Welcome to our program. Now today
I'm going to be preaching from the book of Ephesians chapter
6, the last chapter of Paul's letter to the church of Ephesus. And the title of the message
is The Whole Armor of God. Now many of you may be familiar
with this passage where the Apostle Paul instructs the believers
at Ephesus to put on the whole armor of God. And this is a very,
very interesting and a very instructive symbol that he uses. He goes
by the symbol of a Roman soldier. Everybody back then in that culture
knew what a Roman soldier, a centurion or a guard or an infantry soldier
would look like and what they wore in their armor. And so Paul
takes that knowledge that they have of Roman soldiers and he
uses it to teach lessons concerning the gospel of God's grace in
Christ and how a believer should conduct themselves in this world
and be fitted for the warfare that believers have to go through
when they're attacked by the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Now he begins in verse 10 with this exhortation. He says, Finally,
my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his
might. Now that verse is a full verse
because really what it tells us is the whole ground and power
of salvation. That the power of salvation,
all of salvation, is in God alone, not in ourselves. Notice he says,
my brethren, so he's preaching here and speaking to those who
know Christ. Brethren, children of God who
are in the same family, These are the elect of God, God's chosen
people out of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation, chosen before
the foundation of the world and given to the Lord Jesus Christ.
In other words, all of the responsibility of their whole salvation has
been placed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and then they are the
redeemed of the Lord. Christ came into the world to
stand in their place and keep the law for them and go to the
cross of Calvary and die for their sins. He died, was buried,
and rose again because of their justification. In other words,
their whole salvation by way of redemption is in the power
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is stated so adequately
and fully in the book of Hebrews when the Apostle speaks of Christ
who is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him. And then in the book of 2 Timothy
where Paul said, I know whom I have believed and I'm persuaded
that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him
against that day. The salvation of a sinner, the
redemption of a sinner, is owing to the power of God in Christ
to redeem us. And then we speak of the power
of the Holy Spirit to give life. God the Holy Spirit regenerates
or gives spiritual life, or we might say it this way, literally
raises a spiritually dead sinner from the dead, and gives that
sinner eyes to see and ears to hear, breathes the breath of
spiritual life into that sinner, gives him a spiritual heartbeat,
and brings him to faith in Christ and repentance. And then we could
speak of the power of God in keeping or preserving his people. Now the Bible commands and encourages
believers to persevere in the faith. And the Bible tells us
that it is only those who persevere or continue to the end that will
receive the prize. But people look at verses like
that and they automatically go into works, self-righteous, legalistic
religion. Those verses are not legalistic.
They're not works oriented. They're not teaching that final
glory in heaven is conditioned upon a sinner persevering in
the faith. The scripture says that we persevere
by the power of God who keeps us. And he who began the work,
that is God, will perform it to the end. The scripture teaches
that Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. And at
no time in salvation, the whole of it, that is from regeneration,
the new birth, all the way to final glory in heaven, at no
time is salvation conditioned on the sinner. It is never to
any degree or at any time. It is always by the power of
God's grace in Christ. So God saves us by His power. God redeems us by His power. God regenerates us by His power. God preserves us by His power. And, thank God, He will glorify
us by His power. So, here's what Paul's saying
in the final words that he has to the Ephesian believers. He
says, my brethren, he says, be strong in the Lord. Our strength
is not in ourselves. Our strength is the Lord Jesus
Christ. He is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth, that is, to everyone that relies and
rests on Him and trusts in Him and His blood. The forgiveness
of sins is by His power and His power alone, the power of His
blood. We sing a hymn at our church
called, There's Power in the Blood. There's not power in me. but there's power in the blood.
and that is in the blood of Christ to cleanse me from all my sin.
