The Armor of God: The Belt of Truth

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, and welcome to our Sunday service. It’s good to see everyone here today.

I have a few announcements to pass on before we begin this morning.

The men’s group will meet tonight at 6:30, all men are invited for that.

We have a few names on the board back in the hallway for our Trunk or Treat event, but we need more. Please consider taking part in that and sign up on the sheet back there.

And if you’re not involved in the many things going on in the church both for our members and our community, do so. Become a part of things, and get involved. It’ll bless the church, it’ll bless the town, and I promise it’ll bless you.

I spoke with Sandy Hutchens this week. Hutch is still in the hospital. He’s making some small improvements and seems to be getting a little better.

Sandy’s faith is getting her through this. God will surely strengthen that faith, but part of that responsibility falls to us as well, as Sandy and Hutch’s church. Please reach out to her. Give her a call, send her a card.

I’ll say the same for the Harris family — Linda, Chad, and Shannon, it’s so good to have you here with us today.

Twila, for John, Brenda, all those in our congregation who are going through a particularly rough time right now, reach out and let them know you’re here for them. We always need our church family, but in times like these we need that family even more.

Jesyka, do you have any announcements this morning?

Sue, do you have anything this morning?

Opening Prayer

Father, we thank and praise you for the life you have so richly given us. Thank you for the incredible blessing of being your sons and daughters and for the beautiful creations you have made us to be.

Lord, we give you all that we are and ask that we might engage with your Spirit today. We ask your blessing upon our country. We lift our hearts that you might fill them with new love. We lift our minds that you would pour fresh hope into our thinking. We lift our hands and our voices to sing your praises in Jesus’s name, Amen.

Sermon

The closest living relative to Tyrannosaurus rex is the chicken.

Dr. Seuss invented the word “nerd”.

That blob of toothpaste that you put on your toothbrush? That’s called a “nurdle”.

On average, 100 people a year die from choking on ballpoint pens.

It is impossible for you to lick your own elbow. Go ahead, I know there’s at least one of you out there right now who wants to try.

Those are all facts about this world. They’re all truth. And even though all of those truths sound a little strange, you probably believe them all, don’t you? Except for maybe that licking your elbow thing, which I know some of you still want to try.

But there’s more than one kind of truth. There’s truth with a little “t” at the beginning. Those are facts that say something accurate about the world. But they’re truths you’re probably not going to base your life on. Knowing that Dr. Seuss invented the word “nerd” is truth, but knowing that truth isn’t going to make much of a difference in your life.

But then there’s Truth — the kind that starts with a big “T”. That kind of truth deals with life’s big questions. Questions like: Is there a God? What does that God think of me? What’s my purpose in life? Do I have a soul? What happens when I die?

What you think about those big-“T” questions is going to go a long way in determining not just what sort of life you live, but what sort of eternity is waiting for you. What you think about those big truths matters in a very large and important way. We can even say that we are the truths that we live by.

We’re starting a series about spiritual warfare, and last week we learned that all of those problems you have, everything from your relationships to your job to even your health, can be traced back to what happens in the spiritual world, or what Paul calls “the heavenly places.”

That’s where your fight really is. That’s where God and Christ dwell. That’s also where you are — the spiritual part of you that’s standing right alongside Christ. The angels are there too. They’re battling Satan and his demons over every moment you’re alive, one trying to pull you closer to God, the other trying to pull you away from God.

So if your goal is to overcome a conflict or a trial in your physical life, you have to first address its cause in your spiritual life. Your real war is in the spiritual world, and Paul says the key to fighting that war is to stand firm in the truths God has given you.

But the devil has a lot of schemes, doesn’t he? He and his demons have been watching you since you were born. They know all of your weaknesses.

And all of those different schemes the devil’s trying on you have one thing in common: lies. The devil lies, and he uses those lies to create chaos not just in your life, but in what you think and what you feel.

In John chapter 8, Jesus says that we will know the truth, and the truth will set us free. Ten chapters later, he stands before Pilate and says, “I’ve come into the world to bear witness to the truth, and everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

Truth is the one thing that can keep us out of the chains the devil tries to put us in, and so it makes perfect sense that all of Satan’s schemes involve twisting the truth. And we do an awful lot in helping him, don’t we?

