We're going to open back up to Ephesians 6 this afternoon to take a brief look at the armor of God. Before we do that, Brother Kirk Fowler, would you pray for us? Amen. So back in Ephesians 6, in verse 11, put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all to stand, stand therefore having your loins girt about with truth, having on the breastplate of righteousness, your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all taking the shield of faith with which you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." So we look at this section, we get a couple of realities that I want to add to what we said this morning about spiritual warfare. We said this morning that it's something that we're engaged in, or at least should be engaged in. The world, the flesh and the devil are engaged all the time. This is not special seasons in life. This is an ongoing thing, and the battle is fought at the point of choice. The decisions we make, the choices we make, how we deal with, respond to the pressures and temptations of life. He goes on in Verse 12 to highlight, and we've talked about this already, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness in this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. So one of the things about this warfare is that at times we can forget and even be confused as to who the enemy is. we mentioned this morning, just an illustration about how Satan can get a foothold and take what should be one little conflict that might be resolved fairly easily and just spin opportunity after opportunity after opportunity until by the time it's finished, you've got an entire church, an entire family that's just split with division. So keeping in mind who our real enemy is, I think this is helpful. The headaches of life are made up of spouses, parents, children, bosses, employees, coworkers, other Christians, and other church members. It's where the headaches seem to come from. But Ephesians 6, verse 12 would have us ask ourselves, is that really where they come from? When we're having problems, when we're having pressures and temptations, Is our spouse really the problem? Are our kids really the problem? Are our parents really the problem? And if we're just going off of experience, we could all shake our head and say, yes, of course they are. Especially if you understand what's going on right now in my family. But Paul, and really the Lord through Paul, would have us pull back the curtain just a little bit and say, you're fighting against the wrong person. The battle that you're in is way bigger than a spouse, a child, a parent, another Christian. The battle that you're in is, again, a battle for your heart. And it's a battle that takes place between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. So then after that, he points us to where we can find our strength. And that's what I want to spend our time looking at this afternoon. And that is in verses 11 and He repeats it in verse 13. Put on the whole armor of God that you might be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Now, it's worth noting that in both texts, verses 11 and 13, the emphasis in the text is not so much on the individual pieces, but on the whole thing. You are called to put on the whole armor of God. And I think that this is synonymous with the exhortation in Romans 13. Turn there. I'll give you some other references you can look at later. In Romans 13, Starting in verse 11, I'll break it in the middle of it. It says, "...and that knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering, and wanting, not in strife and envying, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." You'll notice in verse 12, the exhortation there, the command there is that you would put on the armor of light. And then when he gets down to verse 14, he says it just a little differently when he says, put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh. Now, if you go to Isaiah 59 and look at verses 9 and 10 and 15 through 21, You'll find parallels to the Ephesians 6 whole armor of God, and you'll find that that armor is related to the person of Jesus Christ, that He is the one who is walking in these, and He is the one who is these. Now, we could spend our whole afternoon just there, so I'm going to keep moving. But Isaiah 59, 9-10, and 15-21 are some great Old Testament verses to understand the full armor or whole armor of God. The point is, if we're going to fight the battle that we're in and we're going to do it successfully, we need everything God has given us. We need all of it. And so then he starts to go through piece by piece. So starting in verse 14, Stand therefore having your loins girt about with truth." Your loins girt about with truth. Well, we could look in Ephesians 1.13, Ephesians 4.21, and we find that truth is necessary. It's essential. for an individual's conversion and for an individual's maturity. They're maturing in grace. Truth is a key component to your walk with Christ. We said earlier, Satan is called the father of lies. And if we are going to be able to withstand the assaults of the father of lies, then we're going to have to have truth. We're going to have to be able to fight lies with God's truth. Now, the other reality about that, in Ephesians 4, as it describes the church's interaction with one another, one of the things that we're supposed to be doing in an effort to help the body grow and edify itself in love, is that we're supposed to be speaking truth to one another. And so, brothers and sisters, the church cannot function as the church, as God intended, if we are not putting on the belt of truth. We're not girding our loins with truth. We've got to have something to say to each other. We've got to have something to combat the lies of Satan with. And God's idea, or I should say God's design for the church is that we are as individuals fighting against the father of lies with the truth of the gospel and the truth of the word. And then we're also seeking to help build one another up and helping to mature one another in the faith by speaking truth to each other. That's a fundamental part of fellowship and edification from a biblical standpoint. So without truth, without us putting on and girding our loins with truth, we're sitting ducks. I mean, it's not overstating it to say you are bound to be mincemeat, spiritually speaking, if you don't have truth. The idea of being carried about with every wind of doctrine, we could think about that. Sometimes we reserve these kinds of things just for doctrinal positions that define denominations, and you can do that, and that's fine. But I want you to think about how how this picture of being carried about, just tossed, how that perfectly describes