WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.940 We're going to read from Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 to 20. 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:37.820 Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, 00:00:38.340 --> 00:00:45.620 and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, 00:00:46.120 --> 00:00:50.299 and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, 00:00:50.379 --> 00:00:56.079 having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield 00:00:56.079 --> 00:01:01.519 of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one, and take the 00:01:01.519 --> 00:01:07.140 helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in 00:01:07.140 --> 00:01:13.099 the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, 00:01:13.799 --> 00:01:21.359 making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in the opening 00:01:21.359 --> 00:01:27.620 of my mouth, in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an 00:01:27.620 --> 00:01:34.879 ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak. Amen. This is God's word. 00:01:37.019 --> 00:01:43.420 Please be seated. All right. If you are a regular attender here or have been around for a while, 00:01:43.579 --> 00:01:46.599 you'll know that we're working through the second half of the book of Ephesians, 00:01:46.599 --> 00:01:52.479 Ephesians, and over the next two weeks, we'll look at Ephesians 6, 10 to 24 across two times. 00:01:53.059 --> 00:01:59.299 I hope someday to do a series on spiritual warfare and on the armor of God from this passage, but 00:01:59.299 --> 00:02:06.000 that might be a good while from now. So, in the meantime, if you are wanting more on this subject, 00:02:06.099 --> 00:02:09.859 this is one of the most important passages in the New Testament. If you're wanting more on this 00:02:09.859 --> 00:02:15.479 subject, I would highly recommend reading, picking up a copy of Thomas Boston's 00:02:15.479 --> 00:02:22.459 precious remedies against Satan's devices. So, he was a Puritan in England in 1652. He wrote this 00:02:22.459 --> 00:02:28.079 wonderful book, and it's readable, even though it's very old, and it's really worth a committed read 00:02:28.079 --> 00:02:32.919 if you're going to follow Jesus all of your life, and I hope you will. This is one of the greatest 00:02:32.919 --> 00:02:38.639 moments in the New Testament, and it's about the Christian life and what it means and what to expect 00:02:38.639 --> 00:02:44.759 every day, what to expect and what to think about, how to set your heart as you wake up every single 00:02:44.759 --> 00:02:50.319 morning. And if you've been with us in the second half of the book of Ephesians, you'll know that 00:02:50.319 --> 00:02:58.239 one of the really common themes in the book has been that God, through Christ, by the Holy Spirit, 00:02:58.239 --> 00:03:06.579 has made us Christians, but there's a gap between who we are and what we are. There's a big gap for all 00:03:06.580 --> 00:03:14.880 of us in different ways between who God has said we are, found in Christ, a jewel in His sight, 00:03:15.740 --> 00:03:21.180 and what we are, what we think, what we do, what we feel, our emotional lives, our hopes and our dreams 00:03:21.180 --> 00:03:26.340 and our greatest loves, and the idols that we continue to chase after. There's a big gap in all of our lives 00:03:26.340 --> 00:03:30.980 between our justification and our sanctification, as a more theological way to say it. 00:03:30.979 --> 00:03:41.120 And here, Paul reminds you, God reminds you, it's a big reminder of the fact that we are in a war. 00:03:42.939 --> 00:03:48.679 We're in a war. There's an enemy. And then he tells us about the armor we need to fight. 00:03:49.419 --> 00:03:57.359 So there's three things. First, the war. Paul is addressing here the problem we have in that gap 00:03:57.360 --> 00:04:03.140 between the fact that Christ has redeemed us and made us new, brand new, and yet there's a gap with 00:04:03.140 --> 00:04:06.560 who we are in our day-to-day lives, our hopes, our dreams, the way we think, the way we feel. 00:04:07.060 --> 00:04:13.020 And Paul is coming here today to address that mindset. And the mindset, the problem of the mindset 00:04:13.020 --> 00:04:21.980 is that for all of us, we struggle as Christians with drifting and coasting. So our day-to-day, 00:04:21.980 --> 00:04:26.160 we wake up every day, we wake up every day, and our natural tendency will be just to coast, 00:04:26.620 --> 00:04:32.080 to treat every single