The Armor We Must Wear

Let's pray and ask God to give us that awareness. Because I'm telling you guys, if the gospel can get into us and we're really believing it, we will explode. This place will explode with the power of God. Dear God, we, we have so much to learn and there's a sense, Lord, that I feel in this text, there is so much promise in this passage.

Please let us see the promise that is here, the hope that is here for ourselves and for each other, that we would be putting on our breastplate of righteousness ourselves. And when we see a brother or sister or a spouse or someone that's really downcast and, and defeated and discouraged over their sin that we would say, hey, let me help you get the breastplate on. And we minister to one another in this way. As good faithful fellow soldiers who care about one another.

Lord, I want my breastplate on and I want the breastplate of all my brothers and sisters on. I don't want to see them getting attacked and getting injured when they don't need to if they're just wearing their armor. I don't want that to happen to me. So help us, Lord, to wrap ourselves in these realities and enjoy the rest and the joy, the peace that comes from them.

Teach us as we continue to work our way through this text, guide us as we process these things in our care groups tonight. May we come out of all of this study of the text, Lord, fully armored, confidently fighting for the glory of Jesus. It's in his name we pray, Lord. Amen.

Amen. Some awesome reminders. Let's stand and let's sing to each other, these reminders that we've been, just blessed with in this message. You can look on the screen behind me or turn to hymn 315.

If you reach down below the seat in front of you, there's a hymn book, hymn 315. Let's sing out our righteous standing before God through Christ, the solid rock. Let's sing it together, a cappella. My hope is big.

on nothing less than Jesus. Righteousness. I did not trust. Sweet and brave.

Holy be on Jesus' name, on Christ the Son. I stand. The ground is sinking sand. sinking sad.

When darkness. Lovely face, I rest on him. Unchanging grace in every heart. And stormy gales And Yeah.

Oh, I cried, Right Oh. sinking. Sinking born. When.

When he shine. I In him be found in his. And for. cry.

Rock her sinking sad. And, I, Lord, we thank you for that righteousness we have for your Son Jesus Christ. Lord, may we walk in that righteousness today. Lord, may it be ever present with us, and as has already been prayed, may we help each other.

Lord, keep this righteous standing before one another's eyes. We thank you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.

I want to just give you one announcement before you guys leave. you remain safe because we're going to depart. just we've got those flyers for the outreach, I wanna encourage you guys to take, as many of those as you can. If every family would take, 10 of those flyers, then we'd be able to get out about 1000, flyers this week or these, those little 4 by 6 cards.

So I really encourage you guys to get them out, invite people to come to hear the gospel April 8th. Well, let me ask you guys to turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 6. For our time of study in the word this morning. Ephesians chapter 6, we're doing a verse by verse study through the book of Ephesians.

As we continue in our study of this book. This morning, we come to Ephesians chapter 6, verse 14. And my goal is to focus on verse 14, this morning, Lord willing, and throat willing. And the title of the message this morning is the armor we must wear, the armor we must wear.

We're going to begin to focus on the armor we've been given by God, and hence the armor that we absolutely must wear, if we're going to be protected, the way that God wants us to be protected in the warfare that we engage in. Now folks, we all know that this is true, that normally when a government sends soldiers into battle, the government that sends those soldiers typically assumes responsibility to provide those soldiers with armor, as well as with weaponry, right? The government doesn't say we're sending you off in battle.

And by the way, do you have a gun?

Do you have a Helmet, if not, you can get one at Walmart or the gun shop, and you're going to have to come up with this on your own. No, it's just any government throughout history, when they send soldiers in the battle, they take it upon themselves to provide those soldiers with the weapons and the armor that those soldiers need. And the soldier in that army has every right to expect. Their government to do just that, with the war in Iraq that has been raging over the last 4 years, if you've been reading the newspapers at all, frequently, just every few months, there's some big development when it comes to armor as soldiers may be on the field, especially early in the war, were complaining.

About insufficient armor. There were soldiers dying as a result of not being adequately equipped with sufficient armor both on their Humvees as well as the vest, the protective vest that they were wearing, and in terms of the protective vests that the soldiers were wearing. Our military has been tweaking that best. It's undergone 5 different redesigns and upgrades in order to save more lives and provide our soldiers with the protection that they really need.

when we think about the warfare that we as Christians are supposed to engage in, let's think for a minute about just our own war., as we've already been learning a few weeks ago, we've learned that we have to battle against the devil who schemes. He is always scheming, always up to something. And have we not learned that the devil is very good at what he does? He hates you, he wants to destroy you.

He is so good. And his schemes that he can walk into the Garden of Eden, absolutely perfect paradise, and 10 minutes later, walk away, having gotten Adam and Eve to do the unthinkable against God that brings death into the world. And if he could do that to Adam and Eve, who walked with God in the cool of the day, then what can he do with us? He's always scheming, always up to something, and he's always scheming for your destruction, and your ruin.

We also have to fight against demonic intelligences. listen, we believe the Bible, so we just believe what the Bible says. And in verse 12, Paul says, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. These Very powerful, wicked, disgusting enemies that oppose us.

