The Armor of God: Truth
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
[ILLUS] I once helped coach junior high and high school soccer in Mississippi. From time to time we would have away games. Sometimes there would be a junior high game before the high school.
Once when we were traveling to an away game far away, a kid on the junior varsity team came up to me and said, “Coach, I forgot my shin guards. What do I do?”
I said, “See if you can borrow some from somebody. Maybe somebody has an extra pair.”
I believe it was the same player (though it may have been another one), who came up to me a few minutes later and said, “Coach, I forgot my cleats. What do I do?”
I said, “Well, I doubt anyone has extra cleats, so I guess your not playing.”
In sports, if you forget your equipment, you don’t play.
In war, if you forget your armor, you might die.
I once read about a preacher who described the armor of God using his football equipment, but what Paul describes in Ephesians 6 is a life and death struggle.
It’s not a game or a sport.
It’s war and we dare not forget our armor.
[READING - Ephesians 6:14-17]
Ephesians 6:14-17
14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
[CONTEXT] We were told in Ephesian 6:11 and in Ephesians 6:13 to put on and take up the full armor of God. The reasons we must do this are so that we are able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil and resist in the evil day.
The evil day is today because, just like every other day, the devil has laid his traps for us. The schemes of the devil are meant to ensnare us. They are meant to blow us off course. They are meant to cause us to abandon the way of Jesus.
As followers of Jesus, we know that we must stay the course. We must not abandon the way of Jesus because only those who endure to the end will be saved. We want to be saved from the wrath of God on account of our sin, so we must stay the course. This is not because staying the course earns us our salvation, but rather saying the course is proof that we have been saved by God’s grace in Christ Jesus.
If we are going to stay the course—if we are going to stand firm, we must put on the full armor of God.
This armor consists of six pieces.
Truth—we must gird our loins with truth.
Righteousness—we must put on the beastplate of righteousness.
Peace—we must shod our feet with the preparation of the Gospel of peace.
Faith—we must take up the shield of faith.
Salvation—we must take the helmet of salvation.
Word—we must take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
And prayer, though not technically apart of the armor of God, is the atmosphere in which we do battle—we must pray at all times in the Spirit.
[TS] This morning we want to focus on this first piece of armor—truth, we must gird our loins with truth.
Notice those words: girded, loins, and truth.
We will build our thoughts around them.
Major Ideas
Major Ideas
First, let’s think about truth.
First, let’s think about truth.
14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
[EXP] The piece of armor that we are to put on is truth, but if we don’t understand what truth is, we won’t understand what we are to put on.
Truth is rooted in God. It is impossible for God to lie because God is truth.
Because Jesus is God the Son, He is described in John 1:14 as being “full of grace and truth.” In John 14:6, He said…
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
{Word} Before Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our sins, He prayed for His disciples in John 17:17…
17 “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.
This mirrors the first line of Psalm 119:160…
160 The sum of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting.
After Jesus rose from the grave and as He ascended to the Father’s right hand, He sent the Helper, God the Holy Spirit to dwell in His followers.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth (John 15:26).
The Holy Spirit leads us into all truth (John 16:13).
The Spirit—like the Father and the Son—is the truth (1 John 5:6).
Paul knew the importance of divine truth, and in this letter we’ve been studying, he mentioned it several times to the Ephesians.
In Ephesians 1:13, he told them that the message of truth was the gospel of salvation.
13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,
This pairs with Colossians 1:5, which refers to the gospel as the word of truth.
In Ephesians 4:15, Paul told the Ephesian believers that they were to speak the truth in love.
In Ephesians 4:21 he said the Ephesian Christians had been taught the truth—just as truth is in Jesus.
In Ephesians 4:24, he wrote…
24 and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
In Ephesians 4:25, he said…
25 Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.
In Ephesians 5:9, Paul wrote…
9 (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth),
And then we have Ephesians 6:14…
14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
Now, all of this taken together shows us that…
…God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is truth…
…the Word of God (The Bible) is truth…
…the gospel message of Jesus’ death and resurrection is truth…
…and we are to believe that truth, walk in that truth, and gird up our loins with that truth.
But God’s truth is wildly unpopular today. Writing to Timothy, Paul said…
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.
That describes our world perfectly. It even described many so-called Christians perfectly.
But did you know that you must believe this truth in order to be saved?
Second Thessalonians 2:10 says…
10 and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.
Second Thessalonians 2:12 says the judged are those who…
12 in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.
Second Thessalonians 2:13 says…
13 But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.
[ILLUS] William Gurnall was Puritan preacher in the 1600s, and he wrote about 1600 pages on the armor of God in Ephesians 6. His three volume work is called The Christian in Complete Armor.
I was reading a little bit of it this past week and he said that the devil attacks the believer in regard to the truth in two forms: (1) as a deceptive serpent and (2) as a persecuting lion.
The image of the deceptive serpent is of course taken from Genesis 3.
Satan deceived Eve. He made her doubt the truth of God. And when she and her husband, Adam, walked contrary to God’s truth the curse of sin and death entered the world.
The image of the persecuting lion is taken from 1 Peter 5:8, which says…
8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
Gurnall’s point is that if the devil can’t get you to quit the truth by deception, he will try persecution.
[APP] Christian, do you understand that devil is still in the business of lying? Do you know he is still deceiving? Do you know he is still the father of lies?
He has deceived a great many today and those deceived often become the persecutors of those who gird their loins with truth.
Gurnall says that as we face deception, we must establish the truth.
This means that we must measure everything against God’s word to determine its truthfulness. It means that we not only have to get into the word of God, but we have to let the word of God get into us.
We do that by meditating on the word of God.
Don’t be so busy that you have no time to meditate on God’s word.
Gurnall says that as we face persecution, we must confess the truth.
He quotes Romans 10:9…
9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
Even if we are persecuted, we must still confess this truth.
We must still have it buckled around our waists.
[TS] This brings us to our next word—loins.
Second, think about the word loins.
Second, think about the word loins.
14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
[EXP] Loins in this context refers to the waist, the core area of the human body. It’s the same word used in Mark 1:6 describing where John the Baptist wore his leather belt.
6 John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey.
Just like John the Baptist wore a leather belt around his waist, followers of Jesus are to wear truth like a belt around their waists. The CSB actually translates Ephesians 6:14 like this…
14 Stand, therefore, with truth like a belt around your waist, righteousness like armor on your chest,
The NIV says…
14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,
Paul likely got the idea of truth like a belt around the waist from Isaiah 11:5, which says of Jesus…
5 Also righteousness will be the belt about His loins, And faithfulness the belt about His waist.
The parallelism in Isaiah 11:5 shows us that in this context loins equates with waist, and this verse also tells us that when we buckle the belt of truth around our waists, we are following the way of Jesus.
At the very core of Jesus’ being was a devotion to the truth.
That same devotion to truth should be at the core of our being as well.
[ILLUS] You’ve probably seen someone lifting weights using a weight-lifting belt. It’s a thick, broad belt that a weightlifter will cinch around his waist to support his core as he lifts heavy loads. He does this because he knows that no matter how much he lifts, an injury to his core will take him out of action for quite awhile. To lift the load he intends, he needs the belt.
[APP] To carry the load God has for us as followers of Jesus, we need the belt of truth buckled around our waist.
We need to be devoted to the truth.
We need to be committed to the truth.
We need to sincerely believe the truth.
Physically speaking, if we are weak in the core, we are weak everywhere.
Spiritually speaking, if we are weak on truth, we are weak everywhere.
We must believe the truth of Jesus, the truth of the Gospel, the truth of the word, the truth of the Spirit in the deep center of our being or else we will lose the spiritual fight we are in.
It will not work to just have your parents believe it or your church believe it or your favorite preacher or author believe it!
You must believe it!
Do you believe it? Are you devoted to the truth?
[ILLUS] When I was a new Christian, I heard someone say that if the whole world turned away from Jesus, he would still believe.
That’s devotion at the core of one’s being.
That’s the kind of devotion to Jesus and His truth that we all should have.
[TS]…
Third, think about the word girded.
Third, think about the word girded.
14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
[EXP] To gird is to put on a girdle. Of course, we aren’t to literally do this, but just as a girdle keeps everything tucked in place, we are to make sure that every area of our life is tucked into God’s truth.
In Paul’s day, the Roman soldier would wear a tunic underneath his armor, but when the time for action came, he would ready himself by making sure the hem of the tunic would not entangle him in the fight.
He might have shortened it by wrapping it and tucking the end into his belt so that he could move more quickly.
He readied himself by girding his loins.
[ILLUS] One Sunday night not too long ago, Carl and I were watching Lillian crawl down the center aisle here. She loves these steps leading up to the stage, so we would start her at the back of the sanctuary and let her crawl all the way down here.
But as I picked her up one time to restart her, I notice that end of her little dress was tucked into her little bloomers. Not thinking, I pulled it out and put her down to crawl.
When she tried, she couldn’t go very far because she was caught on the hem of her dress.
That’s when I realized that someone had girded her loins so she could crawl to these steps.
I corrected my mistake and even let her crawl up on the first step or two.
[APP] If we do not tuck our lives into God’s truth, we will be all tangled up in this world, and we won’t make it very far with God.
Our thoughts have to be tucked into God’s truth.
Our feelings have to be tucked into God’s truth.
Our words have to be tucked into God’s truth.
Our actions have to be tucked into God’s truth.
Our marriages, our parenting, our work, our entertainment, our everything has to be tucked into God’s truth!
Examine yourself, where does the belt of truth need to be cinched a little tighter in your life?
Pull the belt of truth tight in every area so the devil finds no foothold in your life.
[TS] …
Conclusion
Conclusion
Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth.
[PRAYER]