Good morning. Take your Bibles and turn to
Ephesians chapter 6. Our text is verse 14. Now back in verse 11, Paul says,
Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand
against the wiles of the devil. And last week I stated that the
whole armor of God is the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a picture
of the equipping, the protection and provision by the Lord Jesus
Christ for his people. It encompasses our hope, the
hope of our standing in our Lord Jesus Christ. Over in the book
of Colossians chapter 1. verse 27 and 28 we see where
Paul is saying that we are the church we're sent to declare
the mystery of God in Jesus Christ and he says verse 27 to whom
God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this
mystery among the Gentiles which is Christ in you the hope of
glory. Christ in you is the hope that
we have that we shall behold the glory of our God and receive
Him as our eternal inheritance. Whom we preach, warning every
man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present
every man perfect in Christ Jesus. So, this armor is speaking to,
it's describing the provision and the defense of the believer
who stands in Jesus Christ. His people stand in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And so, this picture of armor,
it's intended to be a comfort to you that believe. This is
intended to be a comfort and an encouragement to you that
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. We're standing in Christ according
to the grace of our God. We stand in Him. It's an immature
thought to think anything of ourselves. as though we ourselves
are something, that we're strong in ourselves and that we're able
in ourselves. That's an immature thought. And
the Lord is the one who matures us. He's the one that takes our
eyes off of ourself. He's the one who, in wisdom and
in his providence and in his counsels, brings us to see it's
not me. It's not my strength. It's not
my wisdom. Christ is all. Our Lord does
that for His people. And so He does this for us. He
has made our all to equip us for the trials that we go through,
whether the trial is a brief trial that's over quickly, or
it's a trial that continues on for a long, long time. Our Lord, He's provided everything
that we need for the trial in Himself. And so we're being encouraged
to look to the Lord Jesus Christ. Our hearts, when we look at this
armor, it's to set our eyes not on self, not to give us something
to boast in of ourselves, but to look to Jesus Christ, our
champion, the mighty one, the one whom God has provided, who's
done everything necessary for his people. Now, Paul speaks
of the fact that there is a spiritual battle that's raging. There is a spiritual battle going
on. He says in verse 12, for we wrestle
not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places. understand that your Lord has
that. He has that realm. He sees that
spiritual realm and knows exactly what the spiritual forces are
and what they're trying to accomplish. Your Lord has those things in
His hand. He's sovereign and He's able
to execute and accomplish His will and purpose in the earth. He's just making us to know that
that these difficulties and these challenges that are coming up
in your life, they're not just by chance, and they're not just
of the flesh and by the flesh, but there's a spiritual attack
going on. There's a spiritual reason behind
it all, but your Lord has it. He's just making us aware that
that person that's saying evil things about you or trying to
provoke you, It's a spiritual warfare that's going on behind
the scenes. But through that all, the purpose
why this is brought out, that through it all, you're called
to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You're called to look to him,
to trust him, to stay upon him and not be moved from him. It's an encouragement that we
not be moved from the Lord. And so we continue to stand in
that hope of our Savior. Now with this understanding,
Paul says in verse 13, Wherefore take unto you the whole armor
of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and
having done all, to stand. And so Paul gives us this armor
of our God, he gives us an analogy. He makes an analogy using this
whole armor of God and It's to help us understand the spiritual
blessings that we've been given by our God and the Lord Jesus
Christ, who's equipped us for every purpose. And he's given
us the protection and the armor that we need in him. And so this
armor, it's an analogy, and it's describing the various blessings
that the believer receives in his Lord. It's describing these
blessings that our God gives to us in Christ that we are given
while we're here serving the Lord. You know, Paul, he uses
language like this. He says, when he's writing to
Timothy, he first said in the first letter, 1 Timothy 6.12,
he says, fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal
life. And then in his second epistle,
2 Timothy 2.3, he said, therefore, endure hardness as a good soldier
of Jesus Christ. Endure hardness. There's hard
days, and there's difficult days. Endure those things. And Christ
has given you everything necessary to endure those days. You're
here now, aren't you? He's kept you, and he's brought
you here thus far. So we're given these awesome
visuals, right? The picture is a Roman soldier,
which Paul would have seen in his day. He's looking at a Roman
soldier, and he's there in armor, which is fit for his engagement
in battle, right? It's the right armor. It's the
perfect armor to equip him for the battles that he faces. These are pictures of what every
believer stands in and rejoices in in the Lord Jesus Christ.
