The Breastplate of Righteousness

Today I want to continue with the armor of God from Ephesians 6. If you remember we talked about the belt of truth last time and how important truth is. Truth, the truth of God is the beginning of and the basis for all of our spiritual warfare. Before we can accept salvation we have to hear the truth about salvation, before we can act on God’s word we have to hear God’s word, taking in the truth and making it part of us is the first step. So what is the second step?

Once you have heard the truth what then, what do you do next? The bible tells us to be doers of the word and not just hearers only. So how does that work, what does that look like. The next piece of armor shows us the way.

Ephesians 6:10–15 CSB

Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by his vast strength. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens. For this reason take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand. Stand, therefore, with truth like a belt around your waist, righteousness like armor on your chest, and your feet sandaled with readiness for the gospel of peace.

The breastplate of righteousness is the second piece of spiritual armor. If you don’t know what a breastplate was it was a solid piece of metal that strapped over the chest and torso of a soldier to protect his vital organs. A strike to the heart meant instant death and a strike to the stomach meant a long, slow, but no less sure death. Today we don’t use breastplates anymore but we still protect the same areas. Police officers wear bullet proof vests and when I was in the Navy we sometimes wore one of these, a flak jacket. These were designed to stop shrapnel from exploding shells from penetrating your body and ending your life.

You may not know that in the Greek world they believe that the center of the will was the intestines, or the gut. Today we still talk about someone having the guts to do something dangerous or scary. If you have to find the willpower to do something that you are afraid to do we talk about a gut check. When you are nervous about something we often say you have butterflies in your stomach.

The Hebrews, and the scriptures often talk about the heart as the center of the will. We still do today. If an athlete has an exceptionally strong will to succeed that causes then to work harder than everybody else or try harder than everybody else we say they have a lot of heart. Jesus said that it is not what goes into a mans mouth that defiles him but that which comes out of his mouth comes from his heart and that defiles him.

Whichever example you want to use it is clear that the spiritual armor of the breastplate of righteousness protects the will of the person. But why is righteousness linked to protecting your heart?

Well what is righteousness? Righteousness is simply believing the right things and acting on them. A righteous person follows the moral law of God, they know the right thing to do and they do it. It doesn’t mean that they are perfect. It means that they are familiar with God’s rules and they make a good faith effort to follow those rules in their life.

According to Jesus it is the words that come out of your mouth that defile you because they come from your heart, in other words you need to protect your heart and keep your desires and your motivation clean.

Now it seems obvious to us that we need to protect our heart. If you have lived very long at all you have probably had your heart broken. Maybe you had a girlfriend or boyfriend that did not work out. We call that a broken heart.

Maybe you have been betrayed by a friend, maybe even more than once. You might have lived to see one of your children stray from the faith, or become addicted to alcohol, or drugs, or maybe you just watched them go through a divorce or some other struggle that broke your heart.

We could all come up with reasons why we should protect our hearts. But as I studied this passage something fascinating became clear. As frequently as we have our hearts broken and as much as it hurts, as much as it would seem natural to protect our hearts from being broken by surrounding them with armor I could not find this idea in the scriptures at all.

Oh the bible says we should protect our hearts but it never even hints at protecting our hearts from being broken. As much as I would like to protect my heart from breaking and as much as I would like to protect my wife and my children and all of you from getting your hearts broken I can’t find any biblical support for doing so. In fact you could almost make the argument that the bible encourages us to put ourselves in the position to get a broken heart over and over again.

Well, if the bible tells us to protect our heart but it doesn’t tell us to protect our heart from being broken what are we supposed to protect our heart from? Are you ready for this? We are to protect our heart from becoming hardened. So What does that mean?

We encounter this concept the first time when Pharaoh will not listen to or obey God and hardens his heart. We also hear about heart hardening when the Jews refused to take possession of the holy land as it is reported to us in Hebrews.

Hebrews 3:7–10 NASB95

Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, As in the day of trial in the wilderness, Where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, And saw My works for forty years. “Therefore I was angry with this generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they did not know My ways’;

Hardening your heart appears over and over again in the bible and it always relates to refusing to obey God, refusing to do the right thing, the thing you know you should do but you just don’t do it. Maybe you are too afraid like the Hebrews were about the holy land. They knew God had promised them that they could do it, they knew that God had overcome the Egyptians, they knew what to do and they had every reason to believe that God could do it, they had seen him perform miracle after miracle time after time but somehow, they lost their faith, and their courage. God had told them exactly what to do, He had provided a strong leader to lead the way and He had proved himself faithful time and time again but the Israelites lost heart, they became afraid, they lost their courage and their will to be faithful to God. They thought that the people of the land were to big and too scary. They were too afraid of being hurt and so they did not act, they did not do what they knew God wanted them to do. They gave up.

The breastplate of righteousness is about guarding yourself against losing courage, against losing heart, against becoming hardhearted. It is tempting sometimes when we are hurt to shut down and cover up. Sometimes we want to build a wall around our heart and make sure no one can get in to hurt us that way again. If we don’t put ourselves out there then no one can hurt us right? Just shut everybody out and shut everything down and protect what you have. That’s no way to live.

God never tells us to protect ourselves from getting hurt, he tells us to protect ourselves from shutting down, don’t protect your heart from breaking, instead protect your heart from hardening, have the courage to risk being hurt in order to win the right to love and be loved by others.

If you love your spouse they will one day hurt your feelings, I am sure of it. My wife has hurt me and I know I have hurt her, I regret that and repent of it every time. But let me tell you this, without her I would not be the person I am, I don’t know who I would be if not for her, and I don’t want to know. She completes me, she is the other half of who I am and we are bound together to the extent that it is sometimes hard to tell where I stop and where she starts. That is one of the things that makes my life worthwhile. I love my wife and the love we share has outweighed every hurt and every problem a thousand times over.

I have had several good friends in my life. Some I have moved away from and some I have broken relationships with. In each place I go I have found good friends and I look for that as soon as I can. Have I reached out to people who betrayed me, sure I have. Have I tried to befriend people who rejected me, you bet. But I have also found good friends everywhere I went. People who I could count on and believe in, people I trust. People who make my life better just by sharing it. People I could talk to and cry with if necessary. I cannot imagine living life without friends that I love, they make my life so much more than it could ever be without them. I have begun to build friendships like that right here in this church.

If you reach out to people and offer your heart to them some of them will crush it, reach out anyway. If you give people another chance some of them will hurt you, give them another chance anyway. If you love people, really love them and make them a part of your life, a part of who you are I can almost guarantee that you will experience pain and a broken heart, love them anyway.

A mother goes through intense pain in order to bring a child into the world, many do it more than once, why, because its worth it. Raising children is hard, they frustrate you, disobey you, irritate you, and they love you. Sometimes they break your heart but they are your children and you love them, and loving them makes you more that you could ever have been without them. If you love people they will hurt you, God says love them anyway. The alternative is a life spent alone and with a hardened heart. A heart that no one ever hurts because no one ever gets in.

Love God will all of your heart and all of your will, if you follow God you will sometimes be confused, sometimes scared and often feel like you don’t know whats going on, Love God anyway, the alternative is to live your life in fear, never knowing what God has planned for you because you never had the courage to take what God offers. Don’t spend your life wandering in the dessert when the promised land is already yours. Don’t miss out on what God has for your life because you don't have the guts to take it or because you just don’t have the heart or the will to follow God where he leads. Strap on your breastplate of righteousness and don’t miss out on the best God has to offer.