day of our lives just like everybody else treats every single day of their 00:04:32.080 --> 00:04:38.580 lives, to think that the world we live in is normal, and it's the way it should be. And so we have a 00:04:38.580 --> 00:04:43.860 tendency to coast and to drift. And if you've been here again, if you've been here the last few weeks, 00:04:43.939 --> 00:04:49.840 you'll remember that Paul's been saying that the gospel has got to change our relationships, 00:04:49.839 --> 00:04:53.759 and it's got to change the way husbands and wives relate to each other in marriage. It's got to 00:04:53.759 --> 00:04:59.159 change how we approach dating if we're single and pursuing a marriage relationship. It's got to change 00:04:59.159 --> 00:05:05.179 the relationship between children and parents, parents and children, employers and employees. 00:05:05.699 --> 00:05:11.479 In other words, if you think about it, that's, he's saying the gospel should reorder your life at home 00:05:11.479 --> 00:05:16.579 and your life at work, and that's just pretty much everything. That's all I can do is home and work, 00:05:16.579 --> 00:05:21.680 and that's it. I don't know about you. You may have other spaces. In other words, he's coming and 00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:30.300 turning in chapter 6 verse 10 and saying, now put on the strength of the Lord. Where? At home, at work. 00:05:30.740 --> 00:05:35.740 You've got to live in the strength of his might in all the spaces you occupy from the time you wake up 00:05:35.740 --> 00:05:40.779 to the time you go to bed every night. In other words, he's saying that the mindset we need is an 00:05:40.779 --> 00:05:47.799 everyday mindset at home, at work, wherever we are, and that mindset is we are at war. 00:05:49.139 --> 00:05:55.519 So that's what he tells us in chapter 6 verse 10 and 11, that every day you wake up and you're at war, 00:05:56.359 --> 00:06:01.399 and the degree to which we forget that, the degree to which we fail to put on that disposition 00:06:01.399 --> 00:06:07.559 day in and day out will be the degree, the proportion to which we tend to just coast and drift 00:06:07.560 --> 00:06:14.339 like a boat on the ocean without a rudder, without a sail, and we'll realize that over time, 00:06:14.620 --> 00:06:18.879 without waking up and having the mindset, having the heart set, if I can make up a word, 00:06:19.720 --> 00:06:25.860 having the heart set that I'm at war today, we will drift further and further and further away 00:06:25.860 --> 00:06:31.699 and find ourselves eventually in a state of spiritual depression. And spiritual depression 00:06:31.699 --> 00:06:38.139 has symptoms, and the symptoms are things like lacking assurance, not really believing that I 00:06:38.139 --> 00:06:43.980 could be forgiven. Spiritual depression sometimes looks like doubt. Spiritual depression looks like 00:06:43.980 --> 00:06:48.959 having everything Christ has promised you, yet not really having joy in your life and having a 00:06:48.959 --> 00:06:55.300 perpetual state of unhappiness. These are symptoms of spiritual depression, and Paul is saying if you 00:06:55.300 --> 00:07:02.220 don't wake up every day and put on the mindset, I am at war today, then what will happen is you'll coast 00:07:02.220 --> 00:07:07.180 and drift further and further away from the shore, and eventually you'll realize that you're in a state 00:07:07.180 --> 00:07:14.240 of spiritual depression, struggling, really struggling. I think probably in our modern world, 00:07:14.939 --> 00:07:20.680 our greatest issue we face with coasting, with not having this mindset, is just the simple problem of 00:07:20.680 --> 00:07:27.560 busyness. And so we're so busy, and so we're waking up and hustling from the first moment of the day 00:07:27.560 --> 00:07:32.939 till the very end of the day that we forget who we are in the battle that we're really a part of. 00:07:33.720 --> 00:07:41.240 And in that, we don't realize that there are hundreds of little skirmishes, little battles that 00:07:41.240 --> 00:07:47.399 we're up against every day. So those little moments where you choose impatience rather than patience, 00:07:47.399 --> 00:07:54.879 the little moments where you don't listen to the person that's talking to you and sort of tune out 00:07:54.879 --> 00:08:00.799 even, the little moments where you have false shame arise in your heart even though you've been fully 00:08:00.799 --> 00:08:07.879 forgiven by somebody, the little moments of revenge, the little moments of gossip, the moment where you 