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[0:00] I would like you to turn this morning in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 6, and in order! to frame the text that we're going to look at together, I want you to follow along with! as we read there in verse 10 down through to verse 15. Finally, be strong in the text and the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.

[1:04] Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. Let us pray. Our Father, as we take the Word that You have given to us, we take it with humility, we take it with a confessed dependence upon Your Spirit, that the things that You have written for us, for our blessing and for our admonition, are things that will not really be applied profitably apart from Your work in our hearts.

[1:49] I pray for the Holy Spirit's work in my life, that I might preach with His enabling, and that Your dear people this morning who know You and have been blessed by salvation, and enjoy the ministry of the indwelling Spirit, would be quickened to hear, and to apply, and to grow, and to profit.

[2:15] We trust that the One that is preeminent in our thinking, the One that is lifted up, is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Savior, and who we look forward to seeing. We ask this in Your precious name. Amen.

[2:32] Now, this morning I have some of the regalia. I would get this fan here before it gets the best of things. Oops. I'm sure… I am honestly sorry. Who's singing on that side? Where are you ladies? I'm sorry, please.

[2:57] John, give them a couple seconds to get things back together again. A fan is a good thing for someone who overheats like I do, but a bad thing for people who want paper to stay in place.

[3:07] Okay, so now, I had Greg Bernard bring his gear that is for dealing with civil unrest. Thankfully, he's never had to use it in Columbus.

[3:20] And this is Seth Kirtland's gear that he wears regularly. I would just imagine just for a second that… Where's Seth? Where are you, Seth? You're out here somewhere.

[3:33] Oh, right in the front. I want you to imagine that the alarm goes off at the fire station, and all the guys are suiting up, and they're heading down towards the fire truck, and Seth comes running out in shorts and a t-shirt.

[3:48] Hops in. What are they going to think, besides the fact that you may not be gainfully employed in the future? What are they going to say? Are you going to fire? I'm running the pump in my house. Yeah. Neither of these suits, really, are something that Seth or Greg would wear when they're doing chores around the house.

[4:08] I don't think. Okay. And they don't wear them when they're mowing the lawn. How much does your stuff weigh, Seth? Any idea? About 40 pounds. About 40 pounds.

[4:18] Is it comfortable in the summertime? No. No. Okay. Is this Nomex? Yeah. Yeah.

[4:30] And how hot can the suit get? Forget you, but how hot can the suit get? I think it was 350, 400 degrees. Yeah. That's, yeah.

[4:40] It's designed not as kind of, you know, leisure wear. It's designed for the survival of the individual who is wearing it.

[4:53] And I can assure you that the only time that any individual would wear this other than maybe for, you know, Halloween or something like that, is when there's a reason for doing it.

[5:03] Now, the passage that I read this morning is a passage that talks about the believer being involved in conflict, in warfare.

[5:17] And as we look at this, I'm just curious how consistently you've taken God's Word and suited up for your spiritual survival. How often have you done that? Let me have you think just for a moment of the fact that every one of us here in this room recognize at various times that we've been caught, we've been snared, we've been harmed by the enemy.

[5:38] And in retrospect, that means after the fact, we kind of look back over things and say, Wow, I wish I'd paid more attention and I'd been more conscientious of how to protect myself against the attacks that I was going to endure.

[5:50] You know, behind the heartaches and the difficulties and the sorrows that we so often endure in this present life are the attacks that Satan brings on us and he harms us.

[6:05] And so I want you to think with me just for a moment, just kind of do a little bit of mental recap in your own heart and ask yourself this question. How often in this week did I consciously and deliberately pray, Lord, lead me not into temptation?

[6:22] Don't raise your hand and say, I did seven times. You know, that's not it. But I'm curious, how many times this week did you consciously and deliberately pray, Lord, do not lead me into temptation?

[6:34] Another thing would be, how many of you found yourself midstream in watching Satan's devices play out in your life and you stopped and said, Oh, I know where this goes and this is going to hurt me if I keep on doing it.

[6:48] Lord, help me, protect me. Did you do that? How many times this week did you find yourself as you were on the Internet or you were involved in some public environment, and suddenly you stopped and said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's an attack from Satan.

