How many of you have someone in your life you would consider a thorn? Stop looking at the person next to you. Most, if not all of us, have someone we could identify as a person who it seems has been sent to cause chaos in our life, who seems to surface when we are going through the still water of life and stir up the waves of frustration and opposition. Why?
The Bible talks about people like this, people who are influenced as we talked about last week, by principalities and powers, by the force of darkness. The Apostle Paul understood this, himself once used by those same principalities and powers to bring havoc on Christians in his day, persecuting them, seeking to bring them to punishment and death as we read in Acts concerning the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Having been transformed by Christ, Saul the persecutor became Paul the protector of the faith, instructing the early church how they should live out their faith, warning them of the dangers of standing for righteousness, showing how believers can be protected through the armor of God.
Over the next two weeks we are going to do an in-depth look at the armor of God and how you and I can be protected from those who would seek to bring harm into our lives, the thorns that try and penetrate through our Christian walk.
Turn to Ephesians 6, verses 13-15 as we began a look at our body armor.
The New Living Translation states, “13 Use every piece of God’s armor to resist the enemy in the time of evil, so that after the battle you will still be standing firm. 14 Stand your ground, putting on the sturdy belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. 15 For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News, so that you will be fully prepared.”
We are going to look at 4 things today, the equipment, the belt, the body armor and the shoes so we can be found as workman unafraid of the work God has commissioned us.
I. The Equipment.
The New International Version writes verse 13 the following, “13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
The New Living Translation says to use every piece, the NIV says to put on the full armor, the NKJV says to put on the whole armor. What we can draw from this is the armor of God is not something which automatically adheres to believers, it is something which needs to be put on which also implies it can be taken off or set aside. God does not zap you into a suit of armor, he does not make sure you are always wearing it, he allows you to make a freewill choice, to decide to wear it or not. How many of you came in today with the full armor of God on? How many of you will go about your day tomorrow, conscious of putting on the armor before you begin your day?
Put on the full armor of God so you will be able to stand your ground. You are not a doormat to be walked on, you don’t have to lay down to the demands of everyone around you so they can trample over you because you are a Christian, you need to stand your ground as a believer, to stand up for what you believe and not allow the world to push you around.
William Jennings Bryant said, “Never be afraid to stand with the minority which is right, for the minority that is right will one day be the majority; always be afraid to stand with the majority which is wrong, for the majority which is wrong will one day be the minority.”
This is why it is important to stand with God for he is always the majority. If someone were to examine your life, what would they say you stand for, what would be the predominate theme of how you live your life?
Paul says to stand, stand in the midst of evil days, for evil days will come. Stand firm against the onslaught of those who today seem to be in the majority for as Bryant said, a wrong majority will one day be a minority. There comes a day of final accounting, when God says goats or sheep, right or wrong, heaven or hell, and on that day, where we stand in our life will be of primary importance.
Romans 8:31 reminds us, “If God is for us, who can be against us Since God did not spare even his own son but gave him up for us all, won’t God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else? 33Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? Will God? No! He is the one who has given us right standing with himself. 34Who then will condemn us? Will Christ Jesus? No, for he is the one who died for us and was raised to life for us and is sitting at the place of highest honor next to God, pleading for us.
35Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or are hungry or cold or in danger or threatened with death? 36(Even the Scriptures say, "For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep."[l]) 37No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
38And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can’t, and life can’t. The angels can’t, and the demons can’t. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away. 39Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Encouraging words for those who follow Christ. So lets look at the armor.
II. The Belt of Truth.
The Bible makes it clear, the devil is a liar and the father of lies. To combat lies, we need to tell the truth. The world does not want to know the truth because Christ is truth.
I have served on a couple of juries. One thing I noticed from this duty, guilty people do not want to say they are guilty even when the evidence is overwhelming against them. It is as if, caught in the act, they want to think it is a case of mistaken identity, even when they are delivered in handcuffs to the jail. They plead not guilty hoping someone else will agree with their lie. This is not to say that all people are guilty, but so often we find the guilty attempting to play the role of the innocent, and in some cases they built such a lie it confuses others. One jury I was on they questioned if it were not possible, despite the witnesses, the fingerprints, the other evidence, the person was not guilty because the web of deceit that he spun in the courtroom had some on the jury confused, at least for part of the day until the evidence was gone over and over and over until we could all agree on the verdict.