the culture that we live in. Just from anthropology, what is man? Is there a such thing as a distinction between a man and a woman? Well, that's a doctrinal question. Did God make male and female? Or did He not? And if we don't have truth, just like the culture, just like the people who are somehow engaged in the middle of this silly debate, will be carried about with every wind of doctrine, and it can't last long. I mean, it won't be long until the tide pulls back the other way, and people have to acknowledge there really is a meaningful distinction between a male and a female, but it's not based on truth. It's just based on whatever the tide, the way the wind is blowing. Now, that's just one example. I mean, we could go through and think about what the Bible teaches on anything and say it's the same. What does the Bible teach about Relationships. What does the Bible teach about the church? What does the Bible teach about marriage or parenting or how children should behave toward their parents or how employees ought to act at work or so forth and so on? What does the Bible teach about how we ought to relate to those who are in authority? What does the Bible teach about any of that stuff? Well, that's doctrine. It's just teaching. The Bible has something to say about each of those categories. And so having our loins gird with truth is really an offensive weapon from the standpoint, it could be offensive or defensive, but the standpoint that we are fighting against lies. And you can't fight a lie if you don't know the truth. having your loins," verse 14, "'girt about with truth, having on the breastplate of righteousness.'" The breastplate of righteousness. This is just the armor. The breastplate is covering your vital organs in the front. This is the armor of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The righteousness that you and I have is not a righteousness that comes from us. We do not stand before God based on how well we did today, yesterday, or the day before. We stand before God in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ based on the work that He's done for us on the cross. So if we look back just a couple of chapters back in Ephesians 1, starting in verse 5. It says, "...having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace." Well, this is describing our breastplate. The righteousness that we have comes from the blood of Christ. The adoption that we have comes from the eternal plans of God through the work of His Son who accomplished our forgiveness and our redemption through the shedding of His blood so that He took our sin upon Him and put His righteousness upon us. Now, that's important for more than just being able to get up and preach a sermon. That's one of those areas that Satan will attack you again and again and again and again. Guilt, shame, assurance, Those are areas that are very, very common areas of struggle. And it all hinges on this reality that my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. But then Satan comes in and says, yeah, that may be for them, but there's no way that Christ shed His blood for somebody like you. Not with what you've done. Not with the thoughts that you have. not with the fears that you struggle with, not with the sin that tempts you. Part of the war is putting on that breastplate of righteousness and fastening it firm so that whenever Satan comes at us, the accuser of the brethren, when he comes at us with accusations, we have the righteousness of Christ. to put back in His face. So the breastplate of righteousness. Verse 15, having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel. Having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel. This is just the This is the reality that the Lord has given us, that God has given us peace with Himself and peace with one another. Our feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel, meaning we're ready not just to proclaim the gospel, but to live off of the gospel promises He tells us in Ephesians 2 that God tore down the wall that stood between Himself and us and also between Jew and Gentile. The gospel of peace says that we all, believers, Christians, we all go to God through one body, and that is Jesus Christ. And so the gospel of peace that has shod our feet is really the message, we could say more about it than this, but it's really the message that in the kingdom of God, there are no big I's and small u's. We all go to God one way and one way only, and that is through Jesus Christ, our mediator, who has made peace between us and God and between us and one another. So what does that tell you about the war that we If it's essential that we recognize not only that we have peace with God, but also peace with one another, that clues us in on the fact that you aren't supposed to be fighting this battle all by yourself. We could go back and say the same thing about the girding about our loins with the belt of truth. We could say the same thing there. If we're supposed to be speaking the truth to one another in love, then again, that tells us we're not supposed to be fighting this by ourselves. We could say that really about every one of these. Your faith in the righteousness of Christ can be strengthened as you fellowship with a brother and sister who's trying to encourage you in that area. Any of these can. We know that one of the reasons why we're not supposed to forsake the assembling of ourselves together is because we're supposed to be instead provoking one another and stirring one another up unto love and to good works. And so we're called to put this whole armor on, but we're also called to encourage one another in putting and keeping this armor on. So the breastplate of righteousness, our feet shod with the gospel of peace, Next, it calls us to take the shield of faith wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. The shield of faith. Faith, we know out of Ephesians 2.8 is a gift that we receive from God. It's part of the package whenever it comes to salvation. As the Spirit gives life and regenerates and the individual is converted, they come to Jesus Christ, embracing who He is and what He has accomplished by faith. Romans 5 says that we access this grace that we have through faith. So access there would be the key word. we are able to enter into. It doesn't mean that we accomplish anything. It doesn't mean that our faith accomplishes anything. It means that our faith is the channel that God has given us to bridge the gap between what He has done and our own experience. And so by faith, using the shield of faith, we're able to quench the fiery darts of the enemy. And so you can already begin to see as we're thinking through these pieces individually, there's really