What did Pilate say after Jesus said he’d come into the world to bear witness to the truth? Remember what Pilate said? He said, “What is truth?” And we’ve been arguing about that ever since.

In fact, nowadays we’re not supposed to believe in Truth with a big “t”. We’re not supposed to say that there’s an ultimate truth, God’s Truth, and God’s truth is true for me and for you and for everyone in this world.

Because that’s arrogant. That’s bigoted. It’s better to say that everybody can make their own truth. Everybody should be able to decide for themselves what’s true for themselves and what isn’t.

People who say everybody should decide on their own truth think that’s the best way to make the world a better place. Instead, our society now is starting to look a lot like Israel’s society in Judges chapter 21 — “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”

The devil loves that. He loves it even more when we don’t just fail at living the truth, we fail at even being able to agree on what the truth is.

So, what is truth? We need a good definition. And I have one for you. Ready? It’s simple: Truth is God’s view of something. That’s it. It’s not our view of something, not a government’s view, not history’s view. Truth is what God says is true about something. Period.

Knowing what God says is true, then, is the most important thing you can do. For proof of that, let’s turn to Ephesians chapter 6. Today we’re going to look at verse 13 and the first part of verse 14:

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 this is God’s word.

Look down the next few verses at what else makes up the whole armor of God. There’s a breastplate. Shoes. A shield. A helmet. A sword. All of those are a symbol of one of those weapons waiting for you to pick up and use in that spiritual world.

Now, here’s what you need to know as we begin. Every piece of this armor is important. You can’t run into battle without shoes and expect to win. Can’t forget your helmet and think you’ll be okay. And there are some pieces of this armor that might seem to you more powerful than others. Like a sword, or a shield.

But it stands to reason that the first piece of armor you put on is the most important piece, doesn’t it? You don’t put on the most important piece last, you put it on first. And the first piece Paul lists is the belt of truth.

Now, in order to really understand what Paul means about armor, we have to think about what he’s saying in light of the period of time that he’s saying it.

When we think of a suit of armor, we usually think of what? Of knights, right? Knights on horseback fighting dragons and rescuing damsels in distress. But that’s not Paul’s time. Paul lived a few hundred years earlier than that.

When Paul’s talking about someone wearing armor, he’s talking about a Roman soldier. That’s the picture we have to keep in mind.

The belt of a Roman soldier was about 3 inches wide. It was made of leather covered in strips of metal and had little straps attached to it. We’ll get to those straps in a minute.

Those belts also had metal disks attached to the front. Archaeologists think these represented your rank, or awards you won in battle.

Only soldiers were allowed to wear that kind of belt, and most soldiers wore their belt all the time. It was a symbol of their position and their authority in the Roman army. It set them apart from everybody else. In fact, soldiers who were dishonorably discharged had their belts taken away. That’s how special and important a Roman soldier’s belt was.

But it was also practical. Romans wore tunics. They looked like long robes. Tunics were great when you were walking around town, but not so great when you were in the middle of a fight.

So when a soldier went into battle, he had to take the corners of the tunic and fold them up underneath the belt to keep his legs free so he wouldn’t get tangled. That’s called girding your loins, your loins being the upper part of your thigh.

But even more important, those straps fixed to your belt were used to attach other parts of armor to your body. The breastplate, which we’ll talk about next week, was held in place by fastening it to your belt. So was your sword.

So just imagine what would happen if you charged into battle without your belt. Your legs would get tangled and you’d fall, your breastplate wouldn’t be tight against you. It’d be flopping around, exposing you to the enemy’s sword. And speaking of swords, yours would get dropped to the ground before you could even swing it, because your sword was attached to your belt too.

In other words, forget the breastplate and the shield and the helmet and the shoes and the sword. Without that belt on, you’re dead.

That’s how important knowing the truth is in spiritual warfare. If you don’t have that, none of your weapons will be effective. But Paul also compares the belt you’re supposed to wear with a Roman soldier’s belt because just like a belt marked a person as a Roman soldier, truth marks you as a Christian.