And so if we're going to be what God wants us to be, we got to reckon with these beings, these intelligent, powerful, demonic beings who are opposing us and fighting against us. Where do we fight? We fight in a dark and an evil environment. We are living.

And the evil day, Paul says in verse 13, he also speaks in verse 12 of this darkness that we are living in. The devil and his demonic intelligences are succeeding and winning victory after victory in the lives of millions, even billions of people around the world, creating an evil environment in which we have to live and operate that exerts its own pressure against us. We also have to deal with flaming arrows that are hurling at us and at our children and at our spouses and at our brothers and sisters and at this church at all times.

And so with these flaming missiles going in every direction, and all of this scheming and these powerful beings that are opposing us, the question is, how in the world, how in the world will we survive a day?

In this environment. God has called us in the book of Ephesians to do right, to abstain from what is wrong. He has called us to be pure in an impure world, to not have immorality, even be whispered among us in terms of being in our lives. We are to be a light in a dark place, we're to make an impact, live a life of good works.

We are to experience the very fullness of God. We are to be good spouses, good parents, good children, good employees, good employers, and all of these specific calls that Paul has been delivering to all of us. We need to realize that in between where we are now, and being all of that, that we are called to be is all of this opposition that we have to war against. They oppose us at every step of the way.

And so how will we succeed in this warfare, in this battle, this cosmic battle that we are engaged in, to be what our God has called us to be? Well, we've already learned a few things. We've learned, number one, that we must know our enemy. we got to know our enemy so that we know what we're dealing with and, so that we can say that we're not ignorant of his schemes.

We've already talked about all that. Secondly, we've got to be strong. We got to be strong. Verse 10, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

And what that means is we've got to be militarily strong in the Lord, and we've also got to be strong minded. We can't be whining and complaining about why it's so hard. No, this is war. When we became a Christian, whether we realized it or not, we enlisted in the army of God.

And this is warfare. And so we must be strong and be strong minded. And then thirdly, this is where we began to get to. A couple of weeks ago is we must put on the full armor of God, armor that is fashioned by God, and hence we know that it's perfect.

And it's the armor that was worn by God Himself, and he's sharing his armor with us and he's saying, I've worn this. Why don't you wear my armor, and then Also, Paul describes it as the full armor of God. In other words, the fully sufficient armor of God. Paul is basically telling us, guaranteeing us that if we wear this armor, the way that we should, and when we should, we will find that armor to be perfectly sufficient for its intended purposes to protect us and help us to engage in battle.

In fact, I said this a couple of weeks ago. Let me reiterate this., Paul in verse 10 says, be strong in the Lord. And then it seems like moving into verse 11, he then starts dealing with a different topic, be strong in the Lord. And now here's something else.

In addition to being strong in the Lord, you need to put on the full armor of God. Actually, that's not the way it is. He says, be strong in the Lord. And now he says, let me tell you how you can be strong in the Lord.

You become strong in the Lord by putting on your armor and taking these weapons that I will be telling you about. In fact, let, let me show you in the text itself, how this is the case. If you look at the screen, In verse 10, he says, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, and the verb that is translated be strong is the verb that we get our English word dynamite from. OK?

this is Dunamite. And Paul is saying basically be Dunamite in the Lord, be strong in the Lord. And then coming into verse 11, he says, put on the full armor of God, so that you will be Dunamite, so that you will be strong enough to stand firm against the schemes of the devil, verse. 13, therefore, take up the full armor of God so that you will be Dunamite, so that you will be strong enough to resist in the evil day.

Verse 16, in addition to all taking up the shield of faith with which you will be Dunamite, strong enough to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. You see how the theme of strength, continues throughout Paul's talk about armor. In other words, you put on this armor and take this weaponry. You will make yourself militarily strong in the Lord.

This is a part of how we strengthen ourselves. And understand, folks, that the purpose of putting our armor on, for example, the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness and the shield of the faith and so forth. The purpose of putting that armor on is not so that we can stand motionless and take all these hits and not get hurt. That's, that's not Paul's goal here.

Paul is wanting us to put on this armor because when we have this armor that is guaranteed to protect us, it frees us up to fight more aggressively, knowing we're not going to get hurt. And knowing we're not going to get killed. Do you understand that? you take a football player in the NFL.

Why do they just run full speed into other guys? Just, just breakneck speed, on a kickoff or whatever, just full speed and they just plow into a guy. Why do they do that? Well, they get paid a lot to do that.

That's one reason I, But the reason that they're willing to be so aggressive on the field is because they know they've got their armor on. They're wearing helmets and shoulder pads, and they know that it's not likely that they're going to get hurt. But I guarantee you, you take the helmet off of a player and the shoulder pads off of that player, you remove any padding from an NFL football player and you send them out on the field. For a series of downs, I guarantee you he would play differently and much more attentively than he would if he were fully armored.

And so Paul wants us to put our armor on. so that now we can stand there and just take all these hits and not get hurt, but because we will fight more passionately and more aggressively, knowing as we're fighting, that we can do this, and we're not going to die. We're not going to spiritually die. We're not going to be spiritually injured because we have this armor on.