In other words, this isn't battle for our flesh to use. This is
pictures of what Christ has accomplished for you in his death, burial,
and resurrection to redeem you, his people. It speaks to the
gospel of our Savior, and in Revelation 12, verses 10 through
11, we read that the accuser of the brethren, the devil, he's
been cast down. Christ has overcome the devil. He's been cast down, that one
who comes with fiery accusations to trouble you and to shame you
and to make you feel guilt. Christ has overcome those things
and Christ has done the work necessary. And it says there
in Revelation 12 verse 11, speaking of you brethren who believe the
gospel, it says that they overcame the accuser of the brethren by
the blood of the lamb. Not their own strength, doesn't
speak of their strength and their wisdom, of their good works and
the things that they've done, we overcome the accusations,
the fire accusations of the evil one by the blood of Jesus Christ
and by the word of their testimony. And they loved not their lives
even unto death. They love not their lives unto
the death. That's all gospel language. And
so this armor of Jesus Christ is all gospel. It's all the gospel
of the good news of Jesus Christ. And so we continue to overcome
every enemy by the blood of the lamb. And we understand that
this is of Christ. We know this is of Christ by
the word of the testimony of Jesus. So as we look at each
piece, as we break down these pieces, we're not gonna get to
all of them, we're just gonna stay in verse 14 this morning, but
as we look at these pieces, you behold the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what it's speaking of. It's what he's accomplished for
you. I titled this message, Stand in Christ. Stand in Christ. So let's go to our text in Ephesians
6. Ephesians 6 and let's read verse 14 together. Paul says, Stand therefore, having
your loins gird about with truth, and having on the breastplate
of righteousness. Now let's just stop right there
at that first word, stand. Stand. When religion is explaining
the armor of God, what do they often do? They proceed to lay
upon you a heavy set of armor. They lay on you armor so thick
and so heavy that you can't move. It's a burden to bear. They lay
on you the law. They lay on you the commandments
and doctrines of men. They lay on you philosophies
and ideas that are fleshly in nature. That's what they lay
on the believer. And so you can't even move. You
think of David, right? When David said, I'll go out
and fight Goliath. And Saul did what? He took him
aside and he laid on him that heavy armor, Saul's armor. And
David was like, I haven't even proved these things. I can't
walk in this. I can't do anything in this. I don't need any of
it. And he took it all off. So we're not looking for the
armor of men, but as believers, we see Jesus. We see Jesus, right,
that's there in Hebrews 2.9, who was made a little lower than
the angels for the suffering of death. Crowned, crowned with
glory and honor, that he by the grace of God should taste death
for every man. Christ bore that as our champion. He's our armor. So you've been
called in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the mercy of God for his
people. This is not of your doing. This
is of the Lord's grace. We see in Christ the Lord being
merciful to whom he will be merciful. Him being compassionate upon
whom He will show compassion. It's all in Christ. And so it's
in the hope of the Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ that we stand. And in Him we stand complete
before our God. We're not standing there naked.
We're not standing there insufficient. We're not standing there in rags
of our own making. We stand complete and righteous
in the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, there's a picture that
our Lord gives us of the believer standing in Christ. Moses had
asked the Lord, he said, Lord, show me your glory. Show me your
glory. I want to see your glory, Lord.
And the Lord tells him in Exodus 33, verse 21, the Lord said,
behold, there is a place by me. There's a place by me, the Lord
said. And He says, you shall stand
upon a rock. And that place near the Lord
is the Lord Jesus Christ. We stand upon the rock, which
is the Lord Jesus Christ, and standing in Him and by Him, we
are near our God. We're brought near by His grace
and mercy of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And so our footing Brethren,
it's not on shaky, sandy ground. It's not on slippery, wet, muddy
ground. It's on the rock, which is Jesus
Christ. That's the one in whom we stand
before the Lord. We stand in Him. And so, our
Savior, Jesus Christ, that's the one in whom we behold and
see the glory of our God. Right? Moses said, show me your
glory. You want to see the glory of God? look away from self and
look to the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he's sent to be the propitiation,
to be the one who has obtained our forgiveness by his own hand,
by his work before the Father to put away our sins. Our God
says, or we read in 2nd Corinthians 4-6, for God who commanded the
light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. You want to see the glory of
God? you look to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's whom the spirit
reveals in your hearts that are his. You that believe, you're
looking to the Lord Jesus Christ in his righteousness alone. So stand in the faith and hope
of our calling in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Now we'll come to the
first armor that he speaks of. And it's basically, it's a belt.