[7:04] And if I indulge it, I'm going to harm myself and I'm going to create great turmoil in my soul. And, Oh, no, Lord, I need your help. I want you to think with me just for a moment that this passage is one that brings to a conclusion this very, very significant book about the life of the believer.

[7:27] And as Paul comes to a close in writing about the significance of our salvation and what it means to walk as a godly believer, he says, Listen, the last thing I want to leave you with is this.

[7:38] You need to understand that there is a spiritual battle going on and you need to be well armed. Well, let's understand what the armor is that God wants us to put on.

[7:49] You look at the passage there, and I want you to pick up in verse 13 and just kind of tag the fact that he says, Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.

[8:03] Just as an overview, I want to remind you that what the Scriptures teach us is that our conflict is one that is largely a defensive pattern. It's not one with us going out and aggressively involved in being an adversarial attitude towards other things and people.

[8:19] It is one of defense. And then in verse 14, he says, Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

[8:30] So let's talk a little bit about putting on truth. You guys have probably seen pictures of people in the Middle East dressed in flowing robes.

[8:41] I remember when I came back from India, I ended up in a boarding area in our college, and I thought the reasonable thing to do was after I got ready for the evening, I thought I'd go down and get a shower, and so I wear my lungi.

[9:00] Does anybody besides my brother and mother know what a lungi is? Ah, Brian back there. And I tied on my lungi. Lungi is a long, flowing robe tucked around.

[9:10] I was very spiffy, you know, and I was going down to take my shower with my lungi on. And my roommate, who was Middle Mr. Midwest, you know, and he saw me come back from the shower with my lungi on.

[9:22] He says, I don't know where you came from, but you're not ever wearing that in here again. It was a dress, you know. It was just kind of around my… And lungi was very comfortable. But if you wanted to be involved in any kind of athletic activity, guess what you did with your lungi?

[9:38] You had to belt it up. You had to tie it up. You get it away from your legs because all that long, flowing robe, guess what it'd do when you started running? Does anybody have an idea? It would trip you up.

[9:49] And the ancient soldier, he wore a long coat. He wore a robe. And it served kind of as his blanket. It served as his coat in the wintertime. But it was something that he, if he was going to be involved in conflict, he had to belt it on.

[10:04] And he had wanted to get it in place because it was really critical that it didn't end up snaring him. And so I want you to understand this morning as you look at this passage, what it is telling us that we as believers need to be very careful that we have put on the truth.

[10:19] And it is the thing that's holding us in place. The firmness and stability of the truth is the first piece of our armor. I want you to understand that.

[10:29] The firmness and the stability of the truth is the first piece of our armor. And if we are well anchored in the truth, the believer is not going to be as harmed by Satan as he would be otherwise.

[10:44] We live in a day and age where the truth is largely lost. Do you realize that? It is a day and age where relativism is the norm of our culture. And probably one of the most commonly accepted ideas is that truth really is pretty relative.

[10:59] Now forget the fact that 2 plus 2 equals 4. Everything else on the other side of that is a matter of relativism. And everybody looks at it and says, well, that's your opinion or that's your idea. And the statistical evidence indicates that even a majority of people that are professing believers, follow me carefully, the majority of people that are professing believers today believe in moral relativism as the norm.

[11:28] Josh McDowell. I did some research just to kind of double check the statistics. And I was shocked because I remember about 10, 15 years ago hearing when Barna's survey came out that there was higher than half of believers actually believed that truth was a matter of relativism.

[11:45] And today it's 90%, 90% of people that profess. What that means is that out of every 10 of you, 9 of you believe that truth is a changing, flexible thing that is determined by what seems to work or where most people are.

[12:04] How many of you here know the name Peter Singer? Raise your name, hand if you know Peter Singer. Peter Singer is a moral philosopher from Princeton.

[12:17] And about 10 years ago he said that the issue of same-sex marriage when you argue it in a moral relativistic approach is very easy. He says it's not a problem at all.

[12:28] Guess where we are today on that subject? Where are we? Society has pretty well accepted that. Peter Singer also said that not only is same-sex marriage something that is fairly easy to argue when you deal with it in a relativistic perspective, but he said so also is incest and bestiality.

[12:49] And if you want to know where things will go when you take a relativistic view of truth, it's not just the area of sexuality, it is also the value of human life.

