©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

08-07-05

The Breastplate Of Righteousness

8/7/05 The Breastplate Of Righteousness

EPH 6:14-17 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Those are just three verses from the last chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians,

but they are three verses

that provide us with remarkable insight

into those few ingredients of life

upon which our protection, security, and effectiveness as Christians depend.

For a number of weeks now

we have been involved in a study of this passage

in which Paul describes for us what he calls “the full armor of God”.

And even with that phrase

we need to be sure we don’t become overpowered by the illustration.

Paul is not just talking figuratively here.

He’s not just giving us a word picture,

he’s giving us literal truth.

He is telling us

that there are certain things we can choose to bring into our lives,

things that will then be used by God Himself

to provide us with a protective armor,

an armor that will enable us to then “stand firm”

in this warfare in which we are involved.

And I don’t want us to miss the dual roles in our acquiring this armor.

It is the armor of God.

It is not of our own making,

not of our own design.

God is not asking us to get out there and find some armor for our own protection.

This is armor designed by God,

brought into being by God,

and given to us by God.

That’s His part in the arrangement.

We cannot create for ourselves a helmet of salvation

or form into being by our own power

a breastplate of righteousness.

Only our God can do that for us,

in us.

But then we must choose to put it on.

It will protect us if we do.

It will equip us if we do.

But the whole purpose of Paul’s words to us here

is to let us know

that, if we choose not to put it on,

it is a choice that will ultimately bring about our own injury, pain, and defeat.

And it is injury, pain, and defeat we would never have had to endure

had we accepted what He has given us

and chosen to clothe ourselves in it.

And obviously,

the basic premise of everything Paul says to us here

is that this really is armor

that we can accept from our Lord

and then choose to put on.

Or perhaps you are still wondering

if there really is all that much warfare going on.

Do you think this warfare thing is just some truth that applies to “missionaries” on the “foreign field”,

maybe someplace where there are native tribes and witch doctors?

I spent enough years on those “foreign fields”

to know that there is no warfare there

that does not take place right here every day of our lives.

In fact, most of the battles I fought there,

and certainly the most significant ones

were battles that I took with me when I left the states,

and brought back with me when I returned home.

It isn’t where we live that determines the warfare.

It has no connection with what kind of work we do

or what kind of Christian label we wear or do not wear.

If you believe you live an insignificant life

and that your actions and choices have little or no potential

for altering the course of this warfare surrounding you,

then it simply means

you have believed the second great lie used by Satan

in his efforts to defeat us.

The first great lie is that there is no battle.

And the second

is that your part in that warfare is so insignificant as to be virtually meaningless.

Do you think you do not have tremendous power

to impact the lives of those you touch each day

for either good or evil?

I told you last week

that for the past 30 years

far and away the greatest single influence

in my personal daily rediscovery

of the love of God for me

is the kindness,

and the patience,

and the faithfulness,

and the compassion,

and the grace shown to me by my wife, Sandee.

Because of her love for me

it is so much easier

for me to hear and respond to the love of my God for me.

Now, when I said that,

did you think it was just a nice husband

saying nice things about his wife?

What I said was absolute truth

because, in a very significant way,

the choices Sandee makes toward me each day

are choices that help to quiet the lies in my life,

making it far easier for me to hear the voice of my God.

When the human race was severed from the voice of God

as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin

we were also severed from the one source through whom we could correctly understand who we are,

why we exist,

and what our purpose for life is.

Only the Creator Himself

can communicate to the created being

a correct understanding of his or her identity and purpose.

And once we could no longer hear Him,

it plunged us into a desperate search

for some other voice to tell us who we are

and why we have value and purpose.

“Look at this title I have - it proves I matter!”

“Look at all these things I own - it proves I have value.”

“Look at all my trophies on the wall here - they prove how great I am!”

“Listen to what this person or that person says about me!”

“Do you know how many hits I get when I type my name into Google?”

Now, it is certainly true

that once we are reunited with our Creator

and begin listening closely to what He says about us,

about our value to Him and about His love for us,

it does quite the pain and the emptiness to some degree.

But as long as we are in this flesh

we see only through a glass darkly,

gaining just tiny glimpses of the truth.

And we still remain deeply dependant upon the degree to which

the truth given to us by our God

is reflected in the responses we receive

from the people we touch each day.

And every single day

every single person you meet

is, at some level, asking you to tell them who they are,

just as you are asking them the same question.

And the closer they are to us

the more powerfully their voice impacts us

and we impact them.

I mention this

because there is simply no way to overstate

the significance of our influence - either for good or for evil -

in the lives of those we interact with each day.

It is central to all that’s happening

in this warfare over our discovery of the love of our God

that we are involved in each day.

And do you really think

that what you went through this past week was not spiritual warfare?

Do you think it’s just “life”,

with no clear purpose or meaning,

just random acts of chance?

Do you think it has no wilful intention,

no goal?

