The Armour Of God, Part 1.of 4. Series

The Armour of God.p1. A series of descovery, on putting on the armour of God and useing spiritual gifts. We will be useing Ephesians 6:11-17 to start. Now the armour of God is only a part of our defense against the wiles of the devil. But we will look at one piece at a time, to fully understand it sugnificance and use. The Apostil Paul said that, He came to the church ,not with great swelling words, but with dimonstration and power. So what did he mean,lets look. The Armour of God. 1.Loin Girt, Some call this the Belt of truth. Now the belt in roman times, as it is today, was used to hold everything together. There was a hook on one side to hold the shield, when not in use, freeing up the hands for other offensive and defensive weapons. On the other side was a shieth, that held the sword, again to free up the hands, when not in use. Paul used this annology to explane the spiritual side of warfare. He knew what a soldier wore and by the direction of the Holy Spirit, use the different parts to show how we as christians can defend ourselfs with the Armour of God. Now without the belt, the sword and shield would be a burden to the wearer.Trying to carry more than he could, this would make him vunerable to attack. The belt that Paul was talking about was the belt of Truth. What is it? The word of God. The Bible tells us that, Let God be true and every man a lier.Without haveing truth about us ,leaves us, only partually protected, we could not begin to convince anyone of our convinctions about Jesus and the spoken word of God. The truth about our lost condition, brought us to repentance and with out it we would have dificulity in bringing others to Christ. 2.The Breastplate. The breastplate was made of beautifully decorated, metal, thin but yet strong. The weight had to be kept down, as to not wear down the soldier, but allow maximum protection of all vital organs.Now what were they? The lungs, and the Heart. Were going to take the heart as our vital organ, the heart is the area that Jesus mostly wants. Its what brings us to love and compasion with others.The Bible tells us, that its not what goes into the mouth that defiles the man but what comes out, or procedes out of the mouth. For what comes out of the mouth, comes from the heart. At times the mouth produces great swelling words which are not edifiing to the church. But the body being controlled by a Christ like heart brings forth words of, incouragement, love, understanding and piece. protecting the heart was and still is an important task that we all hafe to do for ourselves.The breastplate was also polished on a daily basis, to make it shiney and bright, this helped blind the enemy from seeing the vital organ area. And gave them no clear target to aim at. We also hafe to polish our heart to keep it in ready order for the battles that we face everyday. The breastplate in scripture is, Righteousness, and it simply, is doing things, that we do in this life, the right way. We do this by reading and studying Gods word to see how we should live our lives. Every question that you have about life is in God word. All you hafe to do is find it.The most asked question about the armour of God is, why do we need it? The answer to that is in Eph. 6: 11-13. To be able to stand and not just to be able to stand against the wiles of the devil but as we enter a new chapter of christianity to be able to endure thru these end times. The closer that we are to the end of days the more that we need the protection of the armour.Just as in war the closer you are to the frount the more you need to be vigilant. As we go thru the armour, we also in this series must go into the gifts of the spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:7-10, there are 9 spiritual gifts.With the Breastplate and Belt I want to add the Gift of Word of Wisdom. The word of wisdom is, 1. A moral Insight, 2.Understanding, 3. Intellegence 4.Discretion The reason we add The word of wisdom in the begining of our discussion is because, we hafe to have the word of wisdom to understand the armour and how to put it on and apply it to our daily lives.Dont confuse mans wisdom to the word of wisdom, mans wisdom , according to scripture ,is fulishness to God. An unbeliever cannot, and I repete, cannot, understand the word of God.The word of God is spiritually discerned, and an unbeliever does not have that spirit. The second ,spiritual gift I wish to add here is the Gift of Knowledge, which is tied closely to wisdom.Knowledge is 1.Full discernment, ect. Now full decernment is not only knowing good from evil, but also being able to understand the scriptures and the hidden mystories behind them. That is the reason we have teachers and preachers to help others understand the Bible. Not everyone will have each of these gifts but the ones that we have we must share the gained knowledge with others. Freely youve recieved, freely give. Knowledge, here is concerned with, spiritual knowledge, which is more important than any thing that we can recieve from this life. end part 1. ars A good tool to use in this series ,is a portrate or statue of a fully equipted Roman soldier, to point out each piece of armour. An overhead is also effective.