He's describing a belt. And he says, having your loins
gird about with truth. And so a belt, it wraps around
your waist, right? It wraps around your waist. And
if you have a belt that's part of your armor, it's securing
your armor, and it's giving integrity to the armor so that you're not
losing pieces as you're going in the battle. It's securing
everything and giving it integrity. And in addition to that, we see
that it's used to hold things, right? It holds the sword of
the spirit. And all of this is picturing
the truth of our God revealed to us in his gospel, in the gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now when men, there's also another
sense in which this truth is used. It pictures what men did
back in that day. They would wear long garments,
typically, I guess, having to do with the heat of the time
and the area. And it was flowing. It restricted
movement to some degree, swift movement. And so what they could
do with that belt is they could gather up that garment and stuff
it into their belt. And then that garment would become
like shorts so that if they had to move, they could move swiftly
in the shorts. And so this is the picture that
we have here. Now it's called a belt of truth. And who is the truth? The truth
is Jesus Christ. He's the one who said, I am the
way. the truth and the life. We come to the Father in Christ
who is the way to God. We come in Christ who is the
truth and reveals to us the truth in our God. And we come to him
who's our life. And Christ is revealed where? In the word of truth, which is
the gospel. Which is the gospel that we preach.
The word of the truth of the gospel. Looking back, if you're
in Ephesians, look at Ephesians chapter one, and look at verse 13. And here we see that this gospel
that we hold to, this is the truth of God. This is the revelation
of truth. In whom ye also trusted, After
that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel, the gospel of your
salvation, in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed
with the Holy Spirit of promise. And so this is the truth, brethren. This is the word of truth, which
is the gospel, because the gospel declares to us the truth that
we need to hear. We're sinners. We're sinners
who have offended Holy God. We have no righteousness of our
own. We have no means of making a
righteousness that we could come to God in, but rather it reveals
who the Savior is, who our salvation is. It reveals the Lord Jesus
Christ who took the sin of his people unto himself and went
to the cross and sacrificed himself to put away our sin. and he having
fulfilled all righteousness, he being born under the law and
having fulfilled all the law of God perfectly, he obtained
our eternal righteousness and redemption before God by putting
away our sin and by the Lord imputing his righteousness to
us so that we stand complete in Christ our Savior. And for
this cause, Hebrews 9.15, he is the mediator of the New Testament,
that by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions
that were under the First Testament, when we broke the law, our breaking
of the law, our coming up short of the glory of God continually
in everything we did and all the righteous services we tried
to do, we came up short before the glory of God. So Christ took
care of all those transgressions that we committed against our
God, and says, they which are called might receive the promise
of eternal inheritance. And so we see that our Savior,
he paid it all. The debt's been paid. And we
that were naked, and unfit for the battle, and had no protection
and no provision for the battle, Christ has obtained it all by
His work, by His hand, and He freely gives it to His people
to fit them for that battle. To fit them to stand against
the fiery accusations and all the trouble that comes upon us,
we stand complete in Christ our Savior. So stand there in the
truth of the gospel. And again, we see other pictures
there, right? If you think of that ability
where they took that garment and they tucked it in for movement,
for swiftness of movement, so the Lord makes his people ready,
able, and willing in Him to be ready to go where He sends us,
and to open our mouths when it's time to open our mouth and declare
the truth of the Gospel. And so, wherever the Spirit leads
His people, His Spirit will go. You know, I think of Paul who
when he was writing to the Romans Romans 12 verse 1 he said I beseech
you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present
your bodies a living sacrifice holy acceptable unto God which
is your reasonable service. Now, you and I, we know that
we have no authority and no power of ourselves to be able to serve
God or to determine where we're going to go and when we're going
to go. We don't have that authority or power of ourselves, but we
present ourselves to the Lord. and wait upon the Lord and what
He will do. So we just simply present our
bodies before the Lord. And the picture there is what
you see in Isaiah chapter six. Isaiah six verse eight, when
the Lord said, whom shall we send? And Isaiah said, here my
