How do you equip yourself for a battle you can’t see but feel every day? Join us as we uncover the insights of Ephesians 6, where we transition from understanding Christian identity to confronting the cosmic spiritual warfare we all face. With the gripping imagery inspired by "Saving Private Ryan," we highlight the life-or-death stakes of our spiritual struggles and the essential need for the armor of God, particularly the breastplate of righteousness, to defend against relentless attacks from the enemy.
We'll tackle the concept of the "evil day," likened to historical moments like Pearl Harbor, and dissect the devil's strategy of distorting our truths, much like he did with Eve in the Garden of Eden. By delving into ancient beliefs about the heart and gut as centers of emotion and thought, we emphasize the critical need for spiritual defenses. Learn how passive righteousness—our standing with God—and active righteousness—our good deeds—intertwine to protect and uplift us, using examples from modern psychology and popular culture.
Feeling inadequate or struggling with shame? Let’s explore how Jesus' righteousness shields us, drawing from personal stories and Isaiah 59. By understanding that our worth is rooted in Jesus’ victory and not our own flawed performance, we can stand firmly against any internal and external attacks. Discover how to reclaim your sense of self-worth and navigate your spiritual battles with confidence, grounded in the powerful truth of the gospel.
How do you equip yourself for a battle you can’t see but feel every day? Join us as we uncover the insights of Ephesians 6, where we transition from understanding Christian identity to confronting the cosmic spiritual warfare we all face. With the gripping imagery inspired by "Saving Private Ryan," we highlight the life-or-death stakes of our spiritual struggles and the essential need for the armor of God, particularly the breastplate of righteousness, to defend against relentless attacks from the enemy.
We'll tackle the concept of the "evil day," likened to historical moments like Pearl Harbor, and dissect the devil's strategy of distorting our truths, much like he did with Eve in the Garden of Eden. By delving into ancient beliefs about the heart and gut as centers of emotion and thought, we emphasize the critical need for spiritual defenses. Learn how passive righteousness—our standing with God—and active righteousness—our good deeds—intertwine to protect and uplift us, using examples from modern psychology and popular culture.
Feeling inadequate or struggling with shame? Let’s explore how Jesus' righteousness shields us, drawing from personal stories and Isaiah 59. By understanding that our worth is rooted in Jesus’ victory and not our own flawed performance, we can stand firmly against any internal and external attacks. Discover how to reclaim your sense of self-worth and navigate your spiritual battles with confidence, grounded in the powerful truth of the gospel.
All right, good morning everyone. My name is Houston, one of the pastors here and you heard Lori read it. We're in Ephesians 6. We're in this section where Paul talks about the armor of God, and we've been in this series in Ephesians for a little while and in this special mini-series inside the series very special and what we've been doing is we've gone through Ephesians asking this question what are Jesus' followers or Christians like and what do we do? And we spent time in Ephesians because it's one of the most clear, concise and whole answers to that question.
Speaker 1:And something hit me last week. You know we're in the second passage, the second part of this armor of God passage, and it hit me as I was reflecting on last week's sermon that for some of us, this transition from talking about who Christians are and what Christians do to talking about this set of armor and this battle might feel jarring, might feel off. And I think that's because, partially at least, because I didn't do a very good job of explaining that connection. And the connection, friends, is that as Christians, we are automatically drafted, you might say, into a war. In other words, there are not Christians who are in this war and Christians who are not in this war. Christians are automatically a part of this conflict, this great spiritual conflict. And last week I did say that we're at war. But I think it's really easy for us to compartmentalize this. I know it's very easy for me to compartmentalize this idea. It's hard to wrap our heads around this idea that we're in battle, that we're in war.
