From His Heart

Speaker 1

What clothes did you put on this morning to face the world? Here's Pastor Jeff Shreve.

Speaker 2

A good soldier puts on the full armor of God and is ready to do battle with the enemy. God wants us to be good soldiers. We are soldiers. As believers, we are soldiers.

But the question is, are you a good soldier? Are you disciplined? Are you courageous? Are you prepared for the battle? Have you put on the full armor of God?

Speaker 1

Welcome to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve. Today we're excited that you joined us for an important lesson for every Christian living in an unchristian world. Bottom line, are you prepared for spiritual battle?

In today's powerful lesson, Pastor Jeff shares the importance of three pieces of armor that God has given: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, and the shoes of peace. The lesson is from Pastor Jeff's series, Soldiers of the Cross, that we're in this month.

For information about today's lesson or the current series, visit our website at fromhisheart.org. Now, though, open your Bible to Ephesians, chapter six, as Pastor Jeff begins describing the power and protection that we'll have when we put on the timeless armor of a good soldier.

Speaker 2

It has well been said that the Christian life is not a playground. It's a battleground. As Paul told Timothy, suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. We want to be good soldiers of the cross. A good soldier puts on the full armor of God and is ready to do battle with the enemy.

Now, Paul wrote the book of Ephesians from his first Roman imprisonment. He was chained between two Roman guards, and he saw every day the dress of the Roman guards. He's very familiar, just as all the people in the first century were very familiar with a Roman soldier. They knew what the Roman soldiers wore. And by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he said, this is the armor of a Roman soldier. This is the armor of God.

Ephesians, chapter 6, beginning in verse 10: "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For 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. Therefore, take up the full armor of God that you may be able to resist in the evil day. And having done everything to stand firm, stand firm. Therefore, having girded your loins with truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, with all prayer and petition. Pray at all times in the Spirit and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints and pray on my behalf that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak."

He prays for, asks them to pray for him, that he would have boldness to be a courageous witness for Christ. Well, Paul talks about the armor of God here and he says that we need to take up the full armor of God. Put on the full armor of God. We don't go off half-cocked into the battle. We go on fully dressed. We are dressed for success. It's not something that you can take and leave. Well, I don't really want to wear this, but I'll wear that. No, we take it all. Because unless you take it all, you cannot stand firm against the schemes of the devil.

How many people ever saw the movie *Saving Private Ryan*? You saw that movie. It's kind of a hard movie to watch. It was so gruesome, that war movie. If you remember, the classic scene in *Saving Private Ryan* is when they go and take the beach at Normandy and you see all these soldiers and bullets are flying everywhere and people are getting killed right and left. And there's one scene I've never forgotten as they take the beach at Normandy and the bullets are flying. One soldier has a bullet that hits on his helmet and ricochets off. And somebody says, "Man, are you lucky." And the soldier says, "Wow." And he takes off his helmet to see where the bullet hit. And that moment that he took off his helmet, he takes another bullet right in the head and he is killed. You don't take off your armor when you're in a battle.

Christians are told, commanded, to put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Now notice that we stand; we don't come at the devil, we stand firm against the devil. We, the same word, resist the devil and he will flee from you. A Christian doesn't fight for victory. A Christian fights from victory. Jesus has already won the victory and all we have to do against the devil is stand firm against him, resist him, firm in our faith. Resist the devil, James 4:7, and he will flee from you. We have the ground. God has given us the battleground. It is ours. Just like the Lord told Joshua, "Joshua, you're going to go and cross the Jordan, and you're going to go into the promised land. And every place which your foot trods, I have given it to you as an inheritance. You go get it. But it's yours. It's every place you go. Those people that are there, they're poachers on your land. You go get it. I've given it to you." Joshua wasn't fighting for victory; he was fighting from victory. That's the same way we do in the Christian life.

But in order to stand firm against the schemes of the devil, you have to put on the full armor of God. Now, notice. Very interesting. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Verse 10. Put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. The word for schemes is the Greek word *method*. It's where we get our English word, method. The devil is very methodical. And that word *methodia* is translated in different ways. It's the methods, the trickery, the wiles, the deceit, the cunning art. And what you'll see is that God gives us armor to combat the strategies of the devil, the methods and the cunning arts of the devil. And every piece of armor is designed to combat what the devil is trying to do. And when you understand that, you understand why the armor is so important. Every single piece. Because if you take off your helmet, even for a little bit, you can take a bullet right between the eyes.

So I want you to notice three correlations between the piece of armor and the strategy and the wiles and the methods of the devil. Now, there are six pieces of armor that Paul mentions. And when I set out to do this sermon, I said, I can do all six of these in the time allotted. I can't. We want to look at the first three pieces. We'll look at the next three pieces next time. But the first piece he talks about is the Belt of Truth.

