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­­­­LSB Ephesians 6:10 - 17 P.t. 4

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 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, having taken up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one, 17 also receive the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,

We might say that the single theme in this passage if we were to boil all of it down to a single thematic word would be the word in verse 13 we looked at very briefly last week. Resistance.

In every war you have the force that brings the challenge, the offense, which is then met with resistance.

Mr. Putin entered a sovereign nations borders with the purpose to overcome it's defenses and gain territory for his own possession. But he was surprised by the level of resistance, which frighteningly has gathered necessary help from other nations against the aggressor and as nations gather on the different sides of the argument, we have the possible makings of something like a world war.

So we have the aggressor who brings the war against us, Satan and his demons, who have devised world encompassing schemes of evil systems that overcome foolish and wicked people. Besides Satan and the demons who we cannot see, he has duped fallen sinful people to join in his cause, his hatred of God.

Think about the term progressive that we hear so often these days, and ask yourself, from a Godly perspective of righteousness based in the moral laws of God, the simple ten commandments, which direction are we progressing towards.

Satan isn't stupid. He doesn't call it the depravity movement. He always chooses a positive name for his negative progress away from God and into evil.

Christians are the resistance. In this war of good against evil, we are the resistance. We are massively outnumbered, but we have some natural things working for us.

Every human is born with a conscience. We start out with a conscience that still has some of the glory of the creator built in. Humans know what is good and what is evil naturally, even in our sinful state, we have a built in moral compass.

Our neighbors up and down the block don't walk in my garage and take my things I own away from me. They don't threaten my life. They don't ordinarily lie to my face. There is order. And the laws of the local governing authorities would respond to help me if someone did threaten my life and my rights to own property.

California just learned that it is necessary to keep a governing force in place to legislate some morality or the business model fails and services leave. God gave governments the power to restrain evil and enforce order with lethal means. That's a restraint against evil when it's working within God's moral laws of good and evil.

Christians are necessary resistance to evil, in a broad sense because we are the salt that holds decay away. We collectively resist Satan's evil kosmos, evil world systems as a bloc of people who will rise up in intolerance and do our best to hold immorality at some level with God's help.

We resist evil as a collective block, but this passage is more about individual struggle against Satan's schemes and world as we individually endeavor to hold forth the glory of God in our lives, and even take gain away from Satans grasp and bring released captives into the kingdom of God.

This is battle both defensive and offensive by the church which is made up of individuals, against Satan and his evil forces. We resist corporately, and we resist individually and personally.

James and Peter both agree with Paul on this idea of resistance.
James says; 7 Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Jas. 4:7
Peter likewise says; 8 Be of sober spirit, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 But resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished among your brethren who are in the world. 1 Pet 5:8,9

At almost the same time, Paul writing to the Corinthians tells them; 13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. 1 Cor.. 16:13

A little toxic masculinity there from Paul. Be alert like someone in a war zone. We need to be looking over our shoulders for the enemy at all times. Look for land mines as you walk through this world. Spiritual danger is everywhere. Or not. Perhaps you're no threat to Satan at all. So he doesn't mess with you.

We want to be a threat to Satan. We want to be a problem for him. Again, Paul speaks in warrior language to the Corinthians in 2 Cor. 10

3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the tearing down of strongholds, 5 as we tear down speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, 2 Cor. 10:3-5

Last week we began looking at the different articles in the armor of God.. And just to recap we spent some time thinking about the concept of girding up for battle.

Just the word to gird has in it the idea of the opposite of relaxation. It's a tightening of reflexes and a preparation for active battle. You gird on your armor beginning with the loins.

14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth

When I was in boot camp we would be told to get in formation. Rows of men spaced evenly. Some higher up would say attention! And we all would stand straight and stiff. Ready to march into war. Ready to follow the commanders orders. Rigid and bristling. Then a captain might say "at ease", and you relaxed slightly although remaining in formation until the person in charge said, dismissed.

Paul's call to battle array begins with girding on of your armor so you'll be ready to march into battle. And the first piece of armor is truth. Thinking about this again this week, I thought for the purposes of our review to look at the opposite of truth. Lies. Untruth.

Satan is the embodiment of lies. Listen to Jesus define our adversary the Devil. John 8:44

You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.

Satan is the anti-truth. There is no truth in him. He operates in lies. That's who he is. So the antidote to Satan is truth. The baseline of conflict is a battle between lies and truth.

Look around you in our world. A culture that has abandoned God and God's written revealed word has no anchor for truth. No standard. The entire secular culture stands with Pilate of old and says with him, in derision, "what is truth". To the world, truth is a foolish idea. There is only relativity.