In 1 Peter 3:13, Peter asked Christians the question, who are being persecuted. He said, Who is there to harm you? If you do what is right, if you prove zealous for what is right, who is there to harm you? Oh, yeah, they can harm your body, they may even kill you.

But who is there to do real genuine harm to your soul, if you're doing what's right? And, what boldness would that give Christians to know I am armored. No one can do real hurt to me as long as I'm wearing this armor. So what, I'm going to throw myself into the battle with bravery and with courage.

We're much more strong-minded when we're armored. In this battle, much more aggressive. We fight more aggressively and freely with this armor on. So, does that make you interested in the armor?

Good What? We could talk about something else. Does that make you interested in the armor? OK, well, then we'll move on.

what we're going to do this morning is we're going to look at two pieces of armor that Paul is going to tell us to put on that we find in verse 14. And the first piece of armor that he tells us to put on is the belt of truth. The belt of truth. He says, stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with truth.

Now, let's talk for a minute about the belt. essentially, I want you to imagine a Roman soldier who is getting dressed for battle and he puts a red tunic on that comes down to maybe the middle of his thighs, maybe a little lower, but definitely above the, the knees. And, When that's all he has on, he looks like he's in his jams, not impressive as a warrior at all. The garments, the tunic is a free flowing tunic, and it definitely was just baggy and just hanging there on his body.

But then he takes a leather girdle, literally, a leather belt that's really thick. I'm wearing about a 1 inch belt here, but imagine something that's about 1 ft, or a little bit under a foot in terms of its height. And he takes that leather belt and he wraps it around his gut, all right, sucks his gut in. Guys, how to do this.

And, and then he ties that, to provide support, before he puts his armor on. And as that soldier does that, one of the reasons, the breastplate's going to go over that, so that girdle did not necessarily protect the soldier from like being stabbed with a spear or what have you, but it did provide support and leave the soldier feeling a sense of confidence about what he is about to do. In fact, the, the best modern day equivalent of this girdle or Belt is the weight lifting belt.

Have you ever seen that on, Olympic athletes?

some of you have probably worn them. Some of you may be wearing them now. but, but weightlifters use these, and actually, the studies that they've done, they've actually found that wearing them reduces stress on the lower back and prevents hyperextension of the back and it distributes the weight to the abdominal walls and, Reduces the compression on the discs that are in the vertebrae. studies have revealed all of this, but what, I don't know if they knew all of that back then, but the truth is that it actually did.

the center of our physical strength is our abdominal, just our trunk, and with that wrapped around the trunk of a Roman soldier, it would make him stronger and even beyond that, make him feel stronger. I was reading this week about weight lifting belts and they were saying that some, weightlifters had, commented, they said, I don't know if this really helps me or not, but it makes me feel more secure and confident when I'm wearing it. It does something psychologically to them.

It makes them willing to maybe try a little bit more weight than they would otherwise.

try. And so there's that psychological component to them. I, I go to the gym, from time to time, and one of the things I've noticed is that guys when they're wearing a weightlifting belt, even between sets, they just walk different, they just like I can take on the world and there's just a confidence about them. And so the Roman soldier puts the tunic on, he gathers that into this leather girdle and he tightens it, and it strengthens him.

It literally makes him physically stronger and more confident as a soldier. And so Paul is saying you need to put on the belt of truth. That's what the belt is. All right.

Put on the belt of truth. He says in verse 14, having girded your loins with truth. And so that raises the question, all right, where is the belt and what is the belt? If the belt is truth, then what is the truth so I know.

That I need to put it on. Well, truth can be a lot of things. I woke up this morning. That's a true statement.

So that is truth. Is that what I put around? there's a million true statements that are out there that are true enough, but is that the belt that I put on? What is the truth that we are to wrap tightly around our trunk?

Well, listen to what a couple of commentators say. Martin Lloyd Jones, 00, here it is. He wrote an eight volume set on the commentary set on the book of Ephesians, and this guy can say a lot about very little in scripture. You think I say a lot about a little, and go on and on.

Two of the volumes, these two books right here are on Ephesians 6:10-20. OK? Ephesians 6:10 to 20. There's, he says a lot about everything in this passage.

We won't take that time with this text. But he says, truth stands for the whole truth concerning salvation, the great message of salvation. O'Brien, one of my favorite commentators on the book of Ephesians, says that truth refers to the truth of God revealed in the Gospel. And let's let Paul give us commentary on the word truth.

If you said, Paul, what do you mean by truth that I need to wrap myself with, he would say, we'll go back to Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 13, where I clearly identify what the truth is. Look at what he says in verse 13. In him, you also, after listening to the word of truth, what is that? The gospel of your salvation.

So when Paul in Ephesians 6 says, wrap yourself tightly with truth, what he's saying is you wrap yourself tightly with the gospel, with gospel truth. As you prepare yourself for battle. In fact, we're going to find out, folks, that as we go through these pieces of armor, the truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet shod with the gospel of peace, the shield of the faith, and the helmet of the salvation, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, all of those things are merely synonyms for the gospel.

Paul's point in this passage is, I want you clothed with the gospel from head to toe.