[13:02] And I want you to understand that we live in a day and age where the truth is largely compromised. A little bit like when Pilate said to Jesus, what? What is truth?

[13:13] He was asking in the same mindset that we have in the modern world. Now, really, the whole thrust of the book of Ephesians rests on this central theme of the preeminence and the value of truth.

[13:25] And it's no accident that before Paul spends any time talking about marriage or talking about parenting or your role in the office, what he has done is spent chapter after chapter making it clear what the truth is and where we stand on that truth.

[13:41] Let me give you a couple ideas of that by having you just check on a couple different passages. Look at Ephesians chapter 1, verse 13. As he speaks about the matter of our salvation, he says, the message of the truth, that is the gospel of your salvation.

[14:00] Is the gospel a matter of truth? What is it? It is absolutely true. And apart from the truth of the gospel, do we have hope in the Lord Jesus Christ?

[14:10] Not at all. Let me say that one of the things that is compromising the effectiveness of the gospel today is the progressive decline of the view that God has made Himself clear and that there are moral absolutes.

[14:27] If there are no moral absolutes, if there are no truths in the Word of God, then we really don't need salvation because what did Jesus come to save us from? Sin. And what is sin?

[14:39] Well, it's not something that we decide today may change tomorrow. Sin is that which God has clearly, explicitly said, Thou shalt not or thou shalt.

[14:50] He says, here's what I want you to do. And when we do not follow His counsel and His instruction, what we are doing is we're engaging in sin. And do you know what the Scripture says the consequences of sin is?

[15:01] What is it? The wages of sin are death. Over in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 15 it says, Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head into Christ.

[15:15] It is the truth that arms us against Satan's lies. And His first attack, if you were to go back into the book of Genesis and pick up in Genesis chapter 3, you'll find that Satan's first attack was to come along and say this, Did God really say?

[15:35] It was a challenge to the truth. Following that, what He did was He turned around and He kind of undermined the authority and the truth of God and thereby led man and woman into sin and to great harm.

[15:50] It is the truth that frees you from the tyranny of sin. I love what Jesus said over in Romans, or in John chapter 8 verse 32, and I want you to take a look at that just for a moment.

[16:01] He says, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. You find yourself today dealing with all the baggage and the heartache that sin brings into your life, and guess what?

[16:16] You're not going to get away from that baggage if you keep buying into the lie of Satan. But when you submit yourself to the truth of God and what He has to say, and you recognize that He is the one that gives us the truth, then you walk in uprightness and freeness, and you enjoy the blessing that comes with being where God wants you to be.

[16:37] So how do you take on the truth, beloved? What do you do? It says there in that passage, it says, Stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth.

[16:49] How do you get the truth into your life? Well, the simplest way I would encourage you to do it is open up His Word, which is His truth, and allow it to inform you and lead you in every step.

[17:00] How do you get the truth into your life? How do you appropriate it? How do you gain the benefit of it? Listen to me carefully. It is by reading it. It is by studying it.

[17:12] It is by prayerfully considering its authority and allowing it to be the thing that informs the path that you're on and the decisions that you make and the attitudes that you have.

[17:22] It's the truth, and you have to have it, or you are going to be lunch for lions. I want you to look at a second thing that we find here in this passage.

[17:36] It says there, Stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness. So put on righteousness. The next part of the Christian's armor is the breastplate of righteousness.

[17:52] Now, what did the breastplate cover? You look at this here. This is different than Seth's. Seth's armor, so to speak, is all about keeping him from being burned crisp.

[18:07] You follow that? Seth didn't bring it, but I'm going to guess that there's oxygen that attaches to this. Am I right? That's another, what, 20 pounds or so? There you go.

[18:20] This is designed so that anybody throwing nasty things at Greg Bernard, if they hit the head, guess what happens? Bing!

[18:31] You know, no big problem. And if they throw sticks and stones, you know, you've heard that saying, sticks and stones may break my bones, blah, blah, blah. This is designed to deflect those things.

[18:41] Now, Sam, a couple weeks ago, he brought his battle armor on, and in his is, guess what's inside of it? There are plates that are designed to stop bullets, right?

[18:53] Okay? The breastplate covered your torso from here to here, and it was designed to protect your vitals. You know, hey, if you want to take a chunk of me, you can have an arm, but just don't poke anything inside this part.