Satan did that. He's gotten our nation to the point that if you insist a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl, you're somehow evil if you don't bend to whatever lie someone else tries to foist on you.

Truth is not relative. You don't have your truth which might be different from my truth. There is one truth and it's written down for us in this book. Everything else you see or hear or read must be compared with what this book says to find out whether it is truth, or not.

We revel in the truth. How marvelous it is to have absolute truth. All we have to do is open the book. This is the sole and absolute standard of all truth. Sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. Jesus, Jn. 17

Sanctify means to set apart as separate. This book and what we do with it sets us apart from Satans world. So it makes perfect sense that when you're girding on your battle armor the core piece, the first piece on, is truth.

Truth is to Satan like water is to the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz. Have you all got that image in your minds now? It dissolves him. It's kryptonite to Satan. It's your first piece of armor to gird on.

Satan is a liar and the antidote to lies is this book. But you're helpless if you don't know what the book says, because trust me, Satan does. The most vulnerable parts of your body are hanging out in the spiritual breeze if you are clueless what this book says. Lets move on then.

14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,

The next piece of our armor is the breastplate. It's a layer of protection over our heart. In ancient times different methods of weaving metals together so that some flexibility remained were used. Overlapping pieces of metal tied together like scales with strands of gut perhaps. Or chain weaved layers. Some form of metallic protection of the breast area.

Heavy. But necessary. It was a first century bullet proof vest. It protects vital organs. A shaft through the heart is final. If the enemy can do that you're done. Neutralized.

So what is our bulletproof vest in the spirit world? put on the breastplate of righteousness,

Righteousness. OK, let's get practical here. We christians speak in a special language that is foreign in a way to non christians.

We speak of righteousness in two possible forms. In order for me to come into God's holy presence I must be perfectly righteous. No spot or blemish allowed in heaven. Only perfection.

And we understand something we call, positional righteousness. I have a righteousness not my own. I have put on Jesus and He has removed my sin and clothed me in His perfect righteousness. Romans 8:1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That's positional righteousness.

That isn't the righteousness that Paul is talking about here in the christian armor. Our bullet proof vest is an actual practical righteousness of godly living. It's our daily walk. In this world. Now. Today. An obedient walk in real godliness. A lifestyle, if you will.

There are zero perfect christians. We all stumble. We all sin. Every day I'm sure. But if we are obedient, if our overall lifestyle is obedient, then there must be a normative walk of some level of practical righteousness.

Listen, Satan's name, the actual hebrew word, is Accuser.
The Hebrew term śāṭān (Hebrew: שָׂטָן) is a generic noun meaning "accuser" or "adversary", and is derived from a verb meaning primarily "to obstruct, oppose".

We're in a war of resistance. Good resisting evil. And Satan neutralizes us, he obstructs and opposes us by rightfully accusing us of a long standing life style of sin. It neutralizes the whole effort. You're a pawn who gets captured and removed from the board. That's what Satan does, if we let him do it. That's what his name means.

We're going to mix metaphor's here, for the sake of the exact same idea. We're going to switch from war to Olympic games. Same idea. We need to do whatever's necessary to win. Paul said;

23 So I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a fellow partaker of it. 24 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. 25 Now everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. 26 Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; 27 but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

Sin knocks us out of the game. Out of the competition. Or for our purposes teaching about christian warfare and armor, sin disqualifies us. We take a bullet and go to the hospital. We've become a liability instead of an asset.

One of my very favorite teachers has just gone through that. A guy named Steve Lawson. Awesome expositor and very fun to listen to. He was a big plus sign for the conference crowd. We've got Steve Lawson speaking on day 2 session 2. They'd give him the session after lunch because he was so good, so animated and fun to listen to his teaching you'd stay awake. Even with a full belly. Years and years of that.

Then one day it comes to the surface that Steve is having an online love relationship with some 20 year old, not his wife. 40 years of teaching. Poof. Gone. Go on line and tell me how much you can find of Steve's recorded teaching sessions. A lifetime legacy of really really good teaching is neutralized. Gone. Steve is disqualified and all the places that stored his recorded teaching sessions removed them. It's like he never lived. All gone.

after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified

This is a serious war with a serious enemy. An enemy who can neutralize some of the 5 star generals by accusations of unrighteousness. If the unrighteousness is actual. Real.

Think about Billy Graham. You might not agree with everything he said, but the accusers could never make anything stick. He made it through the minefield, intact. My own mentor, John MacArthur. People slinging mud all day long, but none of it sticks.

Personal righteousness, not perfection now, don't mis hear me, but a lifestyle of ongoing godliness, day in day out, year in year out, is a pre-qualifier to fight in this war. Otherwise you have no breastplate and Satan, the accuser will take you out. Period.

Ever hear of Ravi Zacharias? Exactly.

