on the Acts Now Fellowship website.
Scripture References
Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NET) are from The NET Bible® Copyright © 1996, 2019 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. www.netbible.com. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Related YouTube Video:
Bookstore Suggestions:
