Christ Our Armor

Christ as the Whole Armor of God

Amen, as you turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 6, I invite you to go down memory lane with me. A number of years ago, I believe it was in 2016, my family and I, we did a little mini vacation with another family to Kansas City.

One of the things that we saw in Kansas City is we watched the Royals play a ball game, and then there was kind of like an impromptu thing, what could we do this evening? This was seven years ago, so my boys were a little younger.

Brayden was eight and Caleb was six. But we thought, well, what could we do this evening? And we thought, we'll play laser tag. And so, I want you, by the way, I'll say this, there is a person in my family, I shall not name them, but he's pretty competitive, it turns out, when it comes to laser tag.

But anyway, so we were looking for this laser tag place. We were following Google Maps. This place was like, it was very, very sketchy. I think we might have had to go through like a gate with like a security guard.

And then there's like all these different, maybe like shipping containers and all that's around. And we're like, is this really a place? Are they just trying to lure us here to get us or something? But anyway, it turned out to be a really fun laser tag.

In fact, I thought with one person in the family that it was going to turn into hand-to-hand combat because very, very jazzed up at the laser tag experience. However, the point of this story and what brings us to the text is before, and this is like so annoying if you have played laser tag before, but before you play laser tag, they take you in this room and they show you all the equipment, right?

Like here is your gun, here is your vest, here's how you wear the vest, here's where you can get shot, here's how you go around and shoot people, here's the trigger, here's what you do. And they show you all these things and teach you how it is that you are to play laser tag.

Well, in a much more holy and much more reverent scenario, this is what the Apostle Paul is doing for the church. Something more serious is at stake than laser tag. We're talking about the current war that we are facing against the evil one, not against flesh and blood, but against, as Paul will tell us in verse 12, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers, over the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

And as we're preparing for this war, the Apostle Paul is taking our battle equipment, as it were, and he's showing it to us. Here it is. Here is the helmet of salvation. Here is the sword of the Spirit.

Here is the breastplate of righteousness. Here are the shoes for the sharing of the gospel of peace. And we examine these things so that we can understand when we get into the game, much more serious than a game, when we get into the war, we'll know how to fight.

And so this is what we are examining, the whole armor of God. But what I want you to see this morning in our text, we'll be looking at verse 11, is I want you to see that every piece of armor ultimately points us to the Lord Jesus Christ.

That yes, we are to put on each individual piece of armor. We are to know each individual piece of armor. We are to understand how each individual piece of armor works. But what I want you to see in today's sermon is that ultimately, when we put on the whole armor of God, what we are putting on, who we are putting on, is Christ.

I invite you to stand with me as we honor the reading of God's Word. We've read the entire passage a few times this morning. We'll just read verse 11. Paul says, commands the church, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

Father, help us to understand this text. Lord Jesus, we pray that You would be exalted. Holy Spirit, we pray that You would be present. You would apply this text, illuminate our hearts to it, that we may understand it.

Our great God, may our response today, even before the sermon starts, may our response be, yes, now just teach us how it is we're to respond. Help us to see Christ as our armor. We pray, Jesus, that You would be exalted and lifted high.

And we believe that Christ is worthy here of a healthy church, our great God. And so help us in that endeavor. We believe it's a noble and holy and righteous endeavor. As the psalm that we sang said, we pray that You would deliver us from our enemies, our physical enemies, also the enemy of the evil one.

You would triumph over him. Bless the preaching of the Word. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. So our focus this morning will be on the first part of verse 11. Put on the whole armor of God.

This is a command. This is an imperative. We are commanded as the church. The church in Ephesus is commanded by extension. We are commanded to put on the whole armor of God. Now this word here, put on, it's the idea of clothing.

Paul is telling the church, get dressed. That is, when we go into the laser tag and we get ready to compete in the game, we have to put on the vest. Similarly, yet much more reverently, much more serious, we are to put on, we are to clothe ourselves, we are to dress for action in the whole armor of God.

Now the phrase, the whole armor, it's one Greek word. It is defined as the full equipment of the heavily armored foot soldier. The full equipment of the heavily armored foot soldier. As commentators have noted, it's both the defensive and offensive weapons.