Speaker 1:Especially here, especially here in America, in the West, we have a difficulty with this concept and I think we can fall into two equally problematic pitfalls around it. First, we can fall into this pitfall that when we hear Paul say that we wrestle with spiritual authorities and power and the cosmic powers, we can misunderstand that and we can think that we're fighting for the outcome of this war. In other words, we think that we need to do something to achieve victory and very simply put, that is not the case. That's not the battle that we find ourselves in. I mean, really the Bible says over and over victory does not depend on us, because Jesus has victory, he won, he's already won, battle's done, battle's won, I'll say. But believing that he's already won can then lead us into a different pitfall, kind of an opposite pitfall. People like me can fall into this trap where we think, okay, if the battle's won, if Jesus won it, that means I am not an active participant in this combat, but just a recipient. In other words, I can think that I'm not really fighting here. Oh, it's God fighting, he's doing it all. I'm just here. And unfortunately, that's not really the picture either, because when Paul talks about this conflict that we're in, he uses very active language, very graphic language. In fact, in our passage today, it says that we wrestle against the rulers and against the authorities. And this word wrestle is almost weakened in the English. See, it does mean that we are wrestling, yes, but the picture is very, very intense. It's like the kind of wrestling you do on the battlefield when you're fighting for your life.
Speaker 1:And there's a scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan have you seen this movie, saving Private Ryan Classic? There's a scene where the squad that we follow, they find Ryan and they're in this little village, this French village, and they find out that they can't just extract Orion because there's an enemy squad coming I don't know anything military, I'm sorry, just in advance. The Germans are coming, the Germans are coming to this town and every man is needed to defend this little outpost. And so, in the kind of ultimate scene of the movie. There's this battle where the American soldiers outnumbered like 10 to 1, are holding this little outpost against this German onslaught and it's terrible. There's all this destruction, people are dying. It's very gruesome. But there's a scene where this one, one of the guys in the squad, one of the guys we've been following his name is Mellish where he is defending this room, he and another guy, and the other guy dies, and Germans are just flooding in to the room and he's doing everything he can to keep them at bay and eventually he runs out of ammo. So the last guy comes in the room and he, like, throws his gun at him and tackles him and they start wrestling. And if you've seen the movie, you know that this is the most intense and the most gruesome part of the whole movie, because they are fighting for their lives. Mellish has his knife, his bayonet, and they're going back and forth to who can control the bayonet, who can get on top, who can apply pressure, and eventually the German gets him pinned and he kills him with his own knife and friends.
Speaker 1:This is the picture of wrestling that Paul is talking about in our passage. But there's a very key difference. The difference is that we have something that Mellish that all of the American troops, that no soldier in history has ever had before. We have the absolute assurance of victory Because what Jesus has done we are wrestling, yes, but we cannot lose, we cannot be defeated, because he has already definitively won. And, friends, what I hope we see from this passage, from our time today, is that this victory isn't just like a future thing, it's not just something that will be true one day.
Speaker 1:The whole point of this armor of God is that we are taking on Jesus' victory in our lives right now, and the breastplate in particular, the breastplate of righteousness, is all about how do we take Jesus' victory and appropriate it for our lives and protect ourselves. And what we're going to see today is what the breastplate does and how it protects us. And I'll tell you this just before we start the breastplate of righteousness is the key tool in our defense against the enemy's attacks on our inner life. We're going to see that in three ways today. We're going to see that in three parts. Today, we're going to see what the threat is, what does the enemy do? We're going to see what the breastplate does, how it protects us and then we're going to see how we can use it. How can we take Jesus' victory, how can we take the breastplate of righteousness and use it ourselves. So we're looking at three parts to see how we can defend ourselves from, defend our inner lives from the attacks of the enemy.
Speaker 1:But first let's pray. Lord, I just thank you for this day. I thank you for this place that we get together. I thank you for cooler weather today. Lord, you're very gracious to us and, lord, I just pray that as we open up your word and we dive into some difficult ideas and difficult concepts and, lord, things that are too big for us to talk about in one day, I pray that you'll help us, that you'll show us what you've got for us. Show us in your word, what you want us to see and want us to hear. I pray that you'll help us, that you'll show us what you've got for us. Show us in your word, what you want us to see and want us to hear. I pray that you open our eyes and ears and heart to your truth today and I pray, lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts would be glorifying to you, god, our Lord and our Redeemer. So in Jesus' name we pray amen. Amen, All right.
