The Armor of God: The Breastplate of Righteousness

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, it’s good to see you all here to worship together.

I have a few announcements to mention as we get started. The men’s group will meet tonight at 6:30. There will also be a men’s prayer breakfast on October 23.

Women on Mission will be collecting for Calvary’s food pantry during the month of October. You can either leave your donations in Randal’s Sunday school room, or you can mark your check “food pantry” when you place it in the offering plate.

We’ll be doing our shoebox packing party for Samaritan’s Purse on October 29 from 10-noon, so please come and help make a child’s Christmas his or her best one ever.

Don’t forget to sign up for our trunk or treat. That’ll be held on the 22nd from 6-8. Time’s running out, and we need more people out there handing out candy, so please consider joining us.

Also, for those of you who haven’t heard, John Cooper is in the hospital now after suffering a series of strokes this past week. I visited with him yesterday. They’re making him comfortable. So please be in prayer for John, his family, and for Sue.

Vonda, do you have an announcement this morning?

Thank you, Vonda, and thank you to the rest of the pastor search committee — George and Beth and Jim — for all the work you’ve done for almost two years now. I promise no one’s happier than they are, because they’re tired of reading resumes.

Jesyka, do you have any announcements?

I’ll add that Jesyka has now completed her education and is now officially a certified Christian counselor. Congratulations, Jesyka. Jesyka will now bw offering professional counseling, which isn’t just a great ministry for our church, but for our community.

So if you’re going through a tough time or dealing with grief or anxiety or loss or anything else that the devil might throw at you, please get with her and schedule an appointment. By law it’s all completely confidential, and you can meet with Jesyka here at church when no one else is around.

Please, take advantage of this. This is a great tool for healing. I’m a big fan of counseling, I think everyone needs it. Not that you’re all crazy. Maybe half of you are crazy. But I’ve been through counseling myself, so I know how valuable and what a great blessing it can be to your faith and your life.

Sue, do you have any announcements this morning?

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father, we begin today by giving you thanks. Your love endures forever, it never fails. Though there are many ways in which we have failed, we have not exceeded the supply of your mercy and grace. We thank you for revealing yourself to us through your word. As we open the Bible today we pray that we would hear your voice. We ask that your Holy Spirit would be at work, opening our ears to hear and our hearts to receive your word. May we be transformed into your likeness. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Lord’s Supper

Christian tradition says that Jesus and his disciples celebrated the last supper on the Thursday before his arrest. But we’re going to celebrate that last supper today.

I invite any who know Jesus as their Savior to participate. As always, we begin with the bread, so have that ready. Does anyone need their bread and juice?

Scripture teaches us that through Holy Communion, we connect with Christ not only in the memory of his death, but in the spiritual life he gives us. We have eternal life only with the life of Christ inside us.

Matthew writes that on the night of Jesus’s betrayal, he gathered his disciples in the very Upper Room where they would witness him resurrected. Each of the twelve were there. And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

By him, we are made one with him. By his blood, we are made eternal.

Sermon

We’re continuing our series on spiritual warfare, and we’ve learned a few important things so far. We’ve learned that every blessing God has for you until the moment he calls you home has already been given. They’re all waiting for you to claim them in the spiritual world.

And we’ve learned that every problem you have in this physical world is the result of battles that are raging in the spiritual world. Battles between angels and demons over you.

And why over you? Have you asked yourself that question since we started this? All of this fighting and warring happening in the heavenly places. Battles so large and intense that you actually see the results in this world. All over you? Who are you that angels and demons fight over you? What makes you so special?

Good question. Because I guarantee that if I asked each and every one of you what makes you so special, you’d say, “Nothing.” You’d say, “I’m nobody. I’m just a mother or a father or a grandparent. I’m just a regular person. I’m someone trying to live my life the way God wants. I’m a sinner, and I’m the worst sinner there is.”

And that’s true enough, for all of us. Strip away all the extravagance of Sunday service, it’s all basically one dead man talking to a bunch of dead people about a risen Lord.