Truth is one of the biggest things that sets Christians apart from everybody else, because we have access to God the Father through God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. And what is truth? Remember? Truth is what God says is true.

Just like a Roman soldier always wore his belt, a Christian should always wear the truth. A Roman soldier was never considered to be off duty. As a Christian, you’re never off duty either.

Remember, the first three pieces of armor that Paul mentions are ones that you’re supposed to always have on — the belt, the breastplate, and the shoes — and the first and most important one of those is the belt. It’s the truth that you have as a Christian.

So now that we know what that belt is, the question becomes, How do you put that belt on? And that answer is the same answer I’ve been giving you a lot lately: you put that belt on with that book in your hands.

The Bible is God’s truth. And because it’s God’s truth, it’s your truth. It IS truth, for every time, in every place, inside every life.

In Proverbs 6:21-23, Solomon, the wisest person who ever lived, says that the good life, the best life, the life you are meant to live out each and every day, comes from taking the truth of the Bible and binding it on your heart, tying it around your neck, and thinking about it when you walk, when you sleep, and when you wake up. It’s always with you, in other words. You’re never supposed to take off the truth. You always keep that belt on by taking up and studying the Word of God.

Now if you’re familiar with the rest of your spiritual warfare armor, you might say, “Hang on, wait a minute. There’s that sword. Down in verse 17, Paul says that the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. How can the belt of truth and the sword of the Spirit both be the word of God?

Here’s how. We’ll talk about this more later, but that sword is a weapon. That sword is used for offense. With the sword, you go after the devil by using the truth of what’s written in God’s word. But with the belt, you learn what God’s word says. The belt is for getting the truth, the sword is for using the truth.

You have to know the truth before you can use it, right? Remember, that sword you have hangs on the belt you wear. So if you don’t have your belt, you don’t have your sword.

That Bible in your hands, that’s God’s truth, and there is no greater weapon than that. There’s a reason why all through history, the Bible’s been banned by governments. Because it’s truth with a capital “T”, and so it’s dangerous. But that Bible is worthless if you don’t know what’s in it.

I know people who keep Bibles in their homes and their cars because they think it’s some kind of good luck charm. It’s not.

I once knew a man who bought a house that was built by a Christian builder. Every nail in that house was stamped with “John 3:16” on the head. He told me he liked that, because it meant he’d have good luck with that house. He’s in jail now after being arrested for selling drugs. Every one of those nails had the truth stamped on it, but it didn’t help that poor man a bit because he never bothered to find out what the truth was.

You take up that belt not by owning a Bible, but by reading it. Studying it. Memorizing it. Learning what it says. And when you do that, then you have a sword. You use the sword by using the truths of Scripture to defend yourself against the attacks of the devil.

But before you can use the truth, you have to know the truth. And the only way you can know the truth is if you know the Word of God.

That’s exactly why there are so many weak and ineffective Christians today. They have a Bible, most of them have a whole shelf of Bibles. They’ll wave it around and pray on it and keep it right there on the coffee table where everyone can see, but they won’t read it. Some of them won’t even bring a Bible to church. And not reading it is the same as not having it at all.

God gave you that book so you can know His thoughts. So that you can know the right way to live and believe. In that book are the answers to everything you need to know about this world and the next. Not all the answers are in there — the Bible’s not an encyclopedia, it’s not Google — but it has every answer to every part of your life.

And for the most part, that book is what God uses to talk to you. Yes, sometimes He uses other people. Yes, sometimes He speaks to your conscience, or to your heart. Sometimes He’ll even speak to you through a dream. But by and large, it’s the Bible that God uses to speak to you and to whatever you’re going through right now, to give you the wisdom and comfort He knows you need.

How many times have you opened up your Bible and found that perfect verse you needed to hear? That perfect scripture to give you the hope or the joy or the peace that you need? Or how many times have you read a verse that you know by heart, but found something hidden in it that you’ve never considered before because of what you’re going through right now? That’s God talking to you.

But if you leave that book shut, if you only pick it up every once in a while, you’re not going to be wearing your belt. And if you’re not wearing your belt, your breastplate isn’t going to be right. You’re going to be getting stabbed over and over again by the devil. And you won’t even have a sword in your hand to fight back, because you can’t use the Bible as a sword if you don’t know what the Bible says.