Speaker 1:First thing I want to talk about what is the threat? I want to read this first part of the passage again, verses 10 through 13. Last week I focused in a little bit on verse 11. This week we're going to focus in a little more on verse 13. So pay attention to that when we get there. 10 through 13,. I'm going to read again Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
Speaker 1:Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil, for we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against authorities, against cosmic power over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand the evil day and having done all to stand firm. So what does that part mean? What does the evil day mean? This is an expression in the Bible and it can mean many things, but most often what it means is it's the day when the enemy attacks. So if we were to think about World War II, american history, we would call Pearl Harbor the evil day. This is the day when the enemy attacked and brought us into war, and so it's all because of that attack and this is the thing that we're trying to prepare for this day of attack.
Speaker 1:And last week we talked a bit about these attacks. We talked about how the devil uses lies. He speaks lies. Jesus said that he is a liar. There's nothing in him but lies, and it's almost like nothing else can come out except lies. We saw that he uses these like weapons against us, and we saw that these lies can take root deep down inside us and can twist our insides, can distort things and, consequently, they can cause a lot of damage for us and the people around us. And so we saw the defense against that is to take truth like a belt and to wrap it around the deepest, most intimate parts of our hearts, of ourselves. And the picture Paul uses is that we're using truth like a belt to hold everything in place. Right, but simply applying truth is not enough in this battle. It's not enough. We need something that can defend our hearts, because one thing that he does is he twists the things that are inside us, even good things inside us, to try to distort and to try to lead us astray, try to make us do destructive things. Well, what does this mean? We get a really clear picture of this in the garden In Genesis 3,.
Speaker 1:Adam and Eve are in the garden and, if you remember, god says to them look, you can do anything, you can eat anything here. Don't eat from this tree. It's called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And do you remember the scene between Eve and the serpent? He says to her did God really tell you you couldn't eat anything here? And we see this is an example of one of his lies. He's distorting the truth to try to lead her astray, because we know the truth. No, no, god said eat anything you want. This is great, great space. Do anything, not this one thing? And so he's distorting the truth. He's trying to implant a lie that will lead her astray. Specifically, he's trying to implant the lie that God doesn't want Adam and Eve to have good things, the things that they need.
Speaker 1:But the story doesn't stop there. He goes on and he tells Eve look, you're not going to die if you touch the fruit. Here's the deal. God knows that if you eat this fruit, you'll be like him. And he's holding out on you. He doesn't want good things for you. He's twisting, he's playing on Eve's feelings, he's playing on her experiences. He wants her to see something that's not true. He wants her to act on it. But here's the deal. This is not ultimately what motivates Eve to eat the fruit. Do you know this?
Speaker 1:In the passage we see that. And then there's this strange line where it says and then Eve looked at the fruit and she saw that it looked delicious and nutritious and she said I think this really will give me wisdom. And it was then that she took the fruit and she ate it. And so we have to ask ourselves, friends, does God not want Eve to have things that are nutritious or delicious? Does God want to withhold wisdom from Eve? No, no. Wisdom from Eve, no, no.
Speaker 1:We know definitively that God wanted humanity to have good food, to have nutrition. God even had a plan for us to learn wisdom, to grow and go back to the devil's lies. God does, in fact, want us to be like him. But see, the devil took things that were good in Eve's heart and twisted them and led her astray with them. See, eve's good desire for nutritious food turned into her eating something poisonous. And Eve's good desire for wisdom turned to Eve deciding for herself what is right and wrong. And, most importantly, eve's desire to be like God turned into her making herself out to be God.
Speaker 1:You see, this is what our enemy does. This is what he does. He takes the things in us, the good things, and he corrupts and he distorts, and what he wants is for us to lose sight of what's true and what's good, and he takes these things that were meant to point us to God and leads us to evil with them. This is his ploy and really, this is why the belt of truth is not enough. Because we need truth, we need something that can protect our insides from getting all twisted up. We need something to defend ourselves from these direct attacks. We need something to defend our heart and our gut. And that might sound strange, because here in 2024, that madness in Wisconsin that means something. When we think about our heart and our gut, it means specific things.