00:08:07.879 --> 00:08:13.959 think I could have taken some time to pray just then, but I chose prayerlessness, the lack of self-control 00:08:13.959 --> 00:08:20.719 in a particular moment. These are literally, we literally have hundreds of skirmishes every day 00:08:20.719 --> 00:08:26.240 where we are going to battle, but if we're not waking up and realizing I'm at battle in these moments, 00:08:26.240 --> 00:08:31.579 then we're losing tiny little battles all the time. And that's causing us to drift further and further 00:08:31.579 --> 00:08:35.960 away in our hearts and our minds, the way we think, feel, and do related to the things of God, 00:08:35.960 --> 00:08:43.920 to our spiritual lives. I think that one of the best things C.S. Lewis ever wrote is this quote, 00:08:44.340 --> 00:08:49.080 and I've given it here I think two times in the past year, but it's a quote that's always worth 00:08:49.080 --> 00:08:54.740 coming back to, and it's about exactly this, and this is what he says, good and evil, good and evil both 00:08:54.740 --> 00:09:04.220 increase at compound interest. He says, that is why the decisions you and I make every day are of such 00:09:04.220 --> 00:09:12.580 infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which a few 00:09:12.580 --> 00:09:20.820 months later you may be able to go on to victories that you had never imagined. And apparently trivial 00:09:20.820 --> 00:09:28.460 indulgence today though, in that moment of lust, that moment of anger, that moment of a lack of self-control, 00:09:28.460 --> 00:09:36.100 that moment of impatience, is the loss, he says, of a ridge or a railway line or a bridgehead 00:09:36.100 --> 00:09:41.080 from which the enemy may launch an attack that would have been otherwise impossible. 00:09:42.780 --> 00:09:47.840 Good and evil increase at compound interest. We're at war every single day. We have a battle to fight. 00:09:47.920 --> 00:09:52.740 We're in conflict. And Martin Lloyd-Jones says it like this. He says, the degree to which we're not aware 00:09:52.740 --> 00:09:59.820 that we're at war every day means we're already defeated. We're at war. There's a conflict. 00:10:00.460 --> 00:10:07.120 That's the mindset. Secondly, who are we fighting? The enemy. All right, so in verse 11 and 12, 00:10:07.500 --> 00:10:13.720 Paul turns to this, and he tells us, you see it in verse 11 and 12, he says, put on the whole armor of 00:10:13.720 --> 00:10:19.120 God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. And then he says, we don't wrestle 00:10:19.120 --> 00:10:25.279 against flesh and blood, but against rulers, authorities, the cosmic powers over the present 00:10:25.279 --> 00:10:32.919 darkness, spiritual forces in the heavenly places. Now, he's giving you a list of the same exact enemy 00:10:32.919 --> 00:10:38.560 over and over again there. So he's just saying the same exact thing over and over. Satan, the spiritual 00:10:38.560 --> 00:10:44.279 powers, the cosmic forces, the present powers of darkness. And he's intensifying that list just to 00:10:44.279 --> 00:10:51.379 try to nail it home to you that the enemy that you face every single day really is Satan and really 00:10:51.379 --> 00:10:58.139 is the cosmic evil powers that stand against you. And that means that Paul's telling us when he says, 00:10:58.539 --> 00:11:04.419 we're not battling against flesh and blood, that the enemy of the Christian, the enemy of the local 00:11:04.419 --> 00:11:11.319 church is not human beings. Very nuanced here, very important. The enemy of the local church and the 00:11:11.320 --> 00:11:15.820 enemy of the Christian is not human beings in themselves. It is not society in itself. It is 00:11:15.820 --> 00:11:22.060 not our beautiful city in itself. No, this is the nuance of Christianity. Christianity does not come 00:11:22.060 --> 00:11:29.060 to battle against humans or the city. It comes to battle against the thing that breaks and corrupts 00:11:29.060 --> 00:11:35.180 human beings in the city, and that's Satan and sin. We do not come to do battle against people out there. 