The Belt of Truth

Prayer

Bounded by Lies

Greg Lukianoff is the president and CEO of FIRE, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, has struggled with depression for years. A number of years ago, it got so bad that he was hospitalized

Part of his treatment including therapy, where he learned to battle his depression with a technique called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

What he learned is that he would sink into anxiety and depression because he would engage in catastrophized thinking, he would take a false thought, what he called a cognitive distortion - something like black and white thinking or an over generalization or would personalize things - all in a way that would build up a fortress of lies in his mind, all these terrible things that he was thinking would overwhelm him and cause him to gradually sink into depression.

Learned to recognize what was happening, recognize the lies he was telling himself, and actually talk back to himself, and in doing so, replace the narrative, the story, into something that actually resembled reality, not the catastrophe he was making it out to be in his mind.

This experience led him into teaming up with Jonathan Haidt, a social psychology professor at NYU, to research a similar phenomenon they were seeing play out on college campuses

They were seeing college students engage in catastrophized thinking - if this person is allowed to speak on campus, it’s going to cause psychological harm. This belief that they are in danger all the time - hence the need for safe spaces, for trigger warnings, and fighting against microaggressions.

Catastrophized thinking was having the same effect on these college students (young people in general) that it had on Lukianoff - in the words of Lukianoff and Haidt, their thinking was pathological, and it led to a “tsunami of depression and anxiety.”

I share that story because I want us to think this morning about terrible toll lies can have over us, our thinking

John Stonestreet - “ideas have consequence, bad ideas have victims”

Last week we began our sermon series, Engaging the Battle, talking about the primary struggle that we face in life is actually the spiritual battle. That the very real and present dangers we must endure are the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world, the spiritual forces of evil.

This enemy is worst kind of enemy - powerful, cunning and wicked. And one of his primary tactics is deceit. He is full of lies. Listen to Jesus’ description of Satan in John 8:44 -

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Satan is cunning in his lies. What I mean by that - he never presents outright lies - they are always veiled, some semblance of truth, seems reasonable, a twisting of what’s good, becomes perverted. As Paul writes, he masquerades as an angel of light. And he’s very, very good at it.

And, of course, way that we engage this spiritual battle, the way we stand firm, is by putting on full armor of God, putting on God’s power and might, to help us fight against the schemes of the devil.

First piece of armor that we are to put on is the Belt of Truth

Ephesians 6:14 - Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist...

This is our Main Point this morning: we stand firm in Kingdom of God by committing ourselves to being people of truth. People who seek truth, know truth, live truth, speak truth

When I say “truth”, I’m saying that with recognition that all truth is God’s truth - God is author of reality. The devil is a liar and the father of lies, but God is trustworthy and the father of all truth. In Hebrews, it says that it is “impossible for God to lie.” He can’t do it. Every word that comes from his mouth is truth.

So everything we learn about who God is, about who we are from the Scriptures - is true. It’s reliable. We can stake our lives on it (and we should). Jesus: I tell you the truth…(why we’re to listen to his teachings and put them into practice).

But we see God’s truth in every area, every subject - in mathematics, biology, psychology, astronomy. Everything that reflects what is real is God’s truth. He made world, everything in it

Why so many of early scientists were Christians - Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton

They believed that God is God of all truth - and that one of the reasons he gave us gift of reason, of rational thought, is to discover the truth of universe he had made. That God ordered universe just so, and we can come to know and understand it.

Isaac Newton: This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

So that’s our main point: We stand firm against rulers, authorities, Satan, by putting on the Belt of Truth, by committing ourselves to being people of truth.

Bound by Truth

I want to take a few minutes to talk about Ephesians 6:14, and what Paul means by “Belt of Truth”. We’ve modernized the language in our translations so it makes sense - because the Greek actually says, gird your loins with the truth.