Speaker 1:But for the first century person, I don't think I need to tell you they had a very different view of how the human body worked, especially among Jewish people. In the first century, they believed. Well, first of all, let me say this they knew basically what internal organs did. They knew that the heart pumped blood throughout the whole body. They knew how bowels worked, they knew intestines, all these things, but they thought that, since the heart was the center of the person, that it pumped blood throughout the whole body, that it was also delivering the, or that it was also the source of the person's whole kind of self, whole identity, and they thought that each of these internal organs served additional functions beyond just the biological functions. So the idea is that the heart, along with pumping blood throughout the body, the heart was the place in the person where you could find their will and their desires. This was a place in the person where you could see what they valued most. This is also a place where virtues came out of and our failings came out of our heart.
Speaker 1:The idea is that the heart is the center of the person, and this is kind of similar to how we think about hearts. Some of this resonates with us, right, but the primary way that we talk about hearts today is we think of hearts as the place where your emotions come from. But see the ancient person that was your bowels. So there's this passage in Philippians where Paul is talking to these Christians and he's appealing to them. He's like hey, if you have any sympathy, if you have any love for your brother, if you have any affections, then you'll X, y and Z, and literally that word affections we might translate it if you have any feelings for one another. But literally Paul is saying hey, if you have any bowels for one another, then you'll do this. Husbands, are you telling your wives that you have bowels for her? I tell every morning you can ask Kinsey, I wake up, kinsey, I have deep bowels for you.
Speaker 1:And so in the ancient mind, the heart and the bowels, they serve these different purposes. So if you think the book of Jeremiah, there's this quote so the heart is deceitful above all things. He's not saying that emotions, that feelings, are deceitful above all things. He's saying that the center of yourself, that your will and your desires are deceitful above all things. He's not saying your emotions are untrustworthy. He's saying you're untrustworthy, sorry.
Speaker 1:And so when we think about the bowels from the ancient perspective, this is where feelings come from, this is where emotions come from, this is where your personality comes from, and so you can see this picture of the self comes from your internal organs. And this might sound really strange to us, but think about it for a second. When you're excited physiologically, where do you feel that? I can tell you right now, I feel it right here. I feel anxiety right here, if I didn't know better, that's my bowels, right? I'm feeling a lot of feelings in my bowels right now. Don't read too much into that, no. But when you're angry, where do you feel it? You feel it in your gut, right? You feel strong feelings, we feel it here.
Speaker 1:So, in their minds, heart is the center of the will, the center of desires, the center of the self, the motivating, acting, driving force in our lives. And the bowels are the center of our feelings and our emotions and our personality, our kind of experiential center of our lives. And the Bible says that the devil wants to attack both of these things. He wants to attack both your heart and your bowels because he wants to lead us to destruction, because he knows that if he can get to one of those, he can affect the other and he can destroy your whole person. And specifically today, what we're going to talk about is there's so much to this, guys, there's so much to this. But specifically, we're going to talk about one path that he uses the path from your emotions to your heart, and we're going to talk about how the devil wants to attack your feelings and distort your feelings, to get to your heart, to lead you astray.
Speaker 1:All I have to say you can see, if the devil is attacking you here and here, then we need a piece of armor that's going to cover this part. Some of us need a little more armor than others to cover this part of ourselves, and so hence why we need a breastplate. And so this is a note about the breastplate. Sometimes, when we think about it, we think just the chest, the literal word here this is fun is we need a thorax of righteousness. So we need something that's going to cover us, from neck to thighs, basically, and protect us. And so the first question we ought to ask about this breastplate is what kind do we need? Is metal going to work? Is cloth? Do we need stardust? What is going to protect us and protect our insides? And Paul tells us in verse 14, us, in verse 14, you can see, actually I don't think it says in the bulletin In verse 14, paul says to put on the breastplate of righteousness.
Speaker 1:So how in the world. Does righteousness protect our inner life? That is a great question. We're going to talk about that today. We need righteousness to protect our lives, but first let's understand what in the world righteousness means, because, again, for us today this means something completely different. If I was talking to one of you and I'm describing a third person and I said, oh, he is so righteous, that's not a good thing. Right, like when we say that we mean, oh, this guy is so big on himself, he thinks he's so much better than us. We use righteousness like an insult almost always outside of the church, basically always.