No matter what we do, we can’t seem to stop being our own worst enemy. The devil might get to us, but nine times out of ten he gets to us because he’s invited. We open the doors of our hearts and our minds to him and say, “Come on in.” Doesn’t matter how hard we try, we always seem to screw things up.

What’s going on there? And more to the point, what’s going on there as it relates to spiritual warfare?

The simple answer is that the devil knows he can’t take away your salvation — once you’re saved, you’re saved — but he can still ruin your life. He tries to do that by what Paul calls the devil’s schemes, those tricks he plays on your heart and especially your mind.

There are a lot of different schemes that Satan uses, but they all have the same two goals: he wants keep you from experiencing all that God has planned for you, and he wants to keep you from realizing the full potential of your life and your salvation.

But God’s given us weapons to fight against those two goals. The most important one is what we talked about last week — the belt of truth. Everybody got their belt on today? You’ve been wearing that belt all week, right? Good.

But that’s just the first thing Paul says you need. If you’re going to stand up against the devil when he starts whispering in your ear about how bad you are, how stupid you are, how much of a failure you are, you need to be wearing another piece of that armor, and we’re going to talk about that today.

Let’s go back, then, to Ephesians chapter 6. We’ll be looking at verses 11-14:

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 up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,

And this is God’s word.

In order for us to understand exactly what Paul’s talking about with the breastplate of righteousness, we need to separate those words and look at them one at a time. Let’s look at what Paul means by a breastplate first.

Again, Paul’s talking about the pieces of armor that a Roman soldier would wear as he went into battle. Because that’s exactly what you as a Christian do every day — you battle. You fight against the powers of evil with the powers of good working in and through you.

There’s a reason Paul’s is writing to the Ephesians about spiritual warfare. The church in Ephesus was just starting out. The people there were new Christians, and there were false teachers trying to get into the church and spread lies. A lot of those Ephesian Christians were falling for those lies, and being led away from the truth.

In fact, in Revelation 2:1-7, Jesus tells the Ephesians that they had lost their first love, which was their love of Him. What they needed — and what we need — was to focus on Christ as the center of their lives, because that would protect them from both these false teachers and the devil.

That’s exactly why Paul mentions this next piece of armor, the breastplate. A soldier’s breastplate was made of leather and either bronze or chain mail and was fitted around your chest and midsection with loops. Those loops were then attached and held in place by the straps on your belt.

The belt of truth goes on first, remember, because there are two other pieces of armor that attach to that belt — the sword of truth, which we’ll talk about in a few weeks, and the breastplate of righteousness.

If your belt of truth is loose, your breastplate is going to slip right off. And if your breastplate slips off, what’s exposed? All of your vital organs, right? Liver, kidneys, stomach, spleen. But there’s one organ in particular that the breastplate was designed to protect. It’s your heart. The breastplate protects the heart most of all.

In Proverbs 4:23, we’re warned to “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” A soldier put on his breastplate to protect his heart and his physical life. Paul’s using the image of the breastplate here to say that protecting your heart also keeps you alive spiritually.

Physically, your heart is kept healthy through things like exercise and a good diet. But spiritually, your heart is kept healthy through one thing, and that’s called righteousness.

That’s one of those fancy words that people use all the time, but all righteousness means is doing what’s right. That’s all the definition you need. If you make a habit of doing the right things, then you’re known as a righteous person.

But here’s what you need to know: there are two different kinds of righteousness. There’s the righteousness that you do, and the righteousness that you are. Both of those things have to be in place for that breastplate to work the way it should, and to keep your spiritual heart protected.

If that breastplate slips off, there’s an open invitation sent out to allow demons to come into your life, and it also limits what God can do in you and through you because your fellowship with Him is broken.

So we need to take a look at both kinds of righteousness and make sure we have a good idea of what they are and what the do.

First, there’s the righteousness that you do. The good things that you do. It’s the holy life Christ calls you to live day in and day out.

The Christian life is all about becoming a little more like Christ every day. It’s about his power and his spirit slowly transforming your broken life into a holy life.

But we still sin, don’t we? We all still do terrible things every day. We’ll always sin. We know that, God knows that. And the devil knows that too, and that’s one of the biggest weapons he uses against you.