And then that verse that I quoted part of just a minute ago, Romans
1, 16 and 17, where Paul said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel
of Christ, for it, the gospel, is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, and the Greek
also, the Gentile. And then he says in verse 17,
for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith. For it is written, the just,
or the justified, shall live by faith. In other words, the
power of salvation is in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's what gives me my right standing before a holy
God. That's what enables God to be
both a just God and a Savior. My justification, my right standing
before God, is not by the power of anything that I have done,
am doing, or will do. It is totally the power of God
and His righteousness in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he says,
and in the power of His might, that's the power of His strength,
His strength to save me, to hold me, to keep me, and to glorify
me. Paul wrote in another place, he said, I can do all things
in Christ who strengthens me. Our power and strength in salvation
is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now with that in mind and as
the basis, here's what he says to do. In verse 11 he says, put
on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against
the wiles, or the deceits, the deception, the slyness of the
devil. Now I want you to think about
this very carefully. First of all, he speaks of putting
on armor. Now remember what I said at the
outset. Everybody back then in that culture, they knew what
a Roman soldier looked like and they knew about the armor that
he wore when he was going into battle. And that's what Paul
is going to use as he develops each piece of armor here. And
he shows how he can take each piece of armor and use it as
a symbol or a metaphor for something in the salvation of a sinner
by the power of God. So, first of all, we know this.
Now, no Roman soldier made his own armor. The armor was made
by the skilled craftsman, the weapons maker. And in the same
way, no true believer, no Christian makes his own armor. All this
armor, this is called the whole armor of God. It's the armor
that God makes. Now, what does that mean for
us? Well, it means that everything about my salvation That which
saves me, that which protects me, that which I use as a weapon
in salvation, is the work of God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
I love that passage that I've quoted so often as we study through
the book of Ephesians, in Ephesians 2, 8-9, or 8-10, where the Apostle
said, For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. And then he goes on in verse
10, he says, "...for we are His workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we
should walk in them." What is a Christian? A Christian is a
sinner saved by the grace of God. He's a sinner who's been
washed clean in the blood of Christ. A Christian is a sinner
who has been made righteous by God through Christ based on the
obedience unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's a person whose
sins, a sinner whose sins have been laid on the Lord Jesus Christ
and Christ died for those sins. A Christian is not his own workmanship. You know, we often hear about
millionaires or billionaires who were self-made men. Well,
in Christianity, in the kingdom of God, and in the army of God,
as we would see in this analogy, there are no self-made men. I'm
not self-made, and if you're a believer, you're not self-made.
You are the workmanship of God. Now, all the armor that you wear
as a soldier of Christ is the workmanship of God, too. This
is the armor of God. If any piece of this armor is
of your own making, And my friend, that's where your failure will
be. When Satan, the devil, when he aims his charges and his wiles
and deceits against you, that'll be the one piece that'll bring
you down and kill you. But now if this, each piece of
the armor is the workmanship of God, then there is absolutely
no way that you can be killed. There's no way that you can lose
this battle. Because it's the armor of God,
it's not the armor of man. Salvation is the work of God. Salvation is of the Lord. So he says put on the whole armor
of God. Now how do you put this on, this armor? Well you put
it on, it's a work of the mind and the heart, and you put it
on by faith. Whatever God says, this is what
you believe. And that's how you put on the
whole armor of God. It's not mystic or magical. It's not some
kind of imaginary armor. It's real. The armor of God is
real. Now, it's not an earthly armor
that you can touch and feel and polish up and shine. It's not
something that is forged in the fires of earth, but it's a spiritual
armor. It's the armor of God. God is
spirit. And this is spiritual armor because
we are fighting a spiritual warfare. Back over in the book of 2 Corinthians
chapter 10, the Apostle Paul describes this very, very vividly
when he says in verse 3, for though we walk in the flesh,
we do not war after the flesh. I have a human body and I walk
through this world just like you. And I have all the infirmities
of the flesh. But you see, my warfare, the
spiritual warfare that requires this spiritual armor of God,
is not an earthly warfare. It's not a fleshly warfare. It's
not to be fought with tanks, and guns, and airplanes, and
knives, and all of that. Those weapons will do you no
good in this spiritual warfare. Back during the days of the Spanish
Inquisition, when the false church took it upon themselves to try
to force people to confess and join their church, they used
torture. And what an awful way that is.
That's not scriptural, that's satanic. And that's exactly what
happened. And they would get people to
confess and to claim to believe their doctrine. But they didn't
win the battle because this is a, listen, the gospel of God
and salvation and this warfare that we're engaged in as believers
is spiritual. You can make a person, coerce
a person into saying anything. by physical torture. Now sometimes
they were unsuccessful because they may have gotten hold of
a true child of God and the grace of God kept that person from
giving in to their evil ways. But that's not the kind of warfare
that we're engaged in in the church, the true church of God.