Speaker 1:But righteousness in the Bible, put very simply, means to be right, and there's two aspects to it. There's two really key pieces to righteousness. There is a passive quality and there is an active quality of righteousness. Passively, it refers to being right with someone. So this typically means being right with the law, being right with the government, to be good standing with the king in particular, and so, in other words, passively, righteousness is relational. Right now, to the best of my knowledge, I am righteous with the American government. There are no outstanding warrants. Again, I feel like, to the best of my knowledge, I am righteous with the American government. There are no outstanding warrants, again, I feel like, to the best of my knowledge, no criminal activity, and the government is not out to get me. I think, again, if you know something, no. So in other words, you can say I am righteous with the American government.
Speaker 1:We think of it as this kind of big, lofty thing, but it's really a true, false. Either you're in good standing or you're not. And so in the Bible when we talk about righteousness, passive righteousness, we're talking about being in good standing with God. Are you in good standing with God? And the active component is similar and in fact it's related, but it's not exactly the same. The active component of righteousness is all about doing the right thing. It's all about externally acting in right ways. You know, following the law, not causing problems, is great, but not doing bad things is not enough to be righteous. You have to do good things, and one of the most clear examples of this in the Bible is fighting for justice. Someone who fights and pursues justice in the Bible is called someone who does righteousness. And so the idea is you are externally acting, making things be right. And so here's the deal In the Bible. These two things are not just related, they are dependent on each other, are not just related, they are dependent on each other.
Speaker 1:And when I say that, it makes sense to us oh, if you do good things, you will be a good person. If you do righteousness, you will be righteous. And yes, sure, that's true. But the Bible really drives home the opposite relation. Opposite relation.
Speaker 1:The Bible says very often that being righteous is the source of doing righteousness. And we see this, we see this in modern psychology. There's this thing called the Corresponsive Principle, and it's this idea that the traits let me say this it's the idea that our experiences tend to reinforce the behaviors that bring us to those experiences. Let me say this differently the traits that lead us to situations tend to be the traits that those situations reinforce, traits that those situations reinforce. The Corresponsive Principle says that we, as humans, tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. And so what does that mean in our context? Well, if we think about righteousness like this trait, then people who are righteous will do righteousness and then become more righteous, and the inverse is true People who are unrighteous will do unrighteousness and become more unrighteous. It's a cycle, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1:Have you ever seen the show Seinfeld? This is what the series is all about? Friends. They start off as relatively normal but self-absorbed people and by the end of it do you know how the series ends? They get arrested for being so terrible that they let another man get beat up in front of them and they don't do anything about it. And the whole show is this case study on how can someone start from an unrighteous position and become more of themselves. All the time it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1:So let me say this another way, a way that relates a little more to what we're saying today. What we find is that our internal realities determine our external actions and then affect our internal realities, and that specific axis is the place where the devil wants to do battle, where he wants to attack, where he wants to distort and where he wants to twist. And again, there are so many dimensions to this. There's so much here. I can't talk about it all today, but what I want to focus on today is that one of the aspects of this that we see is that the devil wants to attack and distort our feelings and our emotions in order to lead our hearts astray. In other words, you could say that the devil wants to inflame our bowels, to give us heartburn. Thank you, okay, that's fine.
Speaker 1:How about this one? You've heard the expression that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. You've heard that the Bible says that a way to every person's heart is through their bowels. There you go, man. I was really proud of that one. That's okay. This seems silly, this is funny, but truly what we see is the devil wants to attack and twist our feelings, to distort our hearts, to distort our sense of self, to distort our will, to distort the center of our lives. Because we know, jesus told us that what is in your heart is what will come out in your actions and your words, and so if he can find a way in through your feelings, through distorting your bowels, as it were, he will, and he does. Let's unpack that more. There's a book that has been very influential for Ben and consequently for me, a book called Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd. You've probably heard us talk about this a lot. You're going to hear it a lot more, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:And Chip Dodd, christian and a psychologist, practiced for many years and over the course of his time he took from scripture and from his experience in counseling eight feelings. He identifies eight feelings. Don't get tripped up on that, but he identifies eight feelings and, most importantly, he identifies what scripture says these feelings ought to do and the ways that they can go wrong. And so the idea is that for each emotion, there's an intended design behind it, there's something that this is supposed to do. It's like when we feel fear, this should tell us I'm not in control right now. There is something that is big and scary and I need help. It should move us to ask for help, and then, especially if there's things to be fearful of that are ultimate, it should drive us to God, and so the idea is that fear should be a tool for us to learn to trust God more.