00:11:35.179 --> 00:11:41.859 We come to do battle against sin and Satan that wants to destroy people. And so Paul tells us that 00:11:41.859 --> 00:11:49.779 our great enemy here is Satan. And that means today, if you are a converted Christian following Jesus 00:11:49.779 --> 00:11:57.359 Christ and wanting to serve Him in any way, there is a cosmic battle afoot, and you are the daily target 00:11:57.359 --> 00:12:02.740 of Satan. That's what Paul is saying here. He's saying something that big, that extreme. And back to point 00:12:02.740 --> 00:12:08.259 one, one of our big problems is that we tend to forget that, and we drift away from that, and we 00:12:08.259 --> 00:12:15.080 struggle to even believe that there are things like spirits and spiritual warfare. So we typically operate 00:12:15.080 --> 00:12:22.220 as practical materialists on a day-to-day basis and don't really remember that there is spiritual warfare 00:12:22.220 --> 00:12:29.039 and that Satan is real and he's against us all the time. And so we look out in a culture like we have 00:12:29.039 --> 00:12:33.919 today, looking back at the history of Western thought, and you could ask a question like, 00:12:34.759 --> 00:12:41.839 what have people suggested is the great problems that face humanity in the world? Plato said the great 00:12:41.839 --> 00:12:48.259 problem was ignorance, and what we really needed was more education. And then others came along like 00:12:48.259 --> 00:12:54.740 Thomas Hobbes, and Thomas Hobbes famously said that when you're born into this world, life is solitary, 00:12:54.740 --> 00:13:00.919 very poor, and brutish. And he said, so we're all simply from the very moment of our birth fighting 00:13:00.919 --> 00:13:05.259 against each other for the scarce resources that there are. And he said, that's the great problem 00:13:05.259 --> 00:13:10.840 we face. Karl Marx said the great problem we face is the class struggle, and what we need is economic 00:13:10.840 --> 00:13:16.299 justice, and then we could really fix the problems that we have. And the famous French philosopher 00:13:16.299 --> 00:13:23.940 Jean-Paul Sartre and Walt Disney said the same thing. And they both said this, what we all need 00:13:23.940 --> 00:13:33.940 is the courage to be ourselves. And friends, listen, we tried all of it, and there is still so much hurt, 00:13:35.040 --> 00:13:41.860 so much pain, so much brutality, so much sin. And the Bible came, the Bible comes into the world 00:13:41.860 --> 00:13:47.980 and says the real problem is that you were made by God, made for God. You do not belong to yourself, 00:13:47.980 --> 00:13:54.820 you belong to Him. And there is a supernatural cosmic power called Satan and his demonic forces 00:13:54.820 --> 00:14:00.800 that rebelled against the God who made them, and then tempted humanity to do the same. And that is 00:14:00.800 --> 00:14:06.259 the reason the world is so broken. That is where all of our problems actually come from. And I know that 00:14:06.259 --> 00:14:11.639 there will definitely be folks here today who struggle with the concept that there is something like a 00:14:11.639 --> 00:14:17.600 supernatural cosmic evil called Satan. And all I can say, I can't touch on that today, but just say 00:14:17.600 --> 00:14:23.779 that I spent about 15, we addressed that for about 15 minutes on our sermon on Genesis 3, 1-7. So you 00:14:23.779 --> 00:14:28.580 can go back and check that out. But I will say this to you, just something to think about. If you're 00:14:28.580 --> 00:14:37.120 struggling with the idea of cosmic supernatural evil today, to suggest, to reject supernatural evil, 00:14:37.120 --> 00:14:45.860 as silly as mythology, is to suggest that every single culture and ethnicity across the majority 00:14:45.860 --> 00:14:51.159 of human history was fundamentally wrong about the problem of the world. And that's something to really 00:14:51.159 --> 00:14:55.500 think about, that there's been very few cultures in history that have not believed, that have 00:14:55.500 --> 00:15:00.139 disbelieved in supernatural cosmic evil. And I would love for you to think about that. But the second thing 00:15:00.139 --> 00:15:06.120 is just this, could it be that when Paul says here that Satan loves to work with schemes, 00:15:06.120 --> 00:15:13.299 schemes, that that is one of Satan's favorite schemes, to try to get an entire culture to be 00:15:13.299 --> 00:15:18.299 materialist, to say, surely there's not such a thing as supernatural evil. What silly mythology. 00:15:19.159 --> 00:15:23.820 And back to C.S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis at the beginning of the Screwtape Letters says that there's two great 00:15:23.820 --> 00:15:29.720 mistakes you can make here. On the one hand, you can be superstitious. You can think everything that 00:15:29.720 --> 00:15:34.779 goes wrong in life is just the devil. You know, it's just the devil all the time. So you can think a 00:15:34.779 --> 00:15:39.379 little bit too much about the power of Satan. But the far greater problem I think that we have 00:15:39.379 --> 00:15:45.620 is to disbelieve, to have unbelief. So superstition on the one hand, materialism on the other. And Satan 00:15:45.620 --> 00:15:52.519 loves both of them. Those are two of his favorite schemes to use. And Paul says here, beware Christians 00:15:52.519 --> 00:15:59.120 of the schemes of the devil. So number one, you're at war every day. You're in a battle. You're in skirmishes. 