Lord, send me. And all Isaiah was doing was
presenting his body, a living sacrifice, which had been made
whole when the angel took that live coal off the altar and touched
it to his lips, thus sanctifying him and removing the corruption,
making him a vessel to be used by the Lord as the Lord saw fit
to use him. And so that's what the picture
is there. And so the hope of Christ, which
is the truth of the gospel, it manifests. It's manifested in
the child of God, by the work of God. He reveals faith in us. He reveals hope in us. He reveals
a willingness in us to know the Lord, to be used of the Lord,
to hear the voice of the Lord, to be taught by the Lord, and
to know Him. And it's all done and worked
in us by the Spirit. And He makes us ready to follow
our Lord wherever He'll lead us. And so Christ is made to
the believer the whole of the believer's life. He's made everything
to us. When Peter was speaking of these
things in a similar manner, in 1 Peter 1 verse 13, he says,
And so the Lord's showing us that we're pilgrims, and we're
strangers in this life, in this world, we're pilgrims, and strangers, and we see this
imagery of warfare and the battle of what our Savior has given
to us, and how we are led by the Spirit of the Lord in a moment's
notice. And the picture there, the understanding
that we have is the Lord's saying to us, don't be tied to this
world. Don't set your affections and
your love on this world and the things of this world because
they're passing. And we can't keep them or retain
them. And they can be easily taken
from us. And that one whose heart is set
on Christ, and is made willing to endure the hardness that we
face as believers in Jesus Christ, as a good soldier in Jesus Christ,
when those things are removed or taken away suddenly and disappointments
come, you that have your heart set on Christ are able to reconcile,
that's reconciled rather quickly in us because we see Lord, This
is exactly what you said, and this is exactly what you did. And those people who loved not
their lives unto death, it's because they weren't attached
to the world. They weren't attached to the
things of this world, and their hearts were set on Christ. And
that's why when the hour came to lay down their lives, It was
easy. It was easy. They were made willing
to do it by His grace. And so the truth of this girdle,
what we're learning in the preaching of the gospel and in the declaration
of the gospel that our Lord is teaching us is that Christ is
all. He's all. He surpasses anything
that we gather ourselves in this flesh. He surpasses all our riches. He surpasses all our defense.
He surpasses all our sustenance. He surpasses all our provisions
that we make for ourselves. We do things in the flesh and
we try to account for things and take care of ourselves to
some degree, but it's nothing. Don't hang on to those things.
Those things pass quickly. But we have everything. that
have the Lord Jesus Christ and His righteousness. And that's
what our Lord's doing. He's showing us the blessing
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the enemy, he's going
to attack the truth. And he's going to try to turn
your eyes from Christ and set your focus on earthly things
and provoke you and worry you and trouble you earthly things
but you stand in the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ and that
truth being that he's our righteousness that he's our inheritance so
that when all this is washed away and it passes away they
haven't touched our inheritance they haven't touched Christ he's
not been moved from us and we've not been moved from him we have
the Lord we have everything and that makes it makes it agreeable
with the new man who has, who's in the flesh lost everything,
but has everything in the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a comfort
to know you're in the will and the mind of the Lord, doing that
which he's called us to do, just presenting our bodies a living
sacrifice. Lord, thank you. It makes it
all easy when everything else is taken away. So the next thing
then Paul says, He says, having on the breastplate of righteousness,
having on the breastplate of righteousness. Now, some might
think this refers to the wearer's righteousness, what we do or
what we don't do and how good we've been, how consistent we've
been the last week and what we wanted to do, either in the law
or in religious practices and service and our piety. And there's nothing wrong with
with living according to the word of the Lord, right? We're
not looking to offend or to do things that we know the Lord
says don't do. That's not what I mean, but that's
not our focus, that's not our hope, that's not where we draw
strength from. Our comfort and strength is in
Christ himself. If you were trusting in a breastplate
of righteousness of your own making, How easy would that be
for the enemy to come right in and find the weakness and thrust
you through? He'd disarm you, he'd snip that
armor right off and thrust you through because it has no ability. It'd be like wearing aluminum