I want the gospel in your left hand. Ha, I want the gospel in your right hand. It's all gospel from head to toe, and he uses synonyms to bring out different aspects of the gospel and we'll see that as it unfolds. But now he's speaking of the gospel as truth that we need to have wrapped around us.

Now, we can say this and you guys can say amen. Yeah, I need to wrap the gospel around my, my loins, amen. But what does it mean to do that? How do we practically, Do that.

it'd be nice if there were a physical gospel belt that we could just go to our closet and pull out and wrap it around us, and now we're, we have the benefit of that, but it's not a physical thing. And so, how do we wrap ourselves in the gospel? And folks, I'm going to say this a number of times as we look at the different pieces of armor, but this is basically what you do. To gird your loins with the gospel, gospel truth means to wrap yourself tightly in a conscious mindfulness of gospel truth.

It means to know the gospel, to be aware of the gospel, to wrap yourself in a mindfulness, in an awareness, in an ongoing awareness of gospel truth. One of the things we're going to learn in this passage is something that corrects the mistake that many Christians make. What happens in many of our Christian lives is, we're unsaved, we hear the gospel, we get saved, now, now we're converted, and we're like, oh Lord, thank you for saving me. And then we set the gospel aside and we move on to bigger and better things, even scriptural things.

And in this passage, the Lord is like saying, hey, hey, hey, hey, that, that right there that you put down, pick that up, pick it up. You still need it. In fact, that's your armor. Pick it up and wrap yourself in a conscious mindfulness of gospel truth every single day, moment by moment.

One of the things that I've realized in my own Christian life, just knowing my own weakness and tendencies to sin and an independent spirit is that if I wake up in the morning, And I don't begin by consciously meditating on the gospel, and I let my feet hit the floor. There's something. About my feet contacting the floor that does something to my head, my head just starts racing with a million things to do. And before I know it, I can go from one thing to the next to the next to the next, and at 10:00 in the morning, I'm like, what, I never even took time to pray.

I don't know if I'm the only one with that. That condition, What I've learned is before I even get out of bed, like my alarm goes off, I normally press the snooze once, maybe twice, so as not to strain the patience of my wife. But after the first or second time I press the snooze, I lie there in bed, and before my feet touch the floor, I start reviewing gospel truth. And, and, and this week especially studying this passage, I'm imagining myself girding my loins, wrapping myself in my gospel belt.

Now, lying there, it's easy to fall back to sleep. I can't go through all 20 stanzas of the gospel poem that's in the gospel primer, or quote a whole chapter of scripture, but I, I'm learning, just let, let's just do this briefly before I get out of bed. And here's what I've been saying to myself this week. A center IM.

Before I get out of bed, a sinner, I am, God's wrath I deserve. But Christ died my death, my life to preserve. Forgiven I am with righteousness dressed, that's our justification that I'll talk about in a minute. With God always for me forever.

I'm blessed. In other words, I am loved, I am favored by God's grace right now, I will be favored 4 hours from now. Everything that is true of me right now will be true of me tomorrow and the next day, and a trillion eons from now. Yes, I'm a sinner.

Yes, I deserve God's wrath, but Jesus died for me. And the result is that a whole lifetime of sins has been forgiven by God. Guys, think of the magnitude of the sins that we've committed against God, the millions of times that we have sinned against God, the little sins and the big sins and sins that we don't mind that other people know about, and then other sins that we would dare not share with anybody else, because we are so crushed with shame over those. sins that maybe we have committed, sins that at the moment we got saved, we easily cast them aside.

But even sins that since being saved are besetting sins that are stubbornly ingrained in our persons, sins that from some points of view didn't seem to hurt other people all that much. But then other sins that have wreaked havoc and brought hurt and pain to other people. We all have all of those kinds of sins, and there are millions of them, mountainous sins. And through Christ, when we came to Him by faith, God says, I forgive you.

Of all of that. To say I am forgiven is not a casual statement. That's like. That ought to take our breath away.

Forgiven I am. And not only that, but with righteousness dressed. And my God is always for me, and I am blessed. Just, just to take bullet point gospel truths and just let that go through my mind.

And visualize myself while saying those things, visualizing myself wrapping myself in gospel truth before my feet even hit the floor. It's a great start to a day, a great start to a day. So Paul says you need to wrap. The gospel truth around the center of your strength, and then the second piece of armor that we are to put on is the breastplate of righteousness.

After that girdle is wrapped around our loins, we then put over that the breastplate of righteousness, which for a Roman soldier often had, it was a metal sheet that protected. The front and also the back and so if someone took a dagger and tried to stab a Roman soldier in the heart, that dagger would bounce off. It would not penetrate. Their vital organs were protected.

The breastplate was very important. You got the heart, the liver., a bunch of important stuff, the lungs, inside, one's thoracic cavity and abdominal cavity, and all of that was protected by the breastplate of righteousness. In fact, you guys know the word thorax. how many of you have heard the word thorax, OK, or the thoracic cavity, which is like the chest cavity.

The Greek word translated breastplate is thoraa, Thoraa, which is the Greek word we get our English word thorax from. All right, this was the, Metal armor that protected the Roman soldier, their vital organs in their chest cavity and in their abdominal cavity as well. And so Paul says, you get the, your, your loins girded with fruit, but then also put on this breastplate that will protect your vital organs and save your life. You say, well, what is that breastplate?