00:15:59.120 --> 00:16:03.480 But that battle is not against people. It's not against our city. It's not against society 00:16:03.480 --> 00:16:08.779 in itself. It's against Satan and sin. That's the two things that Christianity comes to deal with. 00:16:09.759 --> 00:16:12.879 But he wants to get specific with you, and he wants to say to you today, 00:16:13.720 --> 00:16:20.820 beware of the schemes of Satan in your life. And let me just, so Precious Remedies Against Satan 00:16:20.820 --> 00:16:28.100 Devices, Thomas Brooks, he lists 80 schemes. So you can open that book and work through all 80 of the 00:16:28.100 --> 00:16:32.060 schemes of the devil that he identifies. Let me just mention one or two of them to you. 00:16:33.159 --> 00:16:36.220 What is Satan's primary scheme against you? He wants to destroy your faith. 00:16:37.620 --> 00:16:45.899 And he wants to aggravate what is already in your flesh, your natural proclivity to some sin. 00:16:46.580 --> 00:16:54.519 And he wants to try to use that, poke that to provoke you away from God. He wants to capture you 00:16:54.519 --> 00:17:00.000 by your tendency to some addiction. He wants to capture you by your tendency to some 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:06.900 personal issue like anger or impatience or anxiety. And he wants to take that, and as Thomas Boston put 00:17:06.900 --> 00:17:12.539 it, he loves to sail with the wind. He simply wants to provide the wind that's already in your sail, 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:17.460 to the sail you already have. In other words, the proclivity to some sin you already have, 00:17:17.819 --> 00:17:22.779 Satan wants to take that and squeeze it. And if you don't go to war every day against it, 00:17:22.779 --> 00:17:29.240 if you're not waking up saying, I'm in a battle, then he's just going to blow a gentle breeze and 00:17:29.240 --> 00:17:33.119 push your boat farther out away and away from the things of the Lord, from God himself. 00:17:33.579 --> 00:17:40.940 Think about Peter, the apostle Peter. Peter was a very fearful man, we read in the gospels, 00:17:41.000 --> 00:17:48.559 by disposition. And so Satan tempted him to save his own skin. He was a scaredy cat, Peter was. And so 00:17:48.559 --> 00:17:53.839 the very particular temptation that he received was, you better save your skin, or they'll do the same 00:17:53.839 --> 00:17:58.899 thing to you they're doing to Jesus. Think about Judas. Judas, we learn in the gospels, was by natural 00:17:58.899 --> 00:18:06.879 instinct a very greedy person. And so the Bible says Satan entered his heart and told him, boy, if you 00:18:06.879 --> 00:18:13.339 will betray Christ, you can get a lot of money. Satan loves to sail with the wind. And so basically what he 00:18:13.339 --> 00:18:22.500 does is he does two things. He tempts and he accuses in that. And in his temptations, he, as Thomas 00:18:22.500 --> 00:18:27.899 Brooks puts it, he says, Thomas Boston puts it, he says, Thomas Brooks, I should say, Thomas Brooks 00:18:27.899 --> 00:18:35.679 puts it, he loves to show you the bait but hide the hook, show you something and say, this is so sweet 00:18:35.679 --> 00:18:42.740 for you, but he never shows you the bitter side of it. And so he loves to say things like, this sin would be 00:18:42.740 --> 00:18:47.519 actually really good for you. And so when you're tempted, what do you do? What can you do in those 00:18:47.519 --> 00:18:55.740 moments of temptation? You've got to say, in the moment of temptation, it took the death of the Son 00:18:55.740 --> 00:19:04.200 of God to show me that this is not good for me. It took the death of Jesus Christ, my Savior, to show me 00:19:04.200 --> 00:19:10.019 this is not good for me. I need to run from this. Now, if you are able to stand up against temptation, 00:19:10.019 --> 00:19:15.019 what he loves to do on the flip side is accuse. So for those of you that are growing and those of 00:19:15.019 --> 00:19:19.660 you that are fighting temptation, Satan's next thing is he is going to turn to you and he's going to 00:19:19.660 --> 