[19:10] Do you understand that? What happens when you poke anything in here? It all goes downhill from there. And so, you look here in this passage, and it says, put on the breastplate of righteousness.

[19:23] Just as the soldier's heart and vitals were to be guarded by the breastplate in battle, so the believer's heart needs to be guarded spiritually.

[19:34] I want you to look at a passage in relationship to this. Turn back in your Bible to Proverbs 4, verse 25. Proverbs 4. I think it's verse 23, actually, but let's take a look.

[19:46] Proverbs 4. Proverbs 4.23. Proverbs 4.23.

[19:57] I have 25 up there. It's my mistake. But keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life.

[20:11] The reason that our heart must be guarded is because the heart is the starting place of what we do and think. And if Satan can undermine or cause you harm in your heart, he is going to lead you to places that you don't want to go.

[20:26] So, what is the breastplate of righteousness? Is it something that we earn? Is it something that we manufacture ourselves?

[20:39] Is it kind of my righteousness that I kind of accrue or I build up over a period of time is what kind of protects me against Satan? No. I want you to understand that what we are speaking about here is the imputed righteousness of Christ.

[20:56] Over in Revelation 12.10. Don't need to turn there. But in Revelation 12, it talks about Satan being the accuser of the brethren. The accuser of the brethren.

[21:08] He brings accusations against us. And since we do struggle with sin, he comes in with one example after another. And he attacks our conscience.

[21:20] He attacks us before the Savior. And he brings up all of those failures and heartaches and difficulties that have been part and parcel of your life. And he encourages. He wants to throw you down and destroy your confidence in the finished work of Christ.

[21:36] Do we struggle in our daily life when we stop and consider our frailty and the easiness or the ease with which we fall into sin? Yes, we get discouraged.

[21:47] And Satan is there accusing us and reminding us, hey, don't think that you have it because you don't. I mean, after all, you've not succeeded in being perfect. And Satan attacks us incessantly trying to undermine our confidence in the finished work of Christ.

[22:05] And one of the reasons that works religion is so popular is because it suggests to us, well, hey, how am I going to get to heaven? Well, I'm doing the best I can.

[22:16] I'm working and I helped a cat across the street or whatever else. And, you know, I'm good. No. Our conscience bears witness and says, no, no, no, you're not there yet. But what also the Spirit of God reminds us of is what the Scripture teaches us, that our righteousness is that which we have received, given to us through the finished work of Christ.

[22:43] So if God were to say to you, so why should I let you into heaven, would you say, well, I've been to communion every week? Or would you say, well, I've been baptized? Or I'm a member of Maranatha Baptist Church?

[22:54] Is that what you're going to say? No, no, no. I am going to be received into glory, not because of who I am, but because of who Jesus is and what He has done for me. And He has placed His righteousness over on my account.

[23:08] He has satisfied my debt. And I enjoy salvation through His finished work. I want you to understand that we live in a performance-based world. And we tend to judge ourselves and others on the merit of our effort.

[23:24] And Satan eats us for lunch on this one. He's constantly reminding us of our failures. And he implies that our sin really indicates that we're not a child of God.

[23:37] Why, if you were really His child and He had done this miracle of converting you, then why are you still having this problem? And we're reminded of the fact that we have put on the breastplate of the righteousness of Christ.

[23:51] And when His arrows and His darts are thrown against us, we know He is the one who has paid for our sin and satisfied the debt. And we stand secure in His finished work.

[24:03] The Bible makes it clear that our standing before God is not based on our own works, but on Christ's. I want you to turn just for a moment to a passage in 2 Corinthians 5.

[24:16] 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21 says, But for our sakes He made Him to be sin who knew no sin.

[24:28] Does that mean that God actually made Jesus a sinner? What's the answer? Listen carefully. The truth, which is important, is not that Jesus became a sinner.

[24:41] But that Jesus was treated as a sinner in my place. It says, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

[24:54] Just as my sin was placed on Jesus, so His righteousness has been placed on me. And I am clothed or I am guarded by His righteousness and His finished work.

[25:13] Now there's another piece in this issue of righteousness. One is the matter of imputed righteousness in Christ, but the other part is a pursuit of righteous living in Christ.

[25:24] It follows then that if I am thankful for His grace, and I am genuinely a convert of His mercy, and I've been drawn to the cross, I've come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, then I would desire to please Him.