If so

then you have not yet seen what’s really going on.

Whether you were consciously aware of it or not,

there was a constant barrage of messages and events that came into your life this past week

all carefully designed by the enemy to accomplish just one thing -

to reinforce in your mind and emotions

real doubt about the love of your God for you.

Some of those attacks came through things people said,

or didn’t say,

voices that spoke lies to you,

lies about your value,

about your dignity,

about your identity and position here and now as a chosen child of the King.

Some of them came through things that happened to you

or to someone you love.

My daughter and son-in-law bought a used car that ran great when they picked it up,

and then three weeks later

the entire internal computer system went crazy.

And where is our God of love in that?

Last Sunday morning I thought this virus I’ve been fighting was on the way out,

but then Monday it became clear that it was only getting started,

and Wednesday night at 1:30 I crawled out of bed

with throat pain like I’ve never experienced before.

There was incredible pain every time I’d swallow

and the pain made my mouth water

which then forced me to swallow again

which made my mouth water more.

I sat there in the silent house in the middle of the night,

squirting more and more of this throat spray in my mouth,

thinking that this would make an incredible form of torture

if someone could find a way to inflict it on another person -

my mouth waters so I swallow which creates pain which makes my mouth water so I swallow which...

And where is our God of love in that?

(In my case I must admit I did know where He was.

He was sitting right there with me in the silence.

And He not only listened to me as I talked with Him about it,

but He felt the pain too.

And when I finally crawled back into bed

He gave me the grace to sleep,

and when I woke five hours later

nearly all the pain was gone.)

But it’s warfare, always warfare.

And there were other attacks in our lives as well.

Some of them came through carefully filtered memories from the past,

memories in which we remembered ourselves

at critical times in our lives,

times at which it appeared as though our God didn’t care or wasn’t there.

And perhaps some of them came through a manufactured mental vision of our own future,

a carefully created attack by the enemy in which we saw ourself in need just a few days or a few weeks from now

with no Father God there to love us,

or to hold us in His arms,

or to keep His promises to provide for our needs.

And because our entire life prior to our union with Christ

was a life in which we really had no Father God holding us in the palm of His hand,

a life in which we truly were all alone in the world

with no one to rely on but ourselves,

when Satan tells us now

that nothing has really changed

it triggers those emotional memories within us

and it is so easy for us to believe the lies.

We truly do live each day at war,

and our success on that battlefield

depends upon the degree to which, each day,

we put on the whole armor God.

We’ve looked at two pieces of that armor so far,

...having girded your loins with truth...,

...and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

And now this morning

I want us to spend a little time with Paul’s instructions to us

that we put on the breastplate of righteousness.

Of all the pieces of armor used by a warrior,

there are two that are by far the most critical to his survival

because they are the ones

that protect the two most vital areas of the body - the head and the heart.

They are, of course,

the helmet for the head

and the breastplate for the heart.

And in the context of Paul’s analogy,

I believe the head is referring to what we think, our reasoning processes,

and the heart is referring to what we feel - our emotional responses.

And just as the physical enemy on the battlefield

would try to attack either the head or the heart of their adversary,

so Satan most often seeks to attack us

either through our reasoning processes

or through our emotions.

We’ll look at our helmet a little later,

but I want us to begin with the breastplate, ...the breastplate of righteousness.

And to understand what Paul is doing here

I need to begin first of all

by reminding us that God uses the concept of righteousness

in two distinctly different ways

when He talks about the Christian.

First of all there is a righteousness of spirit,

a recreation of us at the heart level

that is accomplished within us by God Himself when we first place our lives into His hands.

In His second letter to the Corinthians Paul said simply,

2CO 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

To the Philippians he rejoiced that I “... may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith...”.

And if we took the time

I could share with you statements found in every book in the New Testament

that all proclaim the same incredible truth -

when we come to Christ,

when we reach out to Him

with our hands full of our sin and our failure,

when God’s Spirit is finally able to bring us to the truth about ourselves,

the truth that we are created beings who enter this world with spirits in rebellion against our Creator

and our only hope is to reach out to Him for mercy and forgiveness,

that when we do that

He responds to our cry for help

by not only forgiving us,

but by then creating within us a new heart,

a heart that loves Him and longs to please Him.

He takes our sin

and replaces it with His righteousness.

By now most of you already know

what God’s favorite title for the Christian is.

“My holy one.”

Whenever God begins a conversation with the Christian

He begins it, “My holy one.”

67 times He uses that phrase to describe the Christian.

Unfortunately we miss the power of what He’s saying

because, in most translations, the title is translated as “saints”

which then means little or nothing to us and we just pass over it.

Let’s make it personal.

This morning

God Himself once again takes on human form

and walks into this room.

And He has come for just one purpose - to talk with you.

Not to talk with us,

but to talk with you personally.

He walks in,

sits down right next to you,

reaches out and places His hand on your shoulder,

and then, when you turn and your eyes meet,

the first thing He says is, “My holy one...”