00:19:24.220 accuse you. And this is what he's going to say. He's going to try to get you to look more and more 00:19:24.220 --> 00:19:30.579 at your sin all the time than looking at Jesus, looking at your Savior. And he's going to say things 00:19:30.579 --> 00:19:37.279 like this. Have you heard this before? If you were a real Christian, that kind of a thought would not 00:19:37.279 --> 00:19:43.579 come into your mind. If you were a good Christian, you've had a good week, but boy, you wouldn't have 00:19:43.579 --> 00:19:49.559 said that word. If you were a real Christian, you wouldn't have a dream like that. If you were a real 00:19:49.559 --> 00:19:56.299 Christian, you wouldn't have desires like that still. And sometimes you might have had a really, 00:19:56.440 --> 00:20:00.500 really good week and you might have been praying and in the Bible and you feel like I'm finally growing 00:20:00.500 --> 00:20:09.400 spiritually and you look up and bam, Satan gives you that thought from 25 years ago of the thing you 00:20:09.400 --> 00:20:15.059 said, of the thing you didn't say, of the thing you did to that person 25 years ago that you've been 00:20:15.059 --> 00:20:20.700 forgiven for. But Satan takes that and he says, shame, shame, shame. See, Satan loves to tempt you and 00:20:20.700 --> 00:20:25.220 say, oh, this is so good for you. And if he can't get you there, he loves to turn and heap shame upon shame. 00:20:26.299 --> 00:20:29.700 In other words, he tries to get you to look at something else or to get you to look inward, 00:20:29.700 --> 00:20:34.380 introspection at your sin to keep you away from Jesus. And Robert Murray McShane, 00:20:35.180 --> 00:20:40.620 the great Scottish minister from Dundee, he said, that means that for every one look you take at 00:20:40.620 --> 00:20:47.019 your sin, you got to take 10 looks at your Savior. That's the only way to fight accusation. For every 00:20:47.019 --> 00:20:51.500 one look you take at yourself, you got to turn and take 10 looks at your Savior. Now, thirdly and 00:20:51.500 --> 00:20:58.140 finally, and I'll introduce the armor today and we'll stop. We won't get all the way through it. 00:20:58.140 --> 00:21:05.259 Let me just say this though before I do. If there is spiritual encouragement in your life right now, 00:21:05.880 --> 00:21:09.080 if there is spiritual encouragement in this community of faith right now, 00:21:09.540 --> 00:21:15.500 if we are baptizing, seeing people come to faith here and baptizing folks like we've been able to 00:21:15.500 --> 00:21:20.280 recently, if anything is going well in your spiritual life right now, you need to know that 00:21:20.280 --> 00:21:25.640 that is the moment where Satan is probably most likely to attack you. So it's in this moment right 00:21:25.640 --> 00:21:31.220 now where we feel encouraged, where we bring on a new minister, new staff, where Satan is most probable 00:21:31.220 --> 00:21:37.380 to come for us and to attack us. And we need to be really aware of that. So what can we do this week 00:21:37.380 --> 00:21:44.820 and next week? The armor, the armor of God. So Paul says here, be strong in the Lord. It's a rousing 00:21:44.820 --> 00:21:50.240 action verbs all throughout. Take up the armor of the Lord. Be strong in the Lord all throughout. 00:21:50.240 --> 00:21:55.720 In other words, he's saying when you enter the fight, putting on the armor of God, Satan's schemes 00:21:55.720 --> 00:22:01.180 can be defeated. And you can grow and grow and grow onto new victories that you never imagined. 00:22:02.120 --> 00:22:07.599 What do you need for that? You need verse 18 to 20, you need prayer, yes, but that's not all you need. 00:22:08.420 --> 00:22:13.599 So he says you need prayer, but you also need the armor of God. And we'll come on to prayer next week. 00:22:14.259 --> 00:22:18.380 Really, there's a way to summarize this and say the Bible and prayer, the Bible and prayer is what we 00:22:18.380 --> 00:22:23.980 need, but that's next week. But today he tells us we need the armor of God. So let me just mark out a 00:22:23.980 --> 00:22:30.620 few things before we finish. Number one, he says first, he says, notice it's the armor of God, 00:22:31.080 --> 00:22:37.780 meaning it is not your armor. It's not any kind of armor you make. It's only armor that God gives. 