We are to put on, the text says, the whole armor of God. We are to be dressed properly and completely. And then, of course, it is the whole armor of God.

God supplies it.

God owns it. It is God's armor. Friends, you don't make it, you don't have a better substitute for it. It would be like trading a tank for a bicycle, right? You can't do better than this. It's God's armor.

And we are called to put on, the text says, the whole armor of God. And so we do so in order to stand against the schemes, or if you're reading the King James, I like this word, the wiles of the devil, which we'll talk about in a couple weeks.

Brother Jacob will be preaching here next week. It's God's armor. We're to put it on so that we stand against the schemes of the devil. The gates of hell shall not prevail against Christ's church. And so it's utmost importance, beloved, that we understand our armor rightly and that we obey what Paul instructs the church here in our text, that we put it on, that we put on the whole armor of God.

And so we're going to spend the rest of our morning then understanding this command. Put on the whole armor of God. First, I want you to see, number one, Christ is our armor. The text says, put on the whole armor of God.

Now, I have no intention this morning of getting mystical or the idea of passivity in this battle here. I'm not trying to say that Paul says there's this kind of wrong theology that's out there today that would say that the church is just supposed to let go and let God, like just let go and let God and you don't worry about anything.

No, that is not the command. The command is to put on, to actively engage in this, to clothe ourselves in the whole armor of God. And as we get to it, we'll take each part of that armor piece by piece.

We'll consider it. We'll look at the armory. We'll look at the sword and the breastplate and the helmet and the shield and all of these things. And we'll see how each part is important and vital to our battle.

But this morning, I want you to see the armor holistically. I want you to see it as a whole and understand that ultimately it points us to our Lord Jesus Christ. That each piece of the armor we must consider in light of Christ.

You don't go wield the sword apart from Christ. You don't put on the breastplate of righteousness apart from Christ. You don't hold the shield of faith apart from Christ. You don't put on the helmet of salvation apart from Christ.

All of it points us to Christ. Essentially, for Paul to tell us to put on the whole armor of God, he is telling the church, put on Jesus. I'll prove it that this is Paul's thinking. Turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 13.

You now keep here. We'll come back to Ephesians shortly. But turn over to Romans chapter 13. Paul is commanding the church at Ephesus to put on the whole armor of God. He says something similar here in Romans chapter 13 beginning in verse 12.

Romans chapter 13 beginning in verse 12. Romans 13 verse 12. The night is far gone. The day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Put on armor is the same word put on in our text.

Clothe yourself in armor. Put on armor. So put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, verse 13, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, verse 14, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

So the same word for put on is the same word in our text in Ephesians 6. Armor here is the same root word in our text for armor. But what you see in Romans 13 is that Paul uses these phrases synonymously.

In verse 12 of Romans 13 he says put on the armor and then in verse 14 he says put on the Lord Jesus Christ. So in Paul's mind to put on Christ and to put on our armor is the same. To put on our armor is to put on Christ and to put on Christ is to put on our armor.

Remember that this letter then to the Ephesians is a letter to the saints. Paul is not exhorting the church here to put on Christ for salvation, though of course that is necessary. They're already saved though.

If you're not in Christ, if you're not born again, as our scripture reading this morning says in John 3, if you have not repented of your sins and believed the gospel, then this text, the point of the text really is beyond you.

What you need to do now before you're worried about spiritual warfare and all those things, what you must do is repent of your sins. You must come to the Lord Jesus even now in faith appealing to His great mercy, turning from your sins and surrendering to His kingship over your life.

But Paul's command here in Ephesians 6 -11, that's for the believer. Put on the whole armor of God. So this is similar to what Paul is telling the church at Rome. Put on the armor of light, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's similar to what he says in Colossians 3. Colossians 3, or sorry, Colossians and Ephesians, they're sister letters, they're twin letters as it were. Colossians and Ephesians overlap a lot, but in Colossians 3, Paul tells the church to put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

If we are in Christ, well, if we're in Christ in one sense, we've already put on Christ, and yet we're continually to put on Christ. We cannot understand the armor of God without understanding putting on Christ.