The Belt of Truth is necessary to combat the Devil's divisive strategies. God gives us the belt of truth because the devil has a strategy to divide us. He says in verse 14, "Stand firm. Therefore, having girded your loins with truth, having put on the belt of truth." Sometimes it was just a belt. It always had those straps down front, but it's a heavy belt. It almost looks like a girdle. And that would hold everything together. The Romans would wear those long tunics, and when they would fight, they would gird up their loins. You've heard that phrase, gird up your loins? That means you take your robe and you stuff it in your belt so that you're free, so your legs are. You wouldn't want to fight with a robe that was coming down to your calf because you could get tangled up in your robe. So what would they do? They would gird up their loins and they would take their tunic and they'd stuff it into their thick belt so that their legs would be free so that they could fight.

Now, the belt of truth combats the devil's divisive strategies. He is a divider, and he wants to divide your heart and my heart. Gird your loins with truth. Now, is that talking about the truth of the word of God? Yeah, kind of. But he talks about the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. So the truth he's talking about is not so much the truth; it is truthfulness. It is truthfulness in your life, the truthfulness, integrity in your life that holds you all together. It is so critical.

Now remember that the devil works to divide your loyalties. He works to divide the loyalties in your heart. The very first commandment of the Ten Commandments: "I am the Lord your God, who delivered you from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me," no other gods that come and rival me, no other gods that compete for first place in your heart. So what does the devil do? I'm going to try and bring some other gods up there so that you would go after other gods. Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 11:3: "But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your mind should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ." God wants us to love him with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength, all our mind, to have a singular focus on the Lord and on the mission that he has given us. And what does the devil do? The devil tries to draw us away from that, from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

From the simplicity. That word also means sincerity of devotion to Christ. Now, when a person is sincere, they are true blue. They're not double-minded; they are sincere. They're single in their focus. Very interesting, the word sincere, because God wants us to be sincerely his. And when you're sincere, the word actually means sun-tested sincerity. Sun-tested. The word in Latin, *sine, sera*. *Sine* means without. *Sera* means wax. It's kind of weird, isn't it, without wax? What is it without wax? Here's how that word works. In the ancient world, when they would make pottery, sometimes you'd make a plate or your dish or a bowl, something like that, and sometimes it would have a little hairline crack in it. And you couldn't really sell that because that's not gonna be any good. Once you put hot liquid in there or something like that, the crack will, and then the dish or the bowl or whatever would break. And so what they would do, a dishonest merchant, they would put wax in the crack so you couldn't see it.

And oftentimes you would go to buy those in the shops. And the shops are not necessarily brightly lit, so it's dimly lit. And you think, "Hey, I'm getting this good deal on this bowl, this pitcher, this cup," and all of a sudden you find out, you bring it home and you find out, "Hey, this has a crack in it. There's wax in here. This thing is not pure." So what they would do, the smart buyers, they would look at the pottery and they would take it out and lift it up before the sun to see if this is genuine, if this is true, if this is sincere. If this is without wax, it is sun-tested.

So the devil wants to get us away from being sun-tested. He wants us to add wax to our Christian lives, so to speak, to fill in the cracks with wax. He works to bring hypocrisy into your life and mine. Hypocrisy. So that we talk a big game, but we don't walk it out. As some people in another land said to Christian missionaries, "Well, many of us would have become Christians. But the problem with you Christians is you talk a big game, but you don't walk it out. You know, I can't hear what you're saying because I'm watching how you live." That's a danger for all of us.

See, the belt of truth holds you together in sincerity, in singleness of purpose, in your love for the Lord, in your commitment to the Lord. That you're true blue doesn't mean that you're sinless, because no one is. But it means that you're genuine, you're above reproach. And you don't talk one way and walk another way. The Bible says this in 1 John, chapter 1: "God is light." John says, "This is a message which we have heard from him and announced to you. God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth." Because we're saying one thing, but we're not walking that out.

"If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, us with God. And the blood of Jesus, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin." How do you really walk with God? In sincerity and in integrity. You walk in the light with him. And when you sin, you bring your sins before him and you don't let things build up. And you don't become a hypocritical Christian who says one thing and does another. It means that people can look at your life, public life, private life, even secret life, and say that person walks the talk. That's the belt of truth. That is so important to have that on. If we don't have that on, just like a soldier if he forgot his belt, you know where your sword attaches? It attaches to the belt. So you lose the belt of truth, you lose the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And you're not held together and your robe can't be cinched and you're in deep.

