Your Spiritual Weapons

Isaiah 54:17 No weapon that is formed against you will succeed; and you will condemn every word that is spoken in judgement against you. This is an inherited right of the servants of the LORD [Yahweh], and I give them this right, says the LORD [Yahweh]. (GBMV)

This passage is rich with powerful truths that stand out when you make them into pictures that you can see.

Consider first what a weapon looks like. In early days this could have been a stone that is thrown at you. It could have been arrows that are launched against you from a bow, or it could have been a sword that is pointed at you.

Imagine that someone tries to harm you using one of these weapons. You are just standing there, minding your own business, and suddenly out of the blue, you see a stone coming at you that someone has thrown.

Or perhaps you see arrows flying through the air coming at you, sent from someone’s bow. Perhaps it is even more direct, and someone pulls out a sword and thrusts it towards you to hurt you.

The first promise of this Scripture is that none of these attempts to hurt you will succeed. The Lord has put an invisible shield around you, so that the stone that was designed to hit you and harm you just bounces off you.

The arrows that could have hit you and gone right into you just fall to the ground without touching you. And the sword that is thrust at you just bounces off you, as though it was hitting a rock.

This one picture alone makes this verse really powerful. It means that no matter what our enemy, Satan, throws at us, the Lord will not allow it to hurt us.

But there is more to this passage, and this part is very important. We see that the most dangerous weapons that can be used against us are words spoken by another person.

Here there are two possible pictures you can visualize. In the first, the person is standing in front of you, directing their words at you in a way that will hurt you.

Perhaps they speak insulting or humiliating words. They likely do this by shouting at you. Maybe they use bad language and put you down. They could threaten you with words, saying what they plan to do to you.

Then there is another possible picture here. Imagine that someone is speaking about you to others. They are putting you down, criticizing you, spreading false rumours about you. They are putting other people against you and trying to humiliate you.

In reality, Satan has no right to attack you directly, and he cannot do this without finding another person that he can work through. So these events are very likely to take place.

Words release a spiritual power into the air. God used them to create the worlds. He also used them on occasion to speak judgment and even cause death.

Since God has put some of His abilities into His creation, mankind, that means humans also have a limited ability to make bad things happen to others. And they are able to give demons license to use the power that is in their spirit, when they speak negative words about someone else.

But this Scripture promises us that we do not have to accept this. We can do something about it. Just as the person has judged us and sent some form of harm our way, we, in turn, can condemn them and pronounce our own judgment.

I want you to see this again in picture form. Imagine someone throws a big stone at you. You now have the right, not only to be protected from the stone hitting you, but you have the right to turn it around and send it back at them.

Imagine arrows coming at you, and you turn them around so that they fly back at the person who sent them at you? Or imagine you taking the sword that the person thrusts at you, and you turn it around so that it goes towards them instead.

Now you might be thinking, “But is it right for me to do that? Should I not just stand and take the hurt?”

The answer is that you can take two possible approaches. You can stand in the protection of the Lord by standing in His love. And when this shield of love is all around you, nothing will harm you.

With this shield of love, you can do as Jesus taught, when He said that you should turn the other cheek. It means that if you have that covering of protection they will never succeed in hitting the first cheek. So turning the other will not affect you at all.

In doing this, you could perhaps make the person feel ashamed of attacking you, and you could even become friends.

There are times, however, when you need to handle this as Jesus handled the fig tree. He spoke words that caused it to die. And where the person has become an instrument of Satan willingly with selfish motives, and they are attacking the Lord in you, you might need to use words to turn the attack back on them.

This Scripture tells us finally that God has given this right to everyone who serves Him.

So in effect, not only are you protected from weapons that are used against you, but you hold in your hands an even more powerful weapon that you can use in defense.

But instead of licensing demons as they did, you license the Spirit of God to move on your behalf and fight for you.