One of the reasons you put that belt of truth on every day is because not wearing it leads to a life of obvious sin.

If we don’t know the truth of what God says is right and wrong, we’re going to live wrongly. If we don’t know the truth of what God thinks of us, we’re going to think wrongly of God.

And if we don’t know the truth of that spiritual world where these battles are being fought, we’re going to make all of our decisions based entirely on only what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.

That’s a big reason why we sin — because there are moments every day when we say, “God, I know what you expect of me in this situation, but I’m going to do what I want instead.” That’s basically what every sin is — it’s us putting our own selfish interests above God.

Personal righteousness, the righteousness that you do, just means saying yes to God and no to yourself a little more every day. It’s denying yourself — remember we talked about that a few weeks back — and living by the truth that’s written on the belt you’re wearing every day, a truth that says God knows what’s best for you a whole lot more than you do.

But the devil sees your sins, and delights in them, and he’ll turn those sins into arrows that he shoots right at you.

He’ll fire one arrow that says you’re worthless. He’ll shoot another that says you’re a failure. Another arrow — that one says God hates you. All of them fired right at your heart, right into the center of your life. That’s why you need a breastplate.

When it comes to your sin, the devil attacks you two different ways.

First, he keeps you unaware of your sin, or he helps you come up with perfectly good reasons for the wrong things you do. He does it with one goal in mind — to keep you from confessing those sins to God.

Over and over in the Bible, we see that those big sins that we don’t confess to God are like bricks piled one on top of another. After a while, they become a wall between us and Him.

That’s why it’s so important to confess our sin to God. We absolutely have to do it. Our prayers usually focus on how we want God to bless us, or protect us, or deliver us from trouble, and we should pray for those things.

But God’s given us the key to everything when it comes to prayer, and that’s confession. Confessing our sins removes them from standing between us and God, and so it takes those arrows out of Satan’s quiver. He can’t fire those at us anymore. We’ve been forgiven, and that forgiveness restores our righteousness.

Here’s another trick the devil uses, and this one is tied right to that forgiveness. He says that because of the your sins, you lose your place with God. Some people even think that your sins might cost you your salvation.

Half of that breastplate of righteousness that Paul says you have to wear is made out of those daily decisions you make to give God complete control over your life. It’s God becoming greater, and you becoming less.

But there’s another half to that breastplate, and that half is so incredibly important because it speaks right to those lies Satan tells you about your sins and your place with God.

It’s not the righteousness you do. This is the righteousness that you are. It’s another kind of righteousness that theologians call “imputed righteousness”, and this is the kind of righteousness that’s given to you by Christ himself.

Every piece of the armor God says you need represents a part of God’s strength that he gives us when we become his children. That’s so important to remember — all of your armor is God’s. Any armor you try to put on that you’ve made, no matter what it is, isn’t going to stand a chance against the devil.

We learned last week that the belt of truth you put on is God’s truth. It’s the same with the breastplate of righteousness. It’s God’s righteousness. Even the righteousness that you do doesn’t have anything to do with you beyond choosing to let God take control of everything in your life.

And this other righteousness, this imputed righteousness, was purchased for you by Jesus at the cross.

In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Paul writes, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

When we talk about salvation, we usually talk about how our sins are forgiven through Christ’s death and resurrection. But that’s just one thing that happens at the moment of salvation. Another thing happens too.

God doesn’t just forgive your sins through Jesus. He also gives us the righteousness of Jesus. That means when God looks at you, he sees you in your fullest glory. He sees the beautiful child he’s created. He sees your goodness and your love. And where there is sin in you, God sees only Christ.

That’s how you can be in those two places at once. Remember what Paul said — wherever you are in this world physically, you’re also with God the Son and God the Father in the heavenly places. The only way a sinner like you can be in the heavenly places is if Christ has given you his righteousness to wear.

At the moment you’re saved, you’re given a breastplate specially designed by God to protect your heart from evil. That breastplate has the name of Christ stamped on it, because your own good works are no match for Satan’s attacks. But Jesus says, “Your righteousness isn’t enough to protect you. So here, wear mine.”