some overlap. What's the meaningful difference between putting on and girding yourself with truth and taking up the shield of faith? Well, faith is just laying hold of that which is true, isn't it? I mean, faith is just your spirit bearing witness with the realities that have been laid out for you in Scripture. And so again, we come back to this idea of being able to combat a lie with the truth. So we said this morning that as far as Satan's tactics go, it's not that in several thousand years he's come up with several thousand different tactics. He's just come up with several thousand different ways to use the same one. And that is deceit. You think about all the people. I mean, it's just astronomical. Not just men anymore. It's women as well. All the people who are enslaved to pornography. Right? It's just a digital lie. How? Well, the truth is, you and I could be just as well. All the people who are enslaved to addictions, whose lives continue to fall apart and they keep going back. How? Why? Well, it's just a lie. It's just a lie. One more and it'll be better. One more and it'll make things better. This will satisfy you this time. I mean, we could go on and on, and we're thinking about enslaving sins at this point, the big ones. But the missing piece in all of that is the shield of faith. It's being able to spot the lie and believe the truth. Next, we're called to put on the helmet of salvation. The helmet of salvation. What are we talking about here? We're talking about a renewed mind. We're talking about a renewed mind. Ephesians 4.17, This I say therefore and testify in the Lord that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their minds, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their hearts, He's saying, don't live your life the way that a Gentile or an unbeliever lives their life. And how do they live their lives? Out of the emptiness of their mind. That's hell. Out of the baseness of their thinking. Well, how are we supposed to live our lives? Well, you jump down a couple of verses in verse 23, we're called to be renewed. in the spirit of our minds. And so again, we're thinking about biblical thinking. Biblical truth applied to the way you think about everyday life. The helmet of salvation. Helmet of salvation. By the way, it shouldn't surprise us really that this armor that we're called to put on is so saturated with truth and your understanding of truth and how you think about truth, if what we said this morning is true, and that is that spiritual warfare takes place in a choice-by-choice setting. Every time you make a decision, every time you decide to do this rather than that, It has to do with your thinking. It has to do with what you're desiring. It has to do with your ability to spot the lies that your heart will try to cover up in order to get what the flesh wants. So the helmet of salvation, a renewed mind. And then last, the sword of the Spirit is the one we're most familiar with probably, which is the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit. The word here for word of God is the word rhema, and it's a word that means a specific utterance. We contrast this usually when we come to the place where this word is used. Logos, as a word, is just a, general expression. Think about the Word of God as a whole, the Bible. We could call it the Word of God. We're talking about the whole thing in general. That's not what this word means. When it talks about taking up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, it's talking about taking up the specific utterance you need for the specific temptation you're facing. Okay, so if you're facing If you're facing the temptation to, as we were talking about this morning, not address something that needs to be addressed, well, Ephesians 4 would be a pretty good place to go. Not letting the sun go down upon your wrath. Dealing with what needs to be dealt with so that Satan doesn't get a foothold. If you're dealing with something like anxiety, I'm sorry, Philippians 4 would be a good place for you to go. If you're dealing with something like anger, James 4 would be a good place for you to go. If you're dealing with any number, you name it. Scripture says that what we ought to be doing is using the Word specifically to help reorient our minds, our thinking, and our hearts as it relates to whatever those particular temptations are. Now, I told you this morning, and you know this already, it's just common sense, we don't all struggle with the same thing. in general, make a whole lot of sense for me to spend a ton of time memorizing the Proverbs 31, you know, beauty is vain and however the rest of that goes. Well, okay. But it might make a whole lot more sense for me to take some selected passages that speak to gluttony and to have those ready to go for whenever that comes, or any other temptation that I know I'm going to face on a regular basis. This is the rhema of the Spirit, the sword of the Spirit. Mark 4.4, man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And so again, the encouragement here is that we would take and put on the whole armor of God. which is essentially taking the same tool and using it in different ways. Girding our loins about with truth, putting on the breastplate of righteousness, our feet shod with the peace of the gospel, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit. It's essentially taking the Word of God and putting it on specifically in a few different ways. That's another endorsement or another circle back to the Psalm 112. Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, the one who delights in His commands. And so, brothers and sisters, I hope that what we've said this afternoon will help stir you to a renewed commitment to being in God's Word understanding God's Word and using God's Word specifically in your life for the struggles that you face on a regular basis. Let's pray. Father, we do again, we thank you for your Word. We say that often, but we mean it. We thank you that you have given to us the revelation of yourself You've allowed us to know who You are, what You're like, what You think about things. You've given us a window into a reality that we would have never known anything about otherwise. And then, Father, You've told us to use this Word to fight against our enemy, who's Your enemy as well. You've told us to renew our minds. You've told us to stand firm. You've told us to use the sword of the Spirit. You've told us to put on the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness. And so, Father, I pray that we would do that today, tomorrow, and the next day, and that You would bless us to stand in the battles that we face. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.