Look at what he says. And having put on the breastplate of the righteousness, the righteousness. Put on the breastplate of the righteousness. Now, some commentators actually look at this and they say, well, the righteousness Paul is talking about is our own righteousness, righteous deeds, a righteous lifestyle.

I just have a really hard time with that. Because honestly, Paul never really seemed all that interested in being clothed with his, with his own righteousness. In Philippians 3, he says, I don't want to be found dressed in my own righteousness. I want to be dressed in the righteousness of God.

And I know for me, the primary battle I fight is the battle to actually be righteous and do righteousness. So I need some armor just to get me to that point where I even want to be righteous and do righteous deeds. And so the righteousness, the The justification that Paul is talking about is not our righteousness, but it is the righteousness of God. Another way of translating this is put on the breastplate of the justification.

All right, write that word justification down. and let me, let me say this before I tell you what it is. I think justification is 5 syllables. And for some of you, because that's 5 syllables, I've already lost you.

you're like, what, overload, not interested. I don't get into big theological terms. Let me, let me just throw this at you. People in our society really don't mind big words, if it's something they're interested in.

When you talk to people, even in this church, about the medications they take, some of the medications that are out there now are, they're long, they're weird sounding, they're hard to pronounce, and yet I talked to just average people, and man, they can just rattle those terms off. And they don't just rattle the terms off. they know what they are. They know what the milligrams are.

they've, Studied that and they, they know what effect it has on them. They, they know the benefits of taking them. They, they're studied and how this medication interacts with that medication if they happen to be taking both at the same time. And what, no one ever goes to the doctor and the doctor says, well, I think you need to take, he gives them some long word and they're like, not interested.

I, I don't even want to hear about it. I don't get into long words like that. They do get into long words like that. why?

Because it saves their life. And contributes to their physical health. Justification? Protects your vital organs.

It can save your life. It has saved your life. And so you ought to care. Yeah, it's 5 syllables, but it's pretty critical.

And it goes over your vital organs and protects you from the enemy, and from spiritual death, and from injury. And so you should be very interested in becoming very comfortable with this word and fluent in the knowledge of what justification is all about. And let me give you guys a definition of justification. Justification is one of the craziest doctrines in all of the Bible.

I still, I just shake my head when, when I consider it because it is so insane. Justification is this, you come to God with all of these mountain of sins that I spoke about a few minutes ago. You come to him and you look at Jesus, who died on the cross and shed his blood for the forgiveness of those sins. And you say, what, Lord, I can't save myself.

I can't contribute one I owe it to my salvation. But everything I need to be saved, I see that in Jesus and what he has done. And so I believe in him. He will be my savior.

In that instant, what God does. He pronounces you not guilty. Of all of the sins you've committed before you were saved, since you were saved, sins you've committed in your past, all the sins you have not yet committed, you are pronounced instantly not guilty of all of them. That's amazing enough.

But then God takes all of the righteousness of Jesus and he credits that to your account and says, I will now treat you. The way I treat my son, I will love you the way I love my son. I will relate to you the way I relate to my son, Jesus Christ, because his righteousness is credited to you. He takes our filthy, disgusting rags of sin off of us.

He washes us clean, then takes the perfect spotless righteousness of Jesus and clothes us with that as a robe. And he treats us as if we did everything that Jesus did. The result of that is that now we always enjoy gracious, favored status with God. Let that sink in.

We always are favored ones. We are always under the gracious, good favor of God as a result. That doesn't mean that God doesn't see our sin. He does see our sin.

You go out this afternoon and commit some sin, God will see that sin, but you're still favored by God as much as you were before you committed that sin. God loves and favors you with His grace so much that he will actually bring. Discipline into your life, conviction to your heart, so as to draw you away from that sin so that you might share in His holiness. Never.

What this means is as a justified one, God never gets frustrated with you. He will never give up on you. God never gets ticked at you. There is never one iota of wrath whatsoever in God's dealings with you.

Do you believe that? Do you believe that? for many years of my Christian life, I operated off of the assumption that God would get kicked at me. And if I committed some sin, and I'm coming to God, God would just be there with his arms folded, and he's just mad and, and I've got to beat myself up a little bit.

God, I'm really, really, really sorry. I promise, I'm sorry, and I won't do it again. And, and then eventually, God's countenance warms towards me and he's like, OK, I will forgive you this time. And I wouldn't have thought about it in those terms, but on a gut level, that was the God that I was seeking to relate to.

And it was utterly exhausting. I wasn't fully believing the gospel that I am clothed with the righteousness of Jesus. I am always under the good favor, the gracious favor of my God. Guys, dream a little bit.

Just dream and imagine yourself actually believing that on a practical level. What a difference that would make. How much would you love a God who just, who says all of my wrath was absorbed by Jesus, not 99%, and you got to bear 1% of my wrath, but all of it fell on Jesus. And now it is only love, grace, and deepest compassion that I have in my relationship with you without any admixture of wrath, whatsoever.