That breastplate with Christ’s name on it, that piece of armor that Paul says you’re supposed to wear every day, marks you as God’s own. Your sin no longer stands in between of you and Him. That’s been covered. More than covered, your sin has been forgotten to God. It’s as if it never happened, all because Christ gave his righteousness to you.

And once God marks you, no one can erase that mark. No one and nothing can snatch you from God’s hand. That’s the righteousness that you are. Satan can’t touch that righteousness. God’s already sealed you.

So what he tries to do is get at you through the righteousness that you do. He tries to get you to stop living that life of holiness and looks for ways to break your fellowship with God by creating a gap between who you are in Christ and what you do as a Christian.

As modern people, we’re obsessed with happiness, aren’t we? There are all kinds of books and podcasts and videos devoted to finding out the answer to two things: Why aren’t we happy, and how can we get happy?

Here’s all you need to know about happiness, and this is true whether you’re a Christian or not. It goes for everybody everywhere. Your level of happiness depends on how closely what you believe matches with what you do. The closer that your actions match your beliefs, the happier your are. The more your actions go against what you believe, the more miserable you become.

Christ and the angels are going to war trying to close that gap. That’s what holiness is, it’s wearing the belt of truth and living according to that truth. But the devil and his demons are working to make that gap as wide as they can.

And that, right there, is your battleground. That’s where all of your spiritual warfare takes place, right in that area. It’s the battle over your soul.

Now, I need to give you a little more theology when it comes to your own righteousness, and that holy life you’re trying to live. You are made up of three parts: your body, your soul, and your spirit. The part of you that was immediately made knew when you became a Christian wasn’t your soul, it was your spirit. Your spirit is the part that’s with Christ and God right now in the heavenly places.

Your soul is made up of three parts — your mind, your will, and your emotions. Those are all parts of you that are still in the process of being made holy and new by the Holy Spirit. That process is called sanctification, and it takes a lifetime for that to happen. In the meantime, he’s still working in you through the Holy Spirit to close that gap between the righteousness that you have in Christ and the righteousness that you do through your actions.

That’s why you can be a Christian but still have an addiction, or have an anger problem, or be depressed — because your soul is still stained by sin, and your soul — your mind and will and emotions — is what tells your body what to do.

The devil, though, wants you to think that your soul is what was made new. That’s another one of his schemes. Now, why would he want to try and convince you of that? Because Satan knows if he can convince you of that, then you’ll think all you have to do to find victory in your life is to focus on managing your thoughts and feelings. If you can get your thoughts and feelings in line, you’ll get your actions in line. If you can get your actions in line, you won’t sin as much.

That sounds great, doesn’t it? But it never works. Satan wants you to think that way because then all your efforts will be focused on this physical world instead of the spiritual world where the problems really are. He knows you’ll never be able to fix your actions on your own. Your real problem is that your soul isn’t sanctified. It’s in the process of becoming holy, but it’s not quite there yet.

Listen to what Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:23:

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Notice the order that God sanctifies you and makes you holy. It begins with your spirit, then moves to the soul, and finally to your body. God starts at the spirit to nourish and grow its influence over the soul, and that’s what brings about a change in your actions. That’s how that gap narrows between the truth you believe in and the way you live your life.

That spirit you have that was renewed when you became a Christian? It’s job is to pump life into your soul so that eventually your it’s your new spirit that determines what you think and feel and do. That’s how real change and real victory in spiritual warfare happens. It’s from the inside out.

Just like your heart pumps blood to different parts of your body, your spirit pumps the truth of God into your soul so that your soul can tell your body to start going by God’s standard of living instead of your own. Your spirit says, “You have to walk differently, and think differently, and talk differently. You have to live differently, because your are different.”

And when you start to do that, when you start to faithfully live in obedience to Christ and grow closer to him, his righteousness start producing your righteousness, and that is what makes your spiritual breastplate.

But now you have to put it on. Every day. And how do you do that? Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:33: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Putting that breastplate on means seeking God’s will for your life, putting him first always and your own desires after.

And while you’re seeking, you have to hunger and thirst for that holy life. You have to decide every day to let Christ work through you rather than leaning on your own works. Because according to Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

You put on that breastplate by seeking God and his righteousness above everything else, by making him and his ways your goal, and by delighting in His Word, meaning that Bible in your hands.