foil against the thrusting of a sword. It won't stop it. It'll
be pierced right through. And so we're not talking about
man's righteousness, we're looking away from self. And we're looking
to Christ who is everything to his people. And so, Our hope
and our joy and rejoicing is that the Lord Jesus Christ, according
to his word, according to the gospel, is that we are righteous
in him. We are received and accepted
of the Lord and Jesus Christ. And that truth is the breastplate
of our righteousness. It's secured in that truth. It
remains firmly in place. It's Christ's righteousness and
it isn't coming off. It's kept firmly in the truth
of the revelation of our God's word, which isn't the words or
the doctrines, it's Christ himself. It's Christ himself. Titus 3.5
says, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according
to his mercy, he saved us by the washing of regeneration and
renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through
Jesus Christ, our Savior. Again, we are seeing, we're turned
over and over in the scriptures to the Lord Jesus Christ. We're
not turned to self, we're turned to him. Again, in Romans 3, verse
20 through 22, he says, therefore by the deeds of the law there
shall no flesh be justified in God's sight. For by the law is
the knowledge of sin. That's why the law was given,
to reveal to us how how sinful we are, and how far short we
fall. But now the righteousness of
God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and
the prophets. Even the righteousness of God,
which is by faith of Jesus Christ, by His faithfulness, by His trust
and confidence in the Lord, That's why he was obedient. He trusted
his father. He trusted his father to fulfill
the will and purpose of God in him laying down his life, bearing
the sins of his people to put them away, to make us righteous
and accepted with God. He trusted the father of Jesus,
the faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.
And then Romans 521, that a sin hath reigned unto death, even
so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life
by Jesus Christ our Lord. And so the truth is brethren,
We've been justified by Christ. We're not still trying to figure
out if we're justified and work righteousness to justify ourselves.
And the truth is we've been sanctified by the Lord Jesus Christ. He's
the one who separated us unto himself. gives us His Spirit,
bears His fruits of righteousness in us by His works and by His
power. That's where we stand, in the
faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ, looking to Him, trusting
Him, resting in Him. And right there, that's how you
stand against the wiles of the devil, against his trickery,
his chicanery, all his tricks and attempts to try and shame
you and make you, you know, overcome you with guilt and worry and
fears. You stand in Christ. You are righteous in Christ.
You that believe Him, you're righteous. Don't be afraid. You trust the Lord. You trust
Him. You stand right there on the promises that your God has
declared to you in His Gospel. You are forgiven. You are clean.
You are washed. made whole. He's washed your
feet. He's washed you in every way
necessary. You're clean. Trust the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now I'm going to close with Romans
8. Romans 8 verse 33 and 34. Paul says, who shall lay anything
to the charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies. He's
justified you by the blood of Christ. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather,
that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who
also maketh intercession for us. So that's the armor, brethren. That's the armor. You're standing
in his righteousness. Trust him and believe him. I
pray the Lord bless you with those words. And next time we're
back in the passage, we'll look at the other other pieces of
armor, but as you can see they all speak of what Christ has
obtained for us. It's all glorying in our Savior,
our champion, our God, our husband, our Savior, our Lord. So, rejoice
in Him, brethren. Let's close in prayer. Our gracious
Lord, we thank you, Father, for the sufficiency, the overwhelming
sufficiency of the armor that you've given to us and put upon
us, which is the blood of your son Jesus Christ. We thank you
for every gift, everything that he's obtained for us by the death
and resurrection of himself. Lord, thank you for this. We're
undeserving. We know we're undeserving, but
we thank you for the confidence that you give to us in our Lord.
And Lord, keep our hearts ever set upon him. Lord, bless this
day in which we come before you to worship you, to rejoice in
the singing and in the reading of your word and prayers. And
Lord, in the preaching of the gospel, Lord, bless it to our
hearts. And Lord, bless our time of fellowship. May it be sweet
as we gather together and break bread with one another and have
a good time of fellowship. May it be sweet in the Lord Jesus
Christ. It's in his name we pray and
give thanks. Amen. All right, brethren, so we'll
take about 15 minutes.