Paul says this righteousness that I'm speaking about. You got it as a Christian, whether you're aware of it or not, but it's also intended by God to be a piece of armor, and you need to put it on. You need to wrap yourself in a conscious mindfulness of it. In fact, listen to what Lloyd Jones says about how we actually clothe ourselves with the breastplate of righteousness.

He says, you put the breastplate of righteousness on yourself by reminding yourself of this truth and by relying utterly and solely upon it. So, your justification is there, you're saved, whether you're focusing on that or not. But if you really want to benefit even more from your justification to where it actually serves to protect you, From injury, from stumbling, from defeat, wrap yourself in a mindfulness of this doctrine of your justification. One writer says this, justification is a doctrine for the whole Christian life from start to finish.

It is not simply a doctrine for coming to Christ in the first place. Justification is a doctrine to live by each and every moment. And guys, let's just contemplate this as we, consider our justification. Think about just in practical terms, when we need our breastplate of righteousness or justification on.

When do we need to be wearing this breastplate? Well, we need to be wearing it on our bad days, right?, you're going throughout the day and you're frustrated because I didn't spend time with the Lord like I wanted to, and I've had some lustful thoughts go through my mind and I was lazy here and I just got off the phone talking to this brother, sister and the Lord, and when I think about it, I was bragging about myself. Oh, what disgusting pride I have in me. And man, the way that I talked to my kids just a few minutes ago, man, they're so precious.

I should have never talked to them in that way. That was hurtful to them. And now I'm thinking I'm going to relate to God. It's so easy for us on a bad day, for the devil to persuade us that we have no right to relate to God, when we need to realize on our bad days, what, my standing with God is a favored standing, and it's not at all based on my performance.

It is based on the righteousness and the performance of Jesus. And it's there. It's there all the time, waking or sleeping, good days and bad days. We also need to wear the breastplate of righteousness and remember our justification on our good days, our good days.

it's easy for us as Christians. This has happened to me, I spent time in the word, 30 minutes in the word, 30 minutes in prayer, had a rich prayer time, and man, the last 3 weeks, I've been in the word having my devotions every day, and I've been doing well. I've been talking to other people about the Lord and And able to lead a couple people to the Lord and this besetting sin that always has defeated me, periodically throughout my life, man, the last 3 weeks, I've not stumbled once and man, I'm just really going in a good direction.

And in those times, in those days where things are going well spiritually, here's what the devil does.

He comes and says, hey, you're doing real well. We're like, yeah, yeah, things are going well. That says you're, you're actually, More righteous than other people at Cornerstone, comparatively speaking. Yeah, yeah, that's probably true.

But here's the big lie. Devil says, you must be really special to God. You must be really favored by God. He must really like you.

Because you've been doing so well. And here's the most dangerous point. When we respond by saying, Yeah. Yeah.

As soon as you reach that place, all hell breaks loose against you. The fury of hell is unleashed against you, and a few hours later, a few days later, you look back on the mess you've made, and it's like, what happened? What did I do? How did I do these things?

And now that you've done so badly and you've failed, Now you've lost your good favored standing with God, and the devil totally set you up for it, and you allowed him to. Guys, on your bad days, you got to realize, what, my standing with God is based on Jesus' performance, not mine. His righteousness, not mine. And even on your good days, you have to be very careful to still be reminding yourself, what, things have been going well.

But my standing with God, my favorite status with God is because of what Jesus has done, not what I have done. I don't deserve God's favor anymore today, on this good day, than I do on my bad days. It is Jesus and His righteousness that causes me to enjoy this standing with God. It is so comforting to me to get up in the morning, and to tell myself, to wrap myself in the truth of the gospel, and to tell myself, what, I am dressed in Jesus' righteousness today.

This is crazy. My sin is gone. I'm dressed in his righteousness. I don't even know what today holds.

But I do know this, God will always look upon me and see the righteousness of Jesus, and I will be favored by God today, no matter what, not based on my performance. That takes so much pressure off of me. Does it you? It takes the pressure off of us, because it's all about Jesus' righteousness.

We believe in that on our bad days and on our good days. We need to remember this when we see sin in us, and we're just put off with ourselves. There have been times where, I've committed a sin and I feel like God doesn't even want to talk to me. And so I got to wait a couple of days to come around to God after he's cooled off a little bit.

And there have been times where I haven't even sinned, but I've been battling with the temptation so long, and to where I'm actually starting to think, I bet God is disgusted with me that I'm even having to battle with this. And I become timid in approaching God when again, my approach to God is always mine, because of the righteousness of Jesus. When we come to God and pray, we need to remember this. We need to remember this.

Listen to what Martin Lloyd Jones says and see if you cannot identify with this. He says, we turn to God in prayer. And the moment we get on our knees, the devil begins to act. What he does is to suggest that we are in no condition to pray to God.

He reminds us of our unworthiness, of our sinfulness, wakes up perhaps from a dim and distant past, something we did and holds it before us. Then turning himself into an angel of light, he tells us about the greatness and the glory, the majesty and the holiness of God. And he says, how can a person you pray to God. What excess has such a miserable, sinful worm into that glory everlasting?

God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. He is of such a pure countenance that he cannot even look upon sin. And here you are proposing to enter into the presence of God. A lot of that sounds really spiritual.