You can never complain that God never speaks to you if you don’t read the Bible — every day. That’s part of your role, by the way. You’re a disciple of Christ. That means you pattern your life by the way Christ lived. How often in the Gospels do you find Jesus quoting scripture? It’s practically on every page. He knew scripture inside and out. That’s what he expects of you too.

That book is for you. Without it, you can’t know anything for sure about God, about Jesus, about yourself, or about eternal life.

And if that book is false, then you don’t have much of anything to know what is true. Either the Bible is your foundation, or you don’t have one. Either the Bible has the authority over your life, or the only authority you have is yourself — your emotions, your experiences, and your opinions. And how much trouble do you always get into whenever you start thinking you know everything, or that you know better than God?

So, the Bible — that’s the belt you put on. The more of God’s Word you know, the thicker your belt’s going to be. And the thicker your belt is, the bigger the sword you can carry.

But the value of God’s truth doesn’t just cover those sort of external things like your purpose in Christ, or where you’re going to spend eternity, or why people are the way they are. There’s another special kind of truth that God and the Bible give you, and that’s internal truth. By that I mean the the truth about you, and about what’s in your heart.

Read the Bible and you’ll know that you’re a broken human being. You’re a sinner, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop being a sinner.

Read the Bible and you’ll know that not only is there a God, that God is holy, you as a sinner can’t stand before Him without being judged.

Read the Bible and you’ll know that your desires and your longings will leave you empty if they’re not placed in Him.

That’s also the power of that book in your hands — it shines a light onto all the darkness inside you, and makes you be honest with yourself.

But that’s not where the Bible stops. If it stopped there, then the Bible would be one of the devil’s favorite weapons against you. He could use that over and over again to tell you how bad you are. That’s not the purpose of the Bible though. That’s not what the gospel means.

That book of God’s truth you have shines a light on the depths of your sin, because once you see that, you’ll be better able to understand the depth of God’s love and and grace and forgiveness for you.

The Bible says there’s nothing you can possibly do on your own to gain God’s favor and acceptance, much less his forgiveness. But the Bible also says that even though right now part of you is sitting in that seat, another part of you is standing with Christ in the heavenly places.

That’s how God can say through Paul that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that’s also why God can say through Isaiah:

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

The truth — God’s truth, the truth of both everything outside of you and everything inside of you — can be summed up in one sentence: You are more sinful than you can possibly know, but more loved by God than you can possibly imagine.

That’s exactly why you can always go to Him with everything and anything in pure honesty. God says, “Always be truthful with Me, always be real with me, because then you can always be real with yourself.”

You have to, because if you can’t be truthful with the God of truth, then the devil’s already stripped you of your most important piece of armor even before your fight begins.

And that’s the devil’s goal. He’ll tell you any lie he can and try to twist any truth he can in order for you to screw up your relationship with God. You have to fight him with that belt of truth. You put on that belt of truth by knowing what the Bible says.

But you’re not done yet. It’s not enough to just put that belt on, you have to keep it on. And you do that by one of the toughest choices you’ll ever have to make and one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to realize.

Because it’s not enough to know what your Bible says. It’s not enough to even believe that the words in that Bible are God’s words. You have to believe that what the Bible tells you is more true, more accurate, and most of all more reliable than what you tell yourself.

That’s what it all comes down to. Because the state of your life, whether it’s good or bad, whether you’re content with who you are or disgusted, whether you look forward to getting out of bed each morning or dread it, all comes down to one simple thing: what you believe to be true.

Your problems might show up in your home life or in your work, but the root of those problems are always in what you personally hold is true. That’s what you live by. And there are only two paths to figuring out what you’re going to live by: you’re either going to live by what YOU think, or what God thinks.

There are a lot of people who say they’re Christians, even believe they’re Christians, but still live their lives by what they write on their own hearts rather than what God’s written in that book. They think they know themselves best. They know their lives best. They know what they want and what they need best.

God might know a lot. He might be powerful. He might even forgive their sins and get them to heaven. But when it comes to the right things for them and the right lives to live, those people think they know more than God.