[25:40] And an indication of the authenticity or the genuineness of my salvation is I begin to see evidence of change and works that are right.

[25:51] Listen to me carefully. I'm amazed at how often I run into people that are quite glib and quite quick in telling me that they're Christians, but there's no indication of godly living or interest in it.

[26:06] Living in immorality, living in dishonesty, living lives that are absolutely wicked and perverse, and you look at all that going on and you say, What's happening? I want you to understand that when a person has come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Scripture says, If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new what?

[26:24] He's a new creature. We're different. And the thing that indicates our difference is not that we all change overnight completely, but there is an interest in moving in the right path, in the right direction, growing to be the person that pleases Christ.

[26:39] The way the believer pursues righteous living in Christ is an indication that he has been bathed and he's clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

[26:53] I come to one more piece in the armor. Look there in verse 15. It says, Generally, when we think about the gospel, what do we think about?

[27:12] We think about something that we take to someone else who needs to hear the truth that salvation is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't that right? That's often how we think about the gospel, and that is true.

[27:25] I think about the passage in Isaiah, and again recited in the book of Romans, where he says this, How blessed, how sweet are the feet of those who bring the gospel of good news.

[27:39] And we recognize that to the person who has been affected by sin and whose life is just trashed by the consequences of the heartache that sin creates, the gospel is just a sweet and incredible blessing, and you and I are to be involved in bringing that gospel to their lives.

[27:56] But listen, this picture is not about going out with the gospel. This is about taking a defensive stance with the gospel.

[28:08] What is the defensive stance that we take with the gospel? Now remember, look at the passage again. It says that we are to be strong in the Lord, the strength of His might, put on the whole armor of God.

[28:18] Stand, stand, stand, stand. You see that over and over again in the passage. And then it says, And shoes. The implication of this passage is drawn from the outfit that the ancient soldiers wore, the Roman soldiers.

[28:40] When they went into battle, they wore a different set of foot gear than they wore for lounging around the camp. They were heavy leather sandals that had these metal studs in them.

[28:54] Guess why they wore metal studs? Remember I told you that ancient warfare was a whole bunch of guys kind of locked together trying to protect each other with a shield out here and a sword for sticking people.

[29:06] And one group of ugly, angry guys would run at the other group, and it was like, boom, bang, you know, and then, you know, stick them. Now what did you not want to happen when people were running at you, smashing into you?

[29:18] What did you not want to happen? You didn't want to slip. So you had these shoes that had these cleats in them. That's what protected you.

[29:29] That's what kept you from being thrown over or thrown off. And Paul says, hey, you've got to put on the shoes that are the gospel.

[29:40] Well, what is the gospel? For one, the gospel reminds me from where I came. Do you know what?

[29:52] It is never wrong to remember where you used to be. And when you are in conflict with the enemy who is interested in throwing you down, how many of you realize that life has adversity and hardship and things don't go our way?

[30:14] Hello? Right? That's the way it is, isn't it? And there is Satan. He's after me. Well, Tim, if Jesus really loved you, you wouldn't be having these problems.

[30:28] If he was really real, I mean, I tell you what, I am so sick of the health and wealth gospel that proposes that, you know, the only thing God is interested in me just having a bigger car, a nicer house, a quicker retirement, you know, blah, blah, blah.

[30:44] No! There's conflict going on. And in the middle of that, what I need to remind myself is where I used to be. My life was a mess.

[30:56] I was on my way to hell. And God, in his infinite mercy, found me in my broken despair, and he let me know that there was hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[31:08] And he drew me to himself. So the gospel reminds me of where I came from. The gospel also reminds me of my standing as his child.

[31:22] Does it benefit me to remember that I'm his child? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Two ways. Number one, because I'm his child, listen to me, I can't get away with acting like a fool without him giving me a little licking to help me ticking.

[31:39] How many of you understand that? I can't tell you how many times I've said to people in my office, I don't know if you're a believer or not, but I can tell you the way you're acting right now, involved in whatever sin it is, is a dangerous way for a believer to live.

[31:56] Because if you're a child of God, you can't keep doing it. If you're not his child, it's a little bit like the condemned man. You want that for your last supper?