00:22:38.860 --> 00:22:44.580 Then secondly, he says it's the whole armor of God, meaning you can't just put on a piece of it. 00:22:44.579 --> 00:22:49.480 You've got to have the whole armor covering you all the time to really be protected from the schemes 00:22:49.480 --> 00:22:55.419 of the devil. So let me just highlight two pieces of that armor to you. The first, he says, is the 00:22:55.419 --> 00:23:00.720 belt of truth. So you got to wake up every day and say, I'm at war. I've got hundreds of battles to 00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:06.039 fight today. The first thing I need is the belt of truth. Now a Roman soldier in the first century 00:23:06.039 --> 00:23:13.039 wore a long robe as their day-to-day outfit, just their normal clothing. And so very literally, 00:23:13.039 --> 00:23:18.740 this says girdle of truth, but girdle is a little awkward for modern people. So they've translated 00:23:18.740 --> 00:23:24.299 it belt of truth. Because the long robe, when you went to battle, you couldn't wear a long robe, 00:23:24.399 --> 00:23:30.200 a long dress effectively, because you can't run. So what they would do is raise up a girdle and then 00:23:30.200 --> 00:23:35.359 go between the legs, wrap it around the waist, and that would lift the robe so that you could run. 00:23:35.599 --> 00:23:38.819 That was the first. So Paul's working here through the normal outfit of a Roman soldier 00:23:38.819 --> 00:23:44.000 and giving you in order the pieces that a soldier would put on. The girdle's the first thing. It's 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:50.299 the girdle of truth. Is Paul saying to all of us today, you got to wake up every day and you got to 00:23:50.299 --> 00:23:54.519 say, today I'm going to fasten on the belt of truth. I'm going to be an honest person. 00:23:56.079 --> 00:24:00.919 You know, I'm going to be a person of truthfulness. I'm going to be a person who always tells the truth. 00:24:00.920 --> 00:24:09.160 And some commentators do suggest that, but I think with the majority of commentators here that 00:24:09.160 --> 00:24:14.980 this armor, what did he say? It's the armor of God, not your armor, not armor you make. 00:24:15.800 --> 00:24:22.940 And so what he's saying here is the armor is not the subjective condition of your ability to be an 00:24:22.940 --> 00:24:27.640 honest person today. What is the armor? What is the belt of truth? The belt of truth is to wake up 00:24:27.640 --> 00:24:34.160 every day and say, these are the facts, doctrine. The doctrines really do matter. And to wake up every 00:24:34.160 --> 00:24:42.600 day and say, the truth is, I am a big sinner in need of a bigger savior. I was dead walking in the 00:24:42.600 --> 00:24:49.020 trespasses of my sin and darkness, but God grabbed me and saved me. And today Satan wants to destroy me. 00:24:49.460 --> 00:24:55.100 These are the facts. In other words, the belt of truth is to wake up every day and actually recapture 00:24:55.099 --> 00:25:00.980 the doctrines of the faith, the truth of the faith, what God has really shown us. It's not putting on 00:25:00.980 --> 00:25:05.839 your subjectivity, your ability to be an honest person. It's waking up every day and saying, 00:25:06.119 --> 00:25:11.859 God has redeemed me. I go to battle today. That's the belt of truth. Secondly, lastly, 00:25:12.439 --> 00:25:18.980 the breastplate of righteousness. The next thing that a Roman soldier would put on is the breastplate, 00:25:18.980 --> 00:25:26.059 and it's the heaviest piece that you wear, and it's covers from neck all the way down to your lower 00:25:26.059 --> 00:25:30.640 organs. And, you know, the easiest place to get killed is the heart, the vital organs. You got to 00:25:30.640 --> 00:25:36.819 protect those. Very important. And so the thing that goes over your heart to protect it, he says, 00:25:36.900 --> 00:25:43.400 is the breastplate of righteousness. Again, is that I got to wake up every day and I've got to say, 00:25:43.400 --> 00:25:48.320 I'm going to be a righteous person today. I'm going to do good things for the Lord today. I'm going to 00:25:48.320 --> 00:25:53.700 take up my good works today and be the best I can be. No, remember, it is not your armor. 