But it's a lie. We don't deserve to come into God's presence. But because Jesus shed his blood, our sins are forgiven, and we are justified by his blood, we're declared righteous by God. And so we have the right to come into God's presence, not because of our righteousness, or lack thereof, but because of Jesus, righteousness.

In my own life, there have been times where I've gotten up in the morning, it's like, man, I want to begin my day with prayer, and I get up and I start spending time in the word and start praying to God, and before I know it, a million other things are coming to my mind and I'm distracted and I have to keep drawing my mind back and, and then I start falling asleep and so what started out so well at the beginning of the day is now just crumbling into discouragement and And I began to think, God must be ticked at me.

how offensive is this for me to be in the presence of the Almighty and to be falling asleep and thinking of a million other things. And the devil so easily comes in those moments and says, you pathetic loser. God must be disgusted with you.

But to that we reply, what, I'm struggling right now, but I can come into his presence. Because of the righteousness of Jesus, and I claim that. What you're saying of me, Satan is true, but there's another truth, and that is Jesus' righteousness that gives me the right. To come into God's presence with my struggling self and enjoy his favor and his attentiveness to my prayers.

We also need to wear our breastplate on our deathbed. a strange thought, but they're actually Christians who on their deathbed have been assailed by the devil. And their moments of physical weakness attacked. And he causes them to doubt their salvation.

I remember about 2 1/2 years ago, Vernon Anderson, you guys remember him, just a dear saint of the Lord. a committed bachelor till the rapture, played the organ for our church, but he, died a couple of Novembers ago. But as his body was wasting away in his final weeks, there were two occasions where I was over at his house. And, on those occasions, the, the sun was setting, the shadows were being cast in the house, and I, I remember two occasions looking at Vernon, and he had this haunted look on his face.

And on those occasions, he, he seemed lost in thought. I said, what are you thinking? And he said, He said, Milton, do you suppose That this is happening to me because I'm under the judgment of God. That I have sinned and I'm under God's judgment.

Is this God's judgment? And both of those occasions, I responded by saying, oh, Vernon, and I preached the gospel to him and told him of the blood of Jesus, assured him in the forgiveness of God, reminded him of the righteousness of Jesus that covers all of our sin. And when we were done, just a couple of minutes of rehearsing the gospel, Vernon's face lit up. With a pensive smile, and he said, yeah, I suppose that's true.

Yeah. I suppose that's true. But what, I hate the devil. For attacking my brother in his moment of weakness.

When he didn't have the physical strength and hardly the spiritual strength to get his breastplate of righteousness even on. The devil's assaulting him. And on those occasions he needed the help of a brother getting that breastplate on, but once he got it on, it's like, yeah, and he was protected. So all throughout our lives, folks, this doctrine of justification, this gospel is not just something we need to get saved, and then we move on.

No, God says you pick that up, pick it up, gird your loins with it. Put on this breastplate of the gospel, your justification, and you wear it everywhere you go, everywhere you go. Guys, I'll tell you why this doctrine is so important to me. I, I've always been an evangelical Protestant.

By confession, But functionally, I've been a Roman Catholic for much of my Christian life. a weird statement, but I'll tell you why. If you look over from high school, Up until 2001, here's what my Christian life looked like. A week or two of high energy for the Lord, I just, I'm, I'm going to please him, I'm going to serve him, and I'm going to do it right this time.

And not fail like I did last time and I just throw myself into trying to please God. I spend time in the word, try to spend time in prayer, try to set aside besetting sins and have victory and all this and And after a week or two, when I first start off, it's like, man, if I fail, I'm like, Lord, I, I come to you, I ask your forgiveness, and he seemed, in my mind to easily forgive me. But as the days wore on, and I'm coming to God for the 500th time saying, please forgive me, I began to feel on a gut level, because of my wrong view of God, that God was getting frustrated with me.

And just, I would end in a heap of exhaustion, after just a week or two.

And I'd say, what, I'm not going to mess with this. And so I would then go months of trying to be a pretty good guy, not do anything too stupid, but was not relating to God. That's, that's the way. My life looked like for many years and then I'd feel convicted about that and have more energy and I would throw myself into it again and that would last for 2 or 3 or at the most 3 weeks and I would collapse in exhaustion and in frustration again.

God just always seemed to be frustrated with me in my own mind's eye. I didn't know how to get around that. Well, in 2001, I just, I came to the Lord. I'm like, Lord, I want to live for you.

I want to serve you. I want to relate to you. And so, I started doing that and once again, and I started reaching a point of exhaustion once again. And the, the critical point for me was when I was driving home from work one day, And OK.

This was in April of 2001. And I'm driving home and I get into Moreno Valley. It takes about 10 minutes to get home and I realize that, like, my mind went back to the Lord when I came into Moreno Valley and, And then I thought, oh my goodness, what have I been thinking about over the last 10 minutes? Have I been thinking evil thoughts that I need to make right with God?

Is he upset with me about anything I've been thinking? And so I'm like, what have I been thinking about? OK, it's nothing been nothing sinful, but maybe I should have been focusing on the Lord anyway because that's the better thing to focus on than even other good things that have nothing to do with the Lord. And so I'm like, Lord, are we OK?