[32:09] He'll let you get away, get away, get away. If you're his child, he won't let you have it. He'll stop it. He'll intervene. He'll cause you grief to bring you back.

[32:22] Third, he assures me of why I have peace with God is through the blood of Christ. Why is it that I have confidence? Look at what it says there in verse 15. And as shoes for your feet, having on the readiness given by the gospel of peace, I am at peace with God.

[32:37] He's my father. He's interested in my good. He's at work for all that I need. And I have confidence in that. Finally, he encourages me that his covenant love will bring me home to glory.

[32:52] He who has begun a good work in you will what? He'll finish it. He'll finish it. Now, let me run over this sweet truth by a summary that I would pull out from the book of Romans.

[33:06] And I want you to turn to Romans chapter 8. Lay out for you in just a snap. First of all, Romans chapter 1 through 7 gives us a very careful argument about the issue of salvation.

[33:20] And it begins, first of all, by convicting us that there is none righteous, no, not one. There is not a single person who can say, I have a right to the acceptance of God on the basis of who I am.

[33:34] We all stand condemned before God. The Scriptures also, as Paul makes it clear in Romans, presents to us that salvation is through only through the finished work of Christ.

[33:47] He died and paid the penalty for my sins. And the Scripture makes it clear that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. And so we come towards the close of those seven chapters.

[34:00] And Paul then steps into Romans chapter 8, verse 1, and he says this first. He says, There is now therefore, I love these words, no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.

[34:12] If those words, now listen to me and look at me. If those words do not resonate in your heart, no condemnation, one of two things is true.

[34:23] You have never come to appreciate what it means to be forgiven for all of your sins, and you're sitting here this morning desperately needing the Spirit of God to convict you of how horrible sin is.

[34:35] Or you've become a little careless spiritually. Because when you as a believer hear the words of Scripture where God says, There is now therefore no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, you ought to get a cold chill run up your back.

[34:54] I can't believe it. There's no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. Verse 33, we're skipping a bunch, but here we go.

[35:05] Verse 33 says there's no accusation. No accusation. I want you to imagine that you show up in court, and you're standing there, and you know you're not innocent, but the prosecutor doesn't show up.

[35:30] Do you know what happens with the case? If the prosecutor doesn't bring it, what's the deal? Out. And 33 tells us no accusation. So it follows normally or naturally that verse 34 tells us no condemnation.

[35:48] The judge will not condemn us. And finally, in verse 35 through 39, we read that there is no separation. What shall separate us from the love of God?

[36:02] Nothing. And that's the gospel. And so this morning, as I think of you as God's people who are loved by the Lord Jesus Christ and are placed on this earth as his living, visible representatives of his glory and his salvation, I want you to understand there is a battle going on, and the enemy is interested in throwing you down.

[36:31] He wants to hurt you, and he wants to harm your testimony. How do you go about life? You go about life with all humility, through the power of the Spirit of God and the work of the Spirit that abides within you.

[36:48] You put on the whole armor of God. I want to be in the Word every day. Not just a, I read three verses, and so I guess I'm good.

[37:01] How many of you understand what I just said? No, no, no. I want to be in the Word where I open up the book and I say, Open thou mine eyes that I might behold wondrous truth. I want your Word to speak to me.

[37:13] And then I want to put on the breastplate of righteousness. I want to remember that my standing in the court of heaven is settled in the blood of Christ, and there is now therefore no condemnation.

[37:27] And I also want to put on the feet, the shoes that anchor me in the stability I have in the gospel. Are you going to end up in warfare tomorrow?

[37:42] Well, what's the answer? Yes. And there are some of you, truthfully, that are going to get on the fire truck, and you're not going to be kitted out. Do you know what that's going to be an indication of?

[37:57] Spiritual indifference and heartache to come. Let's close in prayer. Father God, our heart cannot help but remember the words of the prophet that said, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord.

[38:24] We live in a desperate day when believers are very quickly overthrown by an enemy that is so effective.

[38:35] And I would plead that you would take your word and drive it firmly into our lives, that we who are your people would be more careful to be armed and prepared against an adversary that hates the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and desperately wants his children to be compromised and wounded and sad and broken.

[39:06] And we want to take your word seriously and put on the whole armor of God that we may be able to stand. And that's our prayer. We ask this in your precious name.

[39:18]  Amen.