That's the false church that did all that, the Spanish Inquisition
and all that. That was a satanic church, you
might say. But he says, we don't war after
the flesh. He says in verse 4, for the weapons
of our warfare are not carnal, that is, they're not fleshly,
but mighty through God. Now, he says mighty through God
in verse 4 of 2 Corinthians 10. In other words, be strong in
the Lord and in the power of his might. And he says, to the
pulling down of strongholds. Now, what strongholds are we
trying to pull down? We're not talking about geographical
borders. We're not talking about the walls
of a particular city. He says in verse 5, casting down
imaginations, or reasonings as your concordance might say, and
every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge
of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience
of Christ. This battlefield is a battlefield
of the heart. It's a battlefield of the mind
and the conscience. It's a spiritual warfare. So
back here, Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 11, he says, put
on the whole armor of God. Now, why do we need this armor?
He says in verse 11, that you may be able to stand against
the wiles of the devil. My friend, without the armor
of God, you are open, naked to all the attacks, all of the charges,
all of the arrows of the devil. The devil is the great adversary. He's the great accuser of the
brethren. He's declared war on the church.
Now, he cannot win. But the thing about it is, each
individual person has to understand this unto faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ. I know God has already won the
battle. Christ is the victor. It's just
a matter of time to where all of this comes out in the end
according to God's purpose and plan. But I want to be part of
that plan. I want to be in God's family,
you see. So how are we going to stand
against the wiles of the devil, his deception, his lies? You see, that's how the devil
works. He doesn't work by bringing guns and knives. He works by
preaching a lie. And the main lie that the devil
uses to attack the church is the lie of salvation by works,
by man's works. He will always put some condition
upon the sinner in order to attain or maintain salvation. And the
sinful, self-righteous sinner will always latch on to it because
he is in love with himself. He's so proud of himself. So that's why we must be strong
in the Lord and in the power of His mind. Now look at verse
12. He says, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of
the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness or wicked
spirits in high places. Our battlefield is the realm
of the mind and the heart. It's a spiritual battle. We wrestle
against the kingdoms of darkness, that we wrestle against lies
and darkness. You see, that's the issue. That's
the battle. It's not on earth. You see, it's
a spiritual battle within ourselves. The Bible speaks of the warfare
of the flesh and the spirit that goes on within every believing
sinner. That's the battlefield. How are
we going to win this battle? Well, by being strong in the
power of God and in the power of His might. And he uses means. Now what are the means? Put on
the whole armor of God. So he says in verse 13, Wherefore,
or for this reason, take unto you the whole armor of God, that
you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done
all, or having overcome all, to stand. Whenever Satan, the
world, the flesh, launches their attacks, that's the evil day.
That's the day that evil arises itself and attacks you. And he
says, therefore, put on the whole armor of God. Now, he lists this
armor here. I'm not going to be able to get
through it all in one message, so we'll have two messages on
this. But listen to what he says as
we go through some of this armor. Let's read the whole thing first,
and then if I have time today, I'll come back and give you some
of it. But he says in verse 14, Stand therefore, having your
loins girt about with truth, that is, the truth of God. the
truth of the gospel, of God's free and sovereign grace in Christ
Jesus. And then having on the breastplate
of righteousness. Righteousness is how God justifies
the ungodly, the righteousness of Christ. He's not talking about
our own works here, because our own works are not righteousness.
He's talking about Christ. He goes on, he says, and had
your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. This
is the mission of the church in the world, to witness the
gospel. To have our shoes, our feet shod, as it says, with the
gospel. To go out. You see, that's why
you wear shoes. To walk, not to stand still and
stay put. And to take the gospel throughout
the world. That's like the soldier marching.
He's got his marching orders. And then he says in verse 16,
above all, taking the shield of faith. Some say that's faithfulness. I'll talk to you about that in
either today or the next week. He says, wherewith you shall
be able to quench all the fiery darts or arrows of the wicked.
That is when Satan charges and accuses. Verse 17, and take the
helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word
of God. Now let's look at each piece
of this armor just briefly. He goes on back in verse 14.
First of all, he mentions the girdle of truth. That's in verse
14. He says, Stand therefore, having
your loins girded about with truth. Now, first of all, the
soldier here is not sitting. He's not lying down resting.