Are we OK with each other? And I just had this feeling of nausea come over me like I don't, I don't want to live like this. I just, I wanted, I was ready to quit. And I began to think of the hymn, Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy of what thou art, and I'm like, that's, that is so opposite of what I'm feeling even now as I'm trying to please the Lord.

I got home, extremely frustrated, and fortunately, no one was home. To take my frustrations out on. So, I came into the house, I took my Bible, and I, opened it to Romans 5. The whole chapter is about our justification being made righteous in Christ.

And I began to pace around the house just reading Romans 5 out loud. And finally, I got it. I, I got it. And what I got was this.

What I had been putting all this energy into, Jesus already took care of. Now, that's like a no brainer. But after being a Bible major in college and going to seminary preaching over 1000 sermons, for some reason, just in a deeper way, I realized that it's like, wait a minute, Jesus did this. It's done.

He's given it to me, and he maintains it. And so I never have to put an ounce of energy into making sure God's not angry with me, and that, that he's OK with me. I don't have to focus on that anymore. I am always under the good favor of my God, because of my justified status.

And even when I send Romans 6, God's grace abounds all the more as he graciously maintains my justified status. And so it's always there regardless of my performance. And what, from that day when I finally got it, And realized I don't have to put an ounce of energy into this because Jesus took care of all of it. Suddenly, suddenly, I started having tons of energy for things I never had energy before, to love my wife and to love my kids and to love other people and to serve.

There was an energy that was just ballooning in my heart that I never had before. Actually, I had it before, but it was all being consumed on tending to my justification. Rather than just finding rest, and the fact that Jesus did it, he gave it to me, he maintains it as my advocate before the Father. It's always there.

I can go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning and it's there. I can go through a season of sin and come back and it's there. It's always there. From that day on, even when I'm tempted, I'm thinking, what, I can do this sin and that God's grace would only abound all the more as he maintains my justified status.

But something about knowing that makes me then say, but what, because of that, I don't want to do this. It does something to our heart, the rest that we find in God, and in what Jesus has done, believing in that frees us up. To put energy into where it needs to go. on that day in 2001 when I finally got it, here's what I found.

when I was in seminary, we would cram, we would have cram sessions, to study for an exam. We would be in one room and we're just jamming for like two hours and getting all this stuff crammed in our heads and then half jokingly, but we would literally do this, we would walk, when the bell rang and it's time to go to class where we're going to take the test, we would walk. Real slowly, and we're saying, do not bump me. Nobody touched me because I don't want anything jostled around.

I don't want to lose anything. And then we would sit down real carefully in our seats so that everything that we had in our heads would not be lost. Well, on that day in 2001, I finally got it, but here's what I noticed. I woke up the next morning and I didn't have it.

I, I had lost that sense. And so I started on a 3 by 5 card writing out justification truths from Romans 5, and I would rehearse those things out loud to myself. And in the early going, I was doing it sometimes 10 times a day, just so that I still got it. And I'm not losing that sense.

And every time I would do it, it wasn't some, ritual. It was like, it was enjoying the love of God and just experiencing that and, and drinking that in like a, like a glass of cold water to a man dying in the desert. And it's like, oh, this is so great. But I had to keep rehearsing that over and over again.

And the gospel primer that we've made available to you, all that is, is the writings of one desperate guy who has gotten it, but so easily loses it, but has learned that if he says these things to himself and drinks from this glass of ice cold water in the desert. He can keep that awareness day by day and experience the protection that it provides. Paul says to all of us. Take that gospel that got you saved on your conversion day, wrap it around your loins, tightly wrap yourself in a mindfulness of gospel truth, and then take the breastplate of your justification, put it on, wear it proudly, wherever you go.

When you go into battle. Listen, if you're going to go into battle with the breastplate of your own righteousness or your own performance, the devil's going to penetrate that easily, and you're going to get hurt. You're gonna get wounded, you're going to get defeated. Put on the breastplate of the righteousness of Jesus, the devil can never criticize or pick at that, ever, ever.

Take it with you wherever you go. Let me ask you to bow your heads this morning. The, the gospel is not just for nonbelievers. The gospel is for believers.

The gospel is our armor. We are to be wrapped in it at all times. It provides the protection. The weaponry that we need.

So, we need to know the gospel, become expert in the gospel. And be ever mindful of it. Do you take the gospel with you? Wherever you go, it should not be a burden.

it's really good news. And I'm convinced that we, if we as Christians were believing the gospel like we should and wearing it as our armor. Nonbelievers would notice that. They want to know, hey, what's with the breastplate?

Tell me about that. You seem to have such peace. Your spirit seems at rest. You seem confident.

You have joy. Um-hum. My prayer for all of us in this room, Is that just a really powerful sense of awareness of the fullness of the gospel would just come over this congregation. Where we just let it in and actually believe it.

Some of you are not believing. The fullness of the gospel. You're believing the lies. You're girded with lies and deception.

You need to take those lies off, clothe yourself with the gospel. Clothe yourself, armor yourself with Christ's righteousness.