Speaker 1:But we all know the ways that fears can go bad. Right, fear can have a dark side, for sure, and Dodd calls this impairment. But let me say this, let me use the language we're using today the devil can twist and distort even healthy good things like fear and lead us to very dark places, and we know this right, because think about someone who has a lot of fear relationally with other people. One of the things that we see happen time and again is that people who experience so much fear, relationally, will do what They'll try to control. They'll try to control others. They'll fight for control. Sometimes they'll use really dirty tactics for it. We've all experienced this right. What is this? But this is fear that the devil has turned dark Again. God says impaired, I would say distorted, twisted.
Speaker 1:So one of the feelings thatd identifies is the feeling shame, and this is hard for us. This language is very loaded for us. Shame in our context can mean anything from like guilt to embarrassment, to all kinds of things. But let me tell you how he defines it and really one of the key ways the Bible uses it. But let me tell you how he defines it and really one of the key ways the Bible uses it. Shame is this experience of seeing yourself accurately. Shame is the experience of feeling that I am limited, that I am small all things considered. And so the idea is that if you read the daily practice last week, ben talked about feeling shame. Playing basketball with an NBA player, I'm going to know very quickly how big I am on the basketball court when I play against Giannis Is his name, sorry when I play against Giannis, I'm going to know very quickly how small I actually am on the basketball court. And so shame is made to help us to understand our limitations Again, to get help, to look to God to have him help us with these things. And so, with this definition in mind keep this definition in mind we can see that there is good and bad shame. And let me give you a perfect example of this.
Speaker 1:I, for the probably two months at the beginning of the year, experience shame every Sunday, and no, not from preaching, we'll get to that later From putting away the coffee equipment. Every week we have this big black bin that we put all the coffee stuff into, and every week I came face-to-face with my limitations vis-a-vis my lower back and without fail, without fail, I had to wrestle with my limitations and my weaknesses in my back every week. And healthy shame. Houston is going to say, okay, I have not been doing my physical therapy exercises. You know, my back's a little weaker right now, not in the greatest shape. I should ask for help. I should ask someone help me lift this. Or maybe just at the very shape I should ask for help. I should ask someone help me lift this. Or maybe just at the very least, bare minimum, just engage my core and recognize that I'm not as strong as I used to be, or unhealthy.
Speaker 1:Shame. Houston can show up and I can say no, I have to lift this box, because if I don't, I'm weak or I'm worthless or I am messed up. And then what happens? I tweak my back without fail Two months in a row. Every Sunday yes, ben asked what. Every Sunday, I hurt my back because I cannot learn a lesson to save my life. Because I cannot learn a lesson to save my life. And look, this is funny, right? Oh ha ha. Houston, you know, is dumb and he hurts his back. But look, isn't this like the exact kind of dialogues that we're having with the enemy? Isn't this the exact kind of thing that he's playing on in us? How about this? Maybe this will feel closer to home?
Speaker 1:I often hear something like hey, houston, I noticed that you haven't spent time in the word this morning. Not really done much praying today, have you? And I say, yeah, you know what? That's right, I haven't. I haven't spent time in the Word, I haven't prayed today. And he says, huh, kind of a wonder that they let you get up and preach on Sundays, isn't it? And I say, yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:It is very strange for me to get up and talk about the goodness of reading your Bible, the goodness of prayer, and I don't do it. I must be a hypocrite, I must be a fraud, I must be terrible. And then, inevitably, what happens from there is that now I'm feeling what we would call bad shame, toxic shame, and what happens? What do you think happens? Do you think that I just move on and have a great day? No, no, I'm inevitably going to be a destructive person to the people around me, because my world is now distorted by my inflamed and twisted shame. And ask my wife Kinsey how does that go? How does that turn out for us? It's not well, it's not good, it's not good.