He's not taking a break. He's standing firm. He's dug
in. That's what that means. He's
ready for battle. If the orders are to attack,
he's ready to attack. If the orders are to defend,
he's ready to defend. He's standing. Now, how do we
stand? The Bible speaks of standing,
it speaks of walking, but listen. How does the soldier stand? He
stands on firm ground. And what is the firm ground of
the soldier's stand? We stand upon the rock, Christ
Jesus. There's a song we sing called,
Standing on the Promises. That is the promises of God.
Well, all the promises of God in Christ are sure and certain.
You see, our foundation is Christ and Him crucified. Our foundation
is the person and glorious work of Christ, who He is and what
He did, why He did it, and where He is now. We don't stand in
quicksand. We don't stand even on sand.
We stand on the rock, and He's our foundation. And as long as
our standing is upon Christ and Him crucified, His blood and
His righteousness, we're safe. and we have a firm ground. So
he says, having your loins girt about with truth. Now, the Roman
soldier wore a belt around his waist that hung down the front,
and it was to hold all the armor together, and it was to protect
him, and here Paul says it's the girdle of truth. Now, we
speak of truth in a general way sometimes. All the Bible, for
example, is true. But what he's speaking of is
the truth of God's grace in Christ. This is what holds the whole
armor together. This is what bolsters the soldier
up and keeps each piece of armor in its place. It's the truth
of the gospel, the good news of how God saves sinners. That's the issue of the glory
of God in Christ. The fact that we're sinners,
fallen in Adam, and cannot stand by ourselves, we cannot save
ourselves, even our best works and efforts to save ourselves
are vanity, even wicked and evil. The Bible teaches that man at
his best state is altogether vanity. Where there's none righteous,
know not one. None that doeth good, know not
one. By deeds of law shall no flesh
be justified in God's sight. Our only hope of salvation Our
only way of salvation is the way of Christ and Him crucified. That's why He came to this earth,
to die for the sins of His sheep. And we have to have our loins
girded about, everything held together, protected by the truth
of the gospel. And every truth in the Bible
centers around, stands upon, and leads us to the truth of
Christ and Him crucified. Then he says, having on the breastplate
of righteousness. Now the Roman soldier wore a
breastplate over his vital organs from his neck down to his waist,
and it covered his chest and all those vital organs, and it
also attached around to the back. It protected his heart. It protected
all the vital organs. And the righteousness, the breastplate
of righteousness here, stands for the righteousness of God
revealed in the gospel. I quoted that earlier. For therein
is the righteousness of God revealed, Romans 117. The righteousness
here, righteousness is a legal term. Many times it can be translated
just or justice. And it has to do with how a sinner
stands before a holy God. Am I righteous or am I unrighteous? And the Bible teaches that by
nature we're all unrighteous. The only way that we can be made
righteous is by the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So the breastplate that I put on is not my own works of righteousness. Salvation is not by works of
righteousness which we have done. But the breastplate I put on
is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's His obedience unto
death as my substitute. It is His righteousness imputed
or legally accounted or charged to me. so that when Satan shoots
his arrows, his accusations to me, they will not hit my vital
organs because I can say honestly and completely and with all assurance
as a soldier of God, a soldier of Christ, who shall lay anything
to the charge of God's elect. It is God that justifies. God
has justified me based on the righteousness of His Son. And
then who can condemn me? It's Christ that died. Yea, rather,
is risen again and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
You see, I can say, because of the breastplate of righteousness,
I have a righteousness that answers the demands of God's law and
justice. and it'll stand in the day of
evil. When Satan and the flesh and the world comes against me,
it'll stand because I didn't make it. God did by sending his
Son into the world to obey the law for me and to go to the cross
of Calvary and satisfy justice for me. Satan's arrows cannot
penetrate the breastplate of righteousness if it's the righteousness
of Christ. What a piece of armor that is.
He cannot kill me. He cannot touch me. His charges
will always bounce off of that righteousness. Well, we'll continue
this next week on The Whole Armor of God. I hope this message has
been helpful to your understanding of the Gospel. If you'd like
to receive a copy of this message, listen to the announcer and he'll
give you the details. The title is The Whole Armor
of God. This will be Part 1. And I hope
you'll join us next week for another message from God's Word.