To which you respond,

“I’m afraid you’ve got me confused with someone else.”

But, you see, that’s the point - He doesn’t.

And He calls you His holy one

because, if you are a Christian,

if you have taken your sins and allowed Christ to nail them to His cross,

you really are holy at the spirit level of your being.

And I want to be very clear on this

so that there is no misunderstanding.

It isn’t just that God now sees you as holy

because He sees you through the blood of Christ,

as if He were looking at you

through some sort of cosmic polarized Son glasses.

He calls you holy

because you really truly are now holy in heart.

This, by the way,

is one of the more reliable indicators

of whether a person has simply adopted the Christian religion

or whether they have truly been united with Christ.

Those who have simply adopted the Christian religion

will certainly have a social moral conscience

and clothe themselves in the language and external appearance of the Christian.

They may even talk freely

about the need for people to turn to Christ.

But there is no hunger and thirst for a righteous life within them,

no hunger and thirst for a life that honors their Lord.

They’re just concerned about the external facade.

The person who through true saving faith, has united themselves with Christ, however,

has in place within them at the spirit level

a hunger and a thirst for righteousness.

They may be fighting all sorts of flesh addictions,

all sorts of fears and areas of bondage born out of lies that are still etched into their minds and emotions,

but if they could choose the life they most wanted to live

they would say, “If I could I would live a life that honors and glorifies my Savior.”

Before we come to Christ we think we should be good,

after we come to Christ we wish we could be good.

This is just a little off track,

but I have never intentionally preached a sermon

in which my goal was to attempt to motivate people to want to be good.

I haven’t because I know that,

if you are a Christian, that desire has already been imbedded into your spirit by God Himself,

and if you are simply into the religion thing

my attempt to generate an external, emotion-based facade will accomplish nothing.

I do attempt to teach a great deal

about those principles that enable us to take that true hunger for righteousness within the Christian

and turn it into practical righteous living,

but if God has not yet been able to create that holy heart within you

I simply have nothing to offer you.

But my point here is simply to point out

that when we come to Christ

he does not just forgive our sins

and then offer us another chance to try again.

He literally creates within us a new heart, a new spirit,

a heart that loves God and longs to please Him.

And as we confess our sins to Him,

as John puts it, 1JO 1:9 “...He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

And as Paul puts it so powerfully in the second chapter of Colossians,

And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Do you want me to simplify it?

The sin is gone.

YOUR sin is gone forever,

taken from you by Christ Himself.

Your sin became His sin

and He paid the price for it in full.

And He never ever gives it back to you.

It is removed from you forever.

PSA 103:12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.

And what does this have to do

with that breastplate of righteousness?

And how does it protect the heart of the Christian.

One of Satan’s most effective attacks on the child of God

is to bring against us

accusations about our worthiness before God.

He will take sins from our past

and fling them up in our face,

perhaps even pointing out the damage we did to ourselves and to others in the process,

and then he’ll say, “Look at you! That’s who you really are. That’s who you were then, and that’s who you are now!”

Or he will take feelings and attitudes and actions from our present life

and he will hold them up before our face

and then ask us if we really think we have any basis on which to stand secure before our God,

or to call ourselves His child.

“And you call yourself a Christian!

Look at yourself!

There is nothing even remotely “Christian” about you!”

Welcome to the war.

And if we listen to them

and believe the lie upon which they are based,

the lie that our standing with our God is in any way dependant upon our ability

to create a quality of life that earns God’s acceptance,

then we will live in a constant state of fear,

insecurity,

and failure,

forever trying to hid from this God who has so many reasons

why He should reject us.

My friend,

if you are a Christian,

if you have recognized and accepted the death of Christ as payment for your sins,

then your righteousness has now been given to you by God Himself.

ROM 3:28 For we maintain that a man is justified (before God) by faith apart from works of the Law.

2CO 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

And when the attacks come,

when you find yourself in mental anguish

as you look at yourself

and see all the reasons why your God should reject you,

don’t run from the accusations,

charge toward them.

“Yes indeed, Satan, you’re right! That memory you’ve flung up in my face was sin. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless other sins you’ve failed to bring up. And you’re absolutely right - on the basis of my performance I have no right whatsoever to expect anything from my God other than rejection and condemnation. But here is the great wonder of the world - my God loves me. And from the foundation of the world He has been calling me to Himself. And my God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved me, even when I was dead in my transgressions, made me alive together with Christ and raised me up with Him, and seated me with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. I don’t know why He did that. I only know He did. So say what you will about me, Satan. I’ll agree with all of it because it only intensifies my awareness of the depth of my God’s love for me.”

OK, that’s the first part of this breastplate of righteousness.

It is the righteousness of spirit given to us by our God

in our response of faith in Christ.

And it is a powerful protection against the lies.

And there is a second layer to this breastplate as well,

which we’ll look at next week.