00:25:54.580 --> 00:26:00.240 It is not armor that you wield and weld. It's not what you make. It's the breastplate of his 00:26:00.240 --> 00:26:05.560 righteousness. It's objective, not subjective. It's his gift. What is he talking about here? He's 00:26:05.560 --> 00:26:10.140 talking about justification. And he's saying, just like you got to wake up and say the doctrines really 00:26:10.140 --> 00:26:16.720 do matter today. Secondly, you got to wake up and say, I'm at a war, but justification is my armor 00:26:16.720 --> 00:26:24.780 over my heart, over my vital organs. That's what he's referring to here. And boy, that means if your 00:26:24.780 --> 00:26:32.259 main protection, if your main protection from Satan is saying, look at my righteousness, look at my good 00:26:32.259 --> 00:26:38.540 deeds, what will happen? What will happen is that you will fall on your face at some point along the way 00:26:38.539 --> 00:26:44.599 in your sin. And you won't be able to say that anymore. And then that's when Satan will come in 00:26:44.599 --> 00:26:54.779 with that accusation. And he's got military grade armor piercing weaponry. And if you make the armor, 00:26:55.019 --> 00:27:01.079 he's going to penetrate right through it. But if you wake up every day and say justification by faith, 00:27:01.619 --> 00:27:07.579 then he can't get through. He can't get through. And what is justification by faith as we finish? 00:27:07.579 --> 00:27:16.659 Justification by faith is when you say, by the righteousness of God, I stand condemned. When I 00:27:16.659 --> 00:27:21.299 look at his righteousness, his character, I'm condemned. But by the righteousness of God, 00:27:22.119 --> 00:27:30.679 through Jesus, given to me as a free gift, I am made clean. You see, justification by faith is saying 00:27:30.680 --> 00:27:41.259 the just for the unjust, the righteous one for the unrighteous. Apart from him, I'm condemned. But when 00:27:41.259 --> 00:27:46.940 he was condemned, I was declared guilt-free. And that means that you got to wake up every day and say, 00:27:47.060 --> 00:27:52.100 my past sins, my present sins, and my future sins have all been dealt with forever. 00:27:52.099 --> 00:28:00.359 Do you know that in Jesus Christ's cross, the sins that you will commit 10 years from now have already 00:28:00.359 --> 00:28:05.599 been forgiven? And he's saying that's the breastplate of righteousness. That's what you got to wake up and 00:28:05.599 --> 00:28:14.199 put on every single day. Augustine said it like this, we fell so he came down. We fell so he came down. 00:28:14.559 --> 00:28:20.559 He ascended so we're lifted up. The marvelous exchange. That's the breastplate of righteousness 00:28:20.559 --> 00:28:26.859 every single day. And so this week, this summer, especially as you're traveling, as you're traveling, 00:28:27.700 --> 00:28:33.720 go to war. Wake up. Go to war. Go to battle. Put on the armor of God and say, this is not my armor. 00:28:34.539 --> 00:28:39.379 It's not my subjectivity. It's God's objective reality. It's the truth, past, present, and future. 00:28:40.099 --> 00:28:45.700 Because my sins were condemned in him today, I am guilt-free. Satan has nothing against me. 00:28:45.700 --> 00:28:52.440 You can put it in the words. I'll give Martin Luther the last word. You can put it, you can sing it, 00:28:52.500 --> 00:28:57.519 maybe. You can put it in the words of a mighty fortress is our God. Luther wrote this, 00:28:57.680 --> 00:29:08.559 For still, for still, our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe. His craft and power are great and 00:29:08.559 --> 00:29:17.859 armed with cruel hate on earth is not his equal. Did we in our own strength confide? Did we think 00:29:17.859 --> 00:29:25.579 we could stand against him? Our striving would be losing. We're not the right man on our side. 00:29:25.859 --> 00:29:33.700 The man of God's own choosing. And you ask, who may that be? Who may that be? Christ Jesus. It is he. 00:29:33.700 --> 00:29:39.460 So let us stand and put on the armor of God. Let us pray. Father, we pray now that you would help us 00:29:39.460 --> 00:29:46.720 to go in to the battle. Every day, Lord, we have been drifting and coasting. I struggle with that. We 00:29:46.720 --> 00:29:51.940 all struggle with that. Just waking up every day thinking today is normal. But no day is normal in 00:29:51.940 --> 00:29:57.920 a world where Satan and sin want to destroy us. And so we ask, Lord, that you would give us heart, 00:29:57.920 --> 00:30:05.580 spiritual desire to not stand against people but sin, not against society and the city but against 00:30:05.580 --> 00:30:14.400 Satan, Lord. And so see redemption and transformation happen. Lord, we thank you that you love humans 00:30:14.400 --> 00:30:21.539 and you long for them to come to redemption. And so we hear that so much in this passage that you want 00:30:21.539 --> 00:30:28.599 us to stand. And so we thank you for the armor of God. Lord, clothe us in your armor, we pray. As we 00:30:28.599 --> 00:30:32.779 sing this final hymn, clothe us in your armor. In Christ's name, amen.