So the belt of truth combats the devil's divisive strategies. And you mark it down. He is working, "I'm afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your mind should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ."

The second piece of armor that he mentions is the breastplate of righteousness. Now what does that correspond to? The breastplate of righteousness combats the devil's accusations against us. You know what the word devil means? *Diabolos*. In the Greek, false accuser. Revelation chapter 12, verse 10 tells us that the devil accuses us before God, day and night, constantly accusing, accusing, accusing. And the breastplate, sometimes it was metal, or sometimes it was heavy leather, or sometimes it was metal, kind of ringed together like a coat of mail. But that is what we see, like in *Gladiator* or something like that; they would wear those kinds of breastplates. It's to guard your heart. It's to guard your vital organs. You definitely wouldn't go out to battle without the breastplate on.

Well, the devil wants to hit you in the heart. He wants to strike a mortal blow. And if you get hit in the heart, if you get stabbed in the stomach, chances are you're not going to make it. And so the breastplate of righteousness protects your heart, it protects your vital organs, it protects against the schemes of the devil. And one of his big methods, one of his big schemes is false accusation.

Now think about the word righteousness, the breastplate of righteousness. What righteousness is he talking about? Is he talking about self-righteousness? No. The Pharisees had a lot of self-righteousness. They weren't wearing the breastplate of righteousness; they were wearing self-righteousness. The Bible says that your righteous deeds are like a filthy rag to God. Filthy rag. God is not talking here about self-righteousness. What he's talking about is his righteousness. And Christians wear his righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. He's the breastplate of righteousness. We put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and we make no provision for the flesh with regard to its lusts.

Isaiah 60:1, verse 10 says this: "I will rejoice greatly in the Lord. My soul will exult in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation. He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness." Hey, the moment that you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, what does God do? He receives you. You're accepted in the beloved. And just like the prodigal son, when he came back, the Father embraced him and he put a robe on his back, a ring on his finger, shoes on his feet. Hey, God does that for us. He puts a robe on our back. What robe? The robe of righteousness. He clothes us in a robe of righteousness.

We get to wear his righteousness. We get to claim his righteousness. Now remember, the devil is an accuser, and he's a false accuser. And all who are Christians have experienced the accusations that come from the devil. When you try and do something for the Lord, you're going to take a step and do something for the Lord. You hear the accusing voice of the enemy. "How dare you? Who are you to do this? Who are you to sing in the choir? Who are you to teach a Sunday school class? Who are you to give a testimony? Look at the sin in your life. Look what you did in the past. Remember what you did last year, last five years ago, 10 years ago? Remember when you were in high school and you did this on a Saturday night?" He'll just beat you up with guilt over your life, your past life, over sins that have been confessed.

Speaker 1

Hmm, that surely stings to consider those past sins, no matter what they were. But does God want you to continually beat yourself up over them? We're discovering the answer to that today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve and the message "The Armor of a Good Soldier." This is the fourth message that we're airing in the seven-message series, "Soldiers of the Cross."

We are soldiers of the cross, and in order to stand firm against the schemes of the devil, we have to put on the full armor of God. Are you prepared for that battle? In this series, Pastor Jeff provides sound, practical, and powerful insights that can help all of us face and overcome the obstacles that keep us from being all that we want to be for the kingdom. Maybe it's friends or family who are critical, workmates or leaders who diminish you and challenge your faith stance, suppressing your ability to stand for Christ. Or perhaps it's your own insecurities that hinder your impact.

Today's message is entitled "The Armor of a Good Soldier" from the series "The Soldiers of the Cross." This series is our gift of thanks to you this month for your support of From His Heart this month of any amount. With that gift, we'll also send you the companion booklet from Pastor Jeff called "The Lord's Army." To get yours, simply call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-24253) or go to fromhisheart.org and make your gift, and we'll send them right out to you in the format of your choice. Thank you for helping us to continue to speak the truth in love to a hurting world.

Well, thanks for joining us today on From His Heart. I'm Larry Nobles, and we're going to pause right there for today. But next time, after a brief review, Pastor Jeff will continue describing the first three pieces of the spiritual armor found in Ephesians chapter six that will help us be good soldiers and prepare us to fight the battle with confidence and protection. Don't miss the conclusion of "The Armor of a Good Soldier." That's on Wednesday, when Pastor Jeff will open up God's Word and share real truth, real love, and real hope. From His Heart.

Speaker 2

There is treasury, there is bless, There is hope that you always dream love. He can heal every scar from his heart.

Speaker 1

From his heart is the listener supported Broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world.

Remember that no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Find out more about that, go to fromisheart.org.