Speaker 1:And I wonder if anyone here knows about this kind of dialogue. I wonder if anyone here knows this experience of seeing yourself and having that shame inflamed and distorted and then suddenly it's very, very self-destructive and harmful to the people around us. The question is what do we say to that? What can I do to defend my heart and my gut against these kinds of attacks? What can protect me? And it's the breastplate of righteousness. But, man, how in the world do we use that right? How do I take this thing and protect myself because I am under attack.
Speaker 1:Well, friends, I hope that if you hear nothing else today, if you miss every other part of this, that you will hear this the breastplate of righteousness is not our righteousness, but Jesus. We need to put on and defend ourselves with his righteousness, because we know this, because this passage in Ephesians, this whole passage about the armor of God, is actually playing off of this Old Testament passage, isaiah 59. It's this incredible scene where the prophet Isaiah is telling Israel about this really hard time that's going to come upon them, this day of evil that they're facing. He said that they're going to be taken away into slavery and to exile, but there is hope because God will come and do something about it. In this passage, god is telling them about what he's going to do to defeat evil and rescue them. And he tells them that, even though they were corrupted and sinful, and even though their hands were bloody, even though their mouths were just full of lies, even though they were lost and in the dark, that he was going to save them. And not only that he promised to defeat their oppressors and ultimately defeat sin and death and set them free.
Speaker 1:And we get this scene in Isaiah 59, incredible scene where God is pictured like a king preparing for war, and it says that he takes inventory of his kingdom. He looks around and he sees that justice has gone dark. He sees that the world is corrupt. He sees that there's no one left standing in his kingdom, no one who can go to battle for him, no one, no man or woman, who is righteous enough to stand. Do you know what he does? He stands up and he puts the armor on himself Because he is going to war. And do you know the armor that he puts on? It says this Isaiah 59. It says that he puts on righteousness as a breastplate, he puts on salvation as a helmet and he goes to war. And we know that he will win. He did win Because 2,000 years ago we know that God himself came to earth.
Speaker 1:He came to the battleground to fight this battle for us. He came as a man and we know that Jesus lived the perfect life, that he was righteous. And we know that Jesus lived the perfect life, that he was righteous, fully righteous. He always did the right thing, he always had a right relationship with God and he died a criminal's death. Why? Why did he die a criminal's death, because that was our punishment. He took his own righteousness, his breastplate of righteousness, took it off and gave it to us and he took the wrath that we deserved.
Speaker 1:And you know the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John says that when Jesus is on the cross, they strip him naked, they take his clothes and they hang him up naked and ashamed. And you know what they do with those clothes they divide them, they give them to the people who are killing him. Do you get the picture, friends? This is it, this is the gospel that Jesus took the righteousness off of his own back, gave it to us who were killing him, and then he went to the cross naked and ashamed for us. Why? So? We wouldn't have to. So we wouldn't have to. So you and I could go about our lives clothed with Christ's righteousness is what the scripture says Jesus, covering our weaknesses, our shame, covering our sins, covering all this messed up stuff here, protecting our heart and our guts.
Speaker 1:So in those moments when the enemy is attacking our feelings and saying that you are worthless, you are a waste, you're a failure, we say no Because we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when God looks at us, he sees Jesus, and he doesn't see a waste. Or he doesn't see someone who's worthless. He sees someone who is worth dying for. He doesn't see a waste, he sees a treasure. Do you know? When he looks at you, he doesn't see a failure. He sees a beloved child. Do you understand this? The answer is no, we don't. We don't understand this.
Speaker 1:This is the Christian life. The Christian life is us wrestling, trying to take this truth and work it into our hearts and really believe one day that this is true of us. This is the path ahead of us. This is what it means to put on the breastplate of righteousness, to take Jesus' clothes and put them our back. And here's the deal. All the time, we're going to put that shirt on and we're going to say this doesn't fit me, in my case, it's too small, it's not right. And the challenge ahead of us is every day saying no, it doesn't feel like it fits me. No, the enemy wants to tell me that I look like an idiot, but the truth is is that this is mine now because he's given it to me.