Which is a phrase we don’t really use anymore - “before you head out that door, young man, you make sure you gird up your loins”. But it’s actually a helpful image for us to dig into a bit

I want to you show you an artist’s depiction that will help give you some idea of what it means’ to “gird up your loins”, Image from Art of Manliness

Girding up your loins was to tuck in loose clothing in order to prepare yourself for work, running, action, battle. So the phrase became a way of saying, get ready, prepare yourself

In Job 38:3, God says to Job - Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.

Gird your loins like a man…get ready, be prepared, because I’m about to question you.

Not just for men, see phrase used for wife of noble character in Proverbs 31:17 - She sets about her work vigorously; her arms strong for her tasks.

She girds her loins vigorously, she gets about her work with great vigor

So, to put on a belt of truth, gird up your loins, is to prepare yourself. Get ready by equipping yourself with truth. How do we do that? Paul tells us: 2 Corinthians 10:2-5 -

I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Paul is writing this letter in hopes that when he comes to visit the church in Corinth, he won’t have to confront them because some of them think that we live by the standards of the world, think like world.

Launches into battle language - we’ve got different standards, different weapons than the world does.

This is critical part to understand - he says the weapons we use have “divine power to demolish strongholds.” What does he mean by that?

He’s talking about our thoughts, human thoughts. In this scenario, they are prisoners of war. They’ve been taken captive, locked away in a stronghold, a fortress.

Think back to example of Greg Lukianoff, whose distorted thinking (overgeneralizations, black and white thinking) led him into depression and anxiety. He was bound up by those thoughts.

We all have thoughts, narratives, that have become so ingrained in our thinking, so second nature to us, we’re not even aware of them anymore - but they still drive our behavior.

We demolish those strongholds that hold our thoughts captive, we’re on attack against everything that opposes knowledge of God. We do it by taking captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

We want every single thing that we think to be line with Jesus, way he thinks (which is the truth, reality). We want our thinking about God, who he is, to be same as Jesus knows Father to be. We want our thoughts about ourselves, who we are, to be in accord with will of Jesus. Same about world, how it works, our neighbors, what’s right and wrong - everything.

This is key to spiritual formation, to becoming like Jesus. Our narratives, stories that help us frame world, make sense of it, should be same as Jesus’ narratives.

Mindy Caligure puts it this way - we must know the truth. We must surrender to truth. That’s what it means to gird our loins with truth.

In one sense, this part of spiritual battle is very personal, unique to each of us. Because we all have narratives that our unique to us, our individual personalities, how we were raised, our experiences. Satan knows how to get to each of us.

Suze Orman, popular financial expert, tells story watching her father’s business catch on fire when she was a little girl. Her dad ran back into the burning building, grabbed the hot metal cash register with his bare hands and ran out. He fell to ground writhing in pain with scorched and seared hands.

That moment marked her deeply. Lie was deeply ingrained in her about how valuable money was. She says from that point on, earning money, lots of money, became not only what drove her professionally, but also became her emotional priority.

Pete Scazzero realized at one point in his life that he was living out more based on thinking of his family than by truth of Jesus. That impacted way he saw his role as husband, father, how to handle conflict, what success in life was.

Those false narratives, those lies, drive our behavior (they become strongholds that determine our behavior).

Many of us live on narrative that I have to perform, to attain success, to look a particular way, in order to be acceptable, to be lovable, to matter.

Which means that I will get angry if traffic is delaying me and it’s going to make me late and then I’ll look bad. Or I will get jealous if someone has attained more success than I have, feel like a failure. Or I will judge you because I’ve built my sense of who I am based on moral righteousness. Or I’ll be driven to succeed in a career or by making lots of money, at the cost of relationships.

All of us have our own stories, narratives, way of thinking that have been contorted by lies.

I’ve mentioned the Chosen TV series, about Jesus and his disciples. One of the things I love about the show is the intro, the opening song and the animation, which shows a crowd of fish swimming in a stream, and every now and then, one of the fish will change color and start swimming in the opposite direction.

Great reminder that following Jesus, seeking and living his truth, will put us at odds with the culture. We’re going to live differently because we think differently - because we live in a culture immersed with lies of Satan.