And when you do that, you’ll start to develop of purity of heart that shines out in everything you do. That gap between what you believe and how you act starts getting smaller and smaller. Your choices become more godly, and those godly choices protect you.

It’s such a powerful piece of armor, that breastplate. And it’s powerful because it’s not built by anything you do.

Isaiah 64:6 is maybe the clearest and most direct definition of who we all are: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”

But instead of leaving you in your sin and shame, God sent Jesus to become righteousness for you. Christ has made you clean.

We get a beautiful picture of this in Zechariah chapter 3. Zechariah has a vision of Joshua, the high priest, standing in the presence of God wearing filthy clothes. Satan stands by Joshua’s side to accuse him. He’s telling God all the awful things Joshua has done, and how Joshua is unfit to even stand in God’s presence.

But God rebukes Satan. He takes off those dirty rags that Joshua is wearing, dresses him in pure clothes, and says, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put rich garments on you.”

That’s exactly what Christ does for us. Our character and our actions are just filthy rags to God. Even our best works are filled with bad intentions. We might do good, but often we do good in order to be recognized, or praised, or to be known. But God rebukes the devil and dresses us in clean clothes — the righteousness of Christ. That’s the only reason we can stand in the presence of God.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we have to be good in order to keep our good standing with God. That’s exactly what the devil wants. That’s the lie he tells you, because the truth is just the opposite.

We have good standing with God not because of anything good we do, but because of Christ. It’s his righteousness that protects us and keep us in the presence of God, not anything we do. That’s what makes your breastplate stronger than anything the devil can throw at you.

And it’s the joy and thankfulness we feel for all that Christ has done for us that leads us to fully surrender everything about our lives to him, letting him work through our spirits to make our souls holy.

You see? It’s not that you do good works to get into good favor with God. It’s that Christ has put you in good favor with God, and you’re so thankful that you can’t hep but do good works.

It’s Christ’s righteousness given to you, and it’s your righteousness that pours out of that holy life you’re seeking and thirsting and hungering for, that protect you from the devil’s attacks.

He can accuse you of anything he wants. He can remind you of the sins you’ve committed. He can even accuse you of things you haven’t done. Doesn’t matter. Christ has taken all of those sins on himself. You’re forgiven, and those arrows shot at you will just bounce off one by one.

The devil’s looking for you. Watching you. Waiting to attack. And maybe you’ve spent your whole life afraid of him because of all those things he whispers in your ear.

But then you put on that belt of truth that says God loves and cares for you more than you can possibly know, and then you put on that breastplate of righteousness that says, “I’m going to walk the path God has set for me to walk, because He does so much for me every day.” When those two are on and fastened together, you don’t have to cower from the devil anymore.

In Ephesians 6:14, Paul says that once you’ve fastened on his belt of truth, and once you’ve put on his breastplate of righteousness, then you can stand. You can stand against the devil. You can stand against temptation. You can stand against the world.

And let me tell you, as Christians right now, we have to stand against the world. There is so much pressure coming from every direction in our culture to compromise your faith. To go along to get along. And have you ever noticed that when the world says we should compromise, it never means compromise. Compromise means two sides giving up something to settle an issue. When the world tells us to compromise, especially in our faith, what people really mean is, “You give up part of what you believe and instead believe what we do, think like we do, act like we do.”

We can’t do that, not now. Now more than ever, we have to stand apart from the world. That means fastening that belt, and putting on that breastplate, and standing together.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, no one is righteous, not one. But you have given us the gift of righteousness to follow the path you have set before us, and to avoid the snares of temptation and sin set up by the devil. Help us to pursue you today. Whenever we encounter temptation, help us to find a way out. Steer us away from situations or places which may tempt us more to sin, and when we are tempted, remind us of your goodness and that you are the way of life. No matter what these temptations may promise, they cannot promise us eternal life, joy, or love, which comes from you alone. Arm is with the breastplate of righteousness today, so that we may be ready when Satan unleashes heavy torrents of blows on the battlefield. Amen.