We need to put on the belt of truth, even when truth may not be a favorable thing for us. The devil knows if we tell one lie, we will have to built up more and more lies because a lie never remains solitary, it involved additional lie upon lie until we even become confused over what is truth and what is deceit, we actually begin to believe our lies and start to live them out naturally.
And look at where lies lead, when David attempted to conceal the truth of his romp with Bathsheba. His servants covered for him, her husband, faithful to David was killed in battle because David ordered his generals to put him in the front of the battle, which involved others in his lie, and finally, his lie caused the death of his son and problems which stained his family and his kingdom from that point on. One lie, compounded, caused such turmoil. What might have been the outcome of honesty? We will never know because a lie told is hard to reel back in.
The armor starts with truth for without it everything else unravels. The soldiers tunic was loose fitting and without a belt, he could be tripped up and fall in battle. So it is with our Christian walk. It is truth that brings us to Christ, confessing we are sinners, receiving his grace and forgiveness, pledging to live our life forever under his authority. Without truth, we cannot move forward in our walk as believers because our faith becomes a lie. Gather up your life, girding it, keeping it tightly gathered together, with truth. God is truth. Next, put on…
III. The breastplate of righteousness.
When we see a coat of armor, we think of the breastplate being a piece of metal, of steel, protecting the upper part of the body. In Paul’s day, the breastplate was not made of steel but of leather, or material made of an animals hoof which covered the soldiers full torso, protecting his heart and vital organs.
2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “21For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”
Jesus Christ is righteousness, without Christ no one is right, for the Bible says all have sinned, all have fallen short of their potential, all have sinned and done wrong in their life. When we put on Christ, when we allow him to be lord of our life, when we accept his righteousness, we protect ourselves. Satan, the accuser of believers, his stripped of truthful accusations when Christ is our breastplate, when we are living a righteous and holy life.
Paul stated in 2 Corinthians 6:3-10, 3We try to live in such a way that no one will be hindered from finding the Lord by the way we act, and so no one can find fault with our ministry. 4In everything we do we try to show that we are true ministers of God. We patiently endure troubles and hardships and calamities of every kind. 5We have been beaten, been put in jail, faced angry mobs, worked to exhaustion, endured sleepless nights, and gone without food. 6We have proved ourselves by our purity, our understanding, our patience, our kindness, our sincere love, and the power of the Holy Spirit. 7We have faithfully preached the truth. God’s power has been working in us. We have righteousness as our weapon, both to attack and to defend ourselves. 8We serve God whether people honor us or despise us, whether they slander us or praise us. We are honest, but they call us impostors. 9We are well known, but we are treated as unknown. We live close to death, but here we are, still alive. We have been beaten within an inch of our lives. 10Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything.”
Can we say the same as Paul, are we living in such a way that people know us as followers of Christ, living righteously? If not, we need to allow the Holy Spirit of God to transform us.
Finally, today, lets look at the third piece of our armor…
IV. The shoes
Roman soldiers wore leather shoes which had spikes, hobnails, in the sole of the shoes so they could keep their footing, to stand firm. Jesus Christ gives us a firm foundation. Knowing the word of God, understanding the Bible, is the spikes which hold us firmly in place.
Shoes also represent that fact we are prepared for travel, to share the good news of Jesus Christ wherever our feet take us in our journey. To be ready to give a defense of the Gospel, to share with others why we are followers of Christ and the importance of they becoming followers as well.
Isaiah 52:7 states, “7How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news of peace and salvation, the news that the God of Israel reigns!
Are you one of the beautiful? We all can be. The Bible says the field is ripe for harvest and the call has gone out for laborers to work in the field. As any farmer will tell you, the harvest is not forever, when it comes you must act swiftly for there is a day when the harvest ceases and no more will be brought in. So it is with the farmer, so it is with the kingdom of God. One day God will say enough and as the door of the ark closed leaving the rest of the world to its destruction, so one day the doorway to heaven will close.
Today is the day of salvation, for today is all we know we have. With our shoes on, our life fully prepared, the armor shined and ready for living, we will have the opportunity to share the hope we have in Christ. Who will God send your way this week?
Lets pray for ourselves and others as we ready for the task ahead, as we put on the whole armor of God so we can stand in this present world.