Speaker 1:So I want to end with just two thoughts, two maybe, let's say, more tangible thoughts. First of all, if you don't know Jesus as your Savior, you don't have this defense. You're vulnerable. Your heart, your gut are vulnerable to attack, and if we think that righteousness, that goodness, is the thing that we're going to put on to protect ourselves, the truth is that ours is always going to fall short. You know Mother Teresa. Her diaries were published at the end of her life and this blew me away. What we find in her diaries, mother Teresa of all people, is that she wrestled all the time with whether or not God was there, whether or not he could ever love her, whether or not she could ever have something of value to offer God and friends. If Mother Teresa was not good enough, I don't know what the hope is for me, except Jesus and his righteousness freely given. So if you don't know what that means, come find me. Let's talk about it, please. I believe this is life or death stuff.
Speaker 1:Second, for those of us who are Christians, who are following Jesus, we need to ask the question okay, how do we get in the practice of putting on the breastplate of righteousness? And here's what I think. One of the things that we need to do is to. This might sound weird practice, defending ourselves and when I think about the way that so much of us approach like our spiritual lives, like myself especially, it's kind of wild, because I'm thinking about how little I prepare or practice or think ahead of time for these kinds of things and then just hope in the moment I'm going to figure it out. And I think about, like what if I tried to learn how to parachute that way? Right, that is not going to go well, right, no one just gets a brief lesson about the principles of parachutes and then jumps out of an airplane, right, like it's a whole process, it's a fully, it's a full process. So many steps. You learn the principles, you learn how to pack a chute Dan, you tell me if any of this is wrong. Later you learn how to pack a chute, you practice pulling the cord, you do some practice jumps with someone else, and then one day you jump yourself.
Speaker 1:And I think the truth is that we just don't take seriously this battle that we're in and we don't prepare ourselves for the conflict, we don't prepare ourselves for the attack. And so here's what I think that looks like when you are under attack by the enemy, when you are under attack by the enemy by another person by our own internal monologue. How will you defend yourself? What will you put in front of these attacks, so to speak, to be okay? And for most of us, tell me if this dialogue sounds familiar. You know, our daughter, estella, is two years old, and so much of our experience is just saying have we screwed her up too much? Yet, please, god, no. And just hoping. And inevitably man, I'm sure you know this, inevitably I'm going to find comfort in seeing another parent and saying, okay, they did the same thing, I'm probably okay.
Speaker 1:Or where it gets really dark is me saying, well, I don't do this, so I'm okay, but what am I doing there? What I'm saying is that my defense, the thing that makes me okay, is that I'm doing good things. What happens when I find someone who is just definitively a better parent than me? What happens when I find someone who is just definitively a better parent than me? I'm dead right, like I'm just completely destroyed. And so how am I going to defend my insides when I hear these narratives of you're a bad parent, you're messing things up, you're doing this and that? What am I going to say? I'm going to practice. I'm going to practice reciting the gospel. I'm going to practice this whole dialogue.
Speaker 1:When the devil says you are so messed up, god doesn't want anything to do with you, and I will say, yes, I am messed up, yes, I have failed, but no, you're wrong. He's not abandoned me. No, it's not true that he doesn't want anything to do with me. You see, it's this practice of us saying, yes, I did that, yes, that is true, I failed, but my relationship with God is not on the line, my value is not on the line here. In other words, we are defending ourselves with Jesus' righteousness because we're saying, no, you're wrong. My standing with God was never dependent on how good a parent I could be. My standing with God was never dependent on how good of a person I could be. My standing with God was never dependent on fill in the blank.
Speaker 1:And there's a song, a song that we sing Before the throne of God above, and there's a lyric that I think captures this really well. It says when Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward, I look and see him there, who made an end of all my sins. So what the enemy wants to do is he wants to point out your inner life, your inner reality. He wants to twist your feelings, twist your emotions. He wants to attack you with them like a weapon. He wants to destroy you with them, and what we have to remember, what we have to remember, is that my okayness does not depend on me, and that is a very powerful tool. Let's pray.