That’s true not just for us, but for every culture, every people group that’s ever existed. We must be vigilant to understanding the waters we’re swimming in and be willing to go against the tide.

There’s no shortage of examples - lies of abortion (many Christians think it’s personally wrong but don’t feel it’s their place to tell others what to do), gender identity (compassion for people, but God created us male and female).

But there’s one that I think is great ideological challenge of our time - Wokeism (progressive, Critical Race Theory)

Its been said that every virtue, carries to the extreme, becomes a vice. Desire to see groups of people who have often been oppressed and marginalized - to be recognized, treated as equals, has now, I believe, become a vice.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. took to the streets to fight against racism, he did so with a solid biblical basis.

He was committed to nonviolent protest. He was committed to loving his enemies, no matter how brutally they were treated. Their love and dignity exposed the moral ugliness of racism.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had to confront those within the Christian community who had bought into the lies of the culture. One of his great writings was the Letter from Birmingham Jail which is addressed to other questions who questioned the civil rights movement, primarily by saying that he was breaking the law.

King argued beautiful that God’s moral law is greater. And laws of our country at that time were unjust - and therefore had no moral standing to them, and should be opposed.

King’s primary argument, the truth that drove the movement is that the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart, content of the character.

Scripture: In Christ there is no Greek nor Jew, male nor female, slave or free. These identities are secondary

Today’s anti-racist movement is to make these identities primary - lens through which we view all of life, through lens of race, sex, gender identity), explain it all

Has its root in Marxist Theory, whose economy class explained whole of life, rich versus poor, owners versus workers

Effort to stand against racism, which is a good, has now become a situation where everything is defined in terms of racism, anti-racism

Whiteness is now seen as a moral evil (which is complete reversal)

reintroduction of segregation, classrooms in Georgia school

I believe we’re more divided (ideas have consequences, bad ideas have victims

If we’re going to stand firm, to engage this great spiritual battle - we must put on belt of truth. Make commitment to being people of truth. Let me offer some thoughts on how to do this.

Really important to consider - where are you being discipled? What’s feeding into your life? What’s your input? Who is teaching you?

Cable news? TikTok videos? Facebook? Watching TV shows or movies or reading novels (none of which is bad necessarily)

You may think - well, that’s not my discipleship…but if that’s where you spend most of your time, that’s what’s instructing you.

To be discipled is to be in training to become like Jesus. To be his apprentice. Jesus you teach me.

One exercise to do this week is to pay careful attention to how you spend your time, what messages are you hearing - where are you hearing from Jesus?

The best way to recognize lies is by knowing the truth. Making the commitment to becoming people of truth - make commitment by studying the Scriptures.

Bank tellers go through training to recognize counterfeit money. Training begins with studying genuine money - the look of the money and especially the feel of it.

More we study the truth, know God’s truth (which is simply, the truth), the better we will recognize the schemes of Satan. Take captive every thought to make it obedient to Jesus. We want every thought we have to obey Jesus, be in line with what he thinks.

First, study the Scriptures, we study them for the purpose of inner transformation (live the truth)

So, we read the Bible, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit - who will guide us into all truth.

Study it, first of understanding - what is the author saying? Then, for interpretation - what does the author mean? Then application -what does it mean for my life?

Let me finish with this: Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. But reverse is true: good ideas bring blessings.

When we know and surrender to truth, when we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ, we experience God’s goodness and freedom. Jesus: If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Greg Lukianoff says that he still has to battle depression. But fight is very different now - because he has weapons to fight it. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - helps him to recognize the lies, to demolish that stronghold and replace it with truth.

But it’s not just impact in our life, but how we might impact the others. Bad ideas have victims. Lies destroy - that Satan’s whole scheme. Our culture is filled with people whose lives are being destroyed by lies they believe.

If we live by the truth, we have a chance to display to them the goodness of God. Fruit of truth. Truth of the gospel is best shared not with an intellectual idea but in a changed life - life changed by girding our loins with truth of Jesus Christ.

So let’s make the commitment to put on the belt of truth every day, to being people of the truth.