That’s the devil’s scheme — to get you to trust yourself more than you trust God. To get you to doubt that He loves you infinitely more than you love yourself, and that He can do infinitely more for you than you could ever accomplish.

Putting that belt on, then, means reading your God’s Word. Studying it. Knowing what it says.

But buckling that belt, keeping that belt on, means making God’s Word the standard for your life. It means exchanging your opinions with God’s truth, and saying, “It doesn’t matter what I think, only what God thinks.” And how does that happen? With the help of the Holy Spirit.

In 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, Paul writes, “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh” — he’s talking about spiritual warfare, isn’t he? “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”

Take every thought to Christ. That’s what buckling that belt around you and never taking it off means. Satan’s constantly working to get you to think wrong thoughts that contradict God’s truth. And what he loves to do is take a little bit of what God says and then add to it.

He wants that belt of truth off you, because he knows if you don’t have that, half your armor is gone. So the devil says, “Sure, go to church. Go on and read your Bible. But that Bible doesn’t tell you everything, does it? I mean, a lot of that was written a few thousand years ago.

“So what you need to do is take what the Bible says and add a little of what the world says to it. Or what your friends say. Or what television says. And then there’s what you think — you have to add that to the Bible too. And what you feel — that’s important, because your feelings matter so much. There’s the things you want — have to add that to scripture. The things you want to believe. You always have to read the Bible with those things in mind.”

The devil’s going to tell you that, and it’s going to sound like the best and most obvious advice in the world. In fact, that’s exactly what a lot of churches teach about the Bible now. It’s incomplete, it’s old, it doesn’t reflect all the progress we’ve made and all the things we’ve learned.

So use the Bible, yes, but add a little more to it. And after that, Satan doesn’t have to try and take that belt of truth off you, because you’ll already have done it yourself.

You can’t add to truth. If you could add to the truth, then it couldn’t be the truth to begin with. The thing you have to understand about this belt that Paul says you have to put on first and wear every day is that it’s not your belt at all, it’s God’s.

In Isaiah 11:5, God is speaking through Isaiah about the coming Christ. God says, “Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.”

The Greek translation of that text changes that word “faithfulness” to something more specific: truthfulness. It’s very likely that Paul had the Greek version of that verse in mind when he wrote about putting on the belt of truth. And what he’s saying is that truth, that capital-“T” truth that is the standard for your life, isn’t found in the finite wisdom of the human mind, but in the words of an infinite God.

In John 17, Jesus prays to God and says, “Your Word is truth.” In Colossians 1, Paul calls the Bible the “word of truth.”

“Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus said, “but my words will not pass away.”

“The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

Everything that goes into this constant war between angels and demons all around you, all of the blessings ready for you to claim in the heavenly places, all begins with a simple question that you absolutely have to answer: Who has the final say in your life?

When it comes to the decisions you make and the things you hold as true, what’s the standard you go by?

Is it your feelings? Can’t be. Don’t let your feelings be your standard, because those can change from one minute to the next. Your feelings can’t point you to the truth. If anything, your feelings can blind you to the truth.

Is it a person? Can’t be that either. As smart and wise as that person might be, they’re finite beings. They were born. They’ll die. Can a finite being know more than an infinite God who has no beginning and no end, a God who created everything there is?

Does culture define what you hold as true? No, culture changes about as quickly and easily as your feelings. The things one generation holds as true are the things the next generation rebels against.

You see? None of that holds up. None of the truth any of those things can give you can ever possibly last, much less be relied upon. No, to fasten the belt of truth only means one thing — to give Christ the final say in your life.

That’s where it all starts. Everything depends on that. And if you’re ready to give Christ that final say over you, I invite you up here as we sing our closing hymn.

Let’s pray:

Father of all the blessings You give us, can there be any greater than Your very words? Words that encourage us, convict us, teach us, and lift us up. Words that have always been, words that are, and words that will always be the truth. By Your words, Father, we live our lives. They form a belt that we wear to fight the powers of evil that exist in the spiritual world, in our world, and in our own hearts and minds. Help us, Father, to know that truth. Give us a passion for your words, to know them and understand them and apply them to our lives so that we may be victorious in all we do. For it’s in Christ’s name we ask it, Amen.