Now think about this a little bit. How is it that much of what labels itself as evangelicalism seems to be a double standard? Pastors doing horrific things and no one seems to care, nothing seems to come of it.

Think carefully about what we've said so far. We gird on what? Truth. Then we go into the battle and our breastplate must be a practical godliness. A lifestyle of practical righteousness. Or we get blown up by a land mine and removed from the field.

Why do we see a double standard? Truth. Satan doesn't really bother with the guys who are preaching a worldly gospel that has no power. Satan isn't interested in the 1st gigantium church of the tares. The guys who are out there filling up churches with tares who didn't go into the real warfare with the truth, nothing seems to happen to them.

That's because much of popular evangelicalism has no idea of the truth of this book. It's nothing but a fish net hauling in fish that have no value. Satan doesn't neutralize the so called church that's working for his team, his causes.

Those guys get caught sleeping with some whore and then they have to cry a little bit on television, do a little blood letting, and then they're right back flying their personal jet to the next money field.

Not what Paul is talking about here. Truth makes Satan agitated. The BOOK makes him angry! Lack of truth doesn't. Preaching a false watered down gospel and catching a ton of fish the Master won't keep in the drag net doesn't get you on Satan's radar to seriously take out.

He may have a little fun parading you around and making the real christians look dumb, but without truth you're not really engaging him in his war.

On the other hand, if you are consistently teaching the truth you could become a blip on his radar screen. That's one reason I'm happy to be in Tonopah Nevada in front of 12 people. Small impact, small trouble. We hope. But in a way we wish we were causing him a LOT of trouble.

Truth is where the trouble starts. Satan hates it. Waving the truth around is like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

We often think of christianity as being two tiered. Multi-tiered. Ordinary saints and super saints.

The ordinary saints are glad they've been purchased and redeemed by Jesus, and that's good enough. Let somebody else go do battle with Satan for the cause of the kingdom and the glory of Jesus, there's a game on this afternoon and that's my plan.

Maybe there's multiple tiers. Some christians are like the people in the army who are busy at a work station making sure the guys at the front line have got shoes and guns and meals ready to eat. Armies are 97% logistics and 3% people on the front line getting shot at.

Paul writes to Timothy, his son in the faith, and he tells him, be the guy that's getting shot at. In 2 Tim. 2, Pauls final letter before he was poured out as a drink offering for Jesus, Paul tells Timothy this;

3 Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. 5 And also if anyone competes as an athlete, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. 6 The hard-working farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops.

Nobody taught Paul the never mix your metaphors rule of creative writing. We've got soldiers and athletes and farmers all mixed up together in a common image. Don't be an ordinary soldier, or an ordinary athlete, or an ordinary farmer. Be the one that wins.

Get in the battle with Satan. Gird your loins with the truths of this book. Live in such a way that if our Commander says, you're up, you're going to the front lines, you'll have enough truth going out that Satan will be furious about it, and be the one who has a lifestyle of practical righteousness that Satan will try to accuse you and take you down, and nothing will stick.

Paul's final words of exhortation to Timothy in chapter 2 include this metaphor of levels and tiers of being christians who never make much difference, or christians who are in the heat of battle to the end.

20 Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also vessels of wood and of clay, and some to honor and some to dishonor. 21 Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, having been prepared for every good work. 2 Tim. 2:20,21

Growing up as small little guys in Canada, I would have been 4 or 5, and Jeff was 6 or 7. Our dad was going to Prairie Bible Institute, training to be a missionary. My parents were young people with a family to support and the school had little apartments for the non single students who already had families started.

This story isn't about the glories of missionary combat for Jesus. It's more illustrative of the portion of scripture I just read. Vessels of gold, vessels of clay. Vessels for honor, vessels for dishonor.

In our tiny little closet bedroom with our beds we had a privy pot. A thunder mug. Those little apartments didn't have bathrooms. There was a big communal bathroom. So if you had to go, at night, you learned to do it cleanly, in a porcelain privy pot, with a lid. You didn't have to go out in the snow storm to get to the bathroom. You were glad to have that privy pot.

That, my friends, is exactly what Paul has in mind when he says, you need to decide who you are going to be in the body of Christ. Some of us are privy pots, and some of us are beautiful polished urns made of precious metals, only used on the highest occasions.

Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, having been prepared for every good work.

If you want to be more than a privy pot, you need to gird up your loins with truth. Then you need to put on the breastplate of righteousness. That's a soldier the Master will look over His troops and choose for His battle.

There's more armor to put on. We'll look at the rest next week if it please God. But looking out over what calls itself christendom, most of what I see doesn't need to worry about the rest of it, because they haven't girded on truth or given much thought to living a godly life.