Our need to constantly clothe ourselves in the Lord Jesus Christ. Colossians 3 teaches us that we can do these things by seeking the things, not the things of the earth, but to seek the things that are above where Christ is.

We behold and glory in the reality of our sovereign King. We behold, like we sang this morning, we behold the wondrous mystery of God in Christ. In fact, let me draw your attention back to Ephesians 1.

Ephesians 1, consider this Christ. Ephesians 1, verse 18 says, having the hearts of your eyes, wouldn't that be silly? Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you.

What are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints? And what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us, who believe, according to the working of His great might, that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all the rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Beloved, this is Christ. This is the sovereign King of the ages, the One crushed for our iniquities, resurrected from the dead, raised and seated at the right hand of God, the One to whom the church is to look to, to see Him as He is seated at the right hand of God.

He is the head of the church, and He bids us one, and He bids us all, to come and to clothe ourselves in Him, not only in justification, which is absolutely true. By the way, do you remember in Genesis 3?

In Genesis 3, God clothes Adam and Eve in skins of garments, or skins of garments, garments of skins. What is wrong with my brain?

Yeah.

So, that phrase there in the Greek Septuagint, where God clothed them, is the same word in our text in Ephesians 6, put on, clothed. So, in salvation, in justification, God clothes us in the righteous robes of Christ.

We're clothed in Christ in justification. We trade our filthy rags for His righteous robes. We're clothed in Christ, and we are declared righteous by the righteousness of Jesus, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, through the glory of God alone.

This is the greatness of the gospel, but Paul is commanding the church here, to put on the whole armor of God, in the sense that we don't just put on Christ in our justification, but we also put on Christ in our sanctification.

We put on Christ for the battle of our day, and this sovereign King of kings and Lord of lords, bids us to come to Him for armor. Remember the context of Ephesians 6. He bids us, come one, come all, come and put on Christ, to the master and to the slave, to the wife and to the husband, to the child and to the parent.

Come all, come church, come and put on Christ, so that you may be able to stand in the evil day. You will not stand in the onslaught of our day without putting on Christ. Some of you are tempted to put on conservative news, right?

Clothe yourself in conservative news. That's where I'll find safety. Or clothe yourself, and we'll talk about this later in other things, in legality or such. But no, no, no, the text is, clothe yourself in Christ.

Why would you try to battle the evil of our day? The evil of your own fleshly lust. The evil of the devil without Christ. Why would we not obey this wonderful command to put on the whole armor of God?

This gracious and sovereign King bids you today to put on His armor. To look to His sovereignty. To consider His power. To behold His majesty. To rest in His gospel. To depend on His nourishment. To implore Him for His graces.

He tells the church, you have not because you ask not.

To ask.

To seek.

To knock. To do battle His way. To follow His word.

To serve His church. To bond together like brothers in war. To put on Christ. To put on Christ involves seeking Him personally in the Bible, in prayer. Meditating on the Scriptures. Thinking deeply about the word of God.

Every morning waking up and saying, here's the bad thing. Here's the bad thing about our sanctification. The difficult thing. Yesterday's battles, yesterday's victories don't fight today's battles. You understand what I'm saying?

That means each morning that you wake up, this is a command to you again. Each morning you wake up, I have to put on Christ today. Because if I don't, I'll fall. I'll falter. I'll succumb. Put on Christ.

It involves seeking Him corporately in worship, in the Lord's Supper, in the preaching of the Word, in fellowship. Put on the whole armor of God. My point here, friends, is to encourage us to remember that in every piece of armor that we examine, that the full and total armor of God points us to none other than Christ Himself.

All our victory is in Jesus. All our power is in Jesus. The very life of Jesus, as it were, flows through the veins of His church. He is our captain fighting through us and for us, and we are called to rest in Him and to make the conscious daily decision to put on God's armor, to put on Christ.

This is not a command that you don't think about. It's not something that is supposed to just happen. It's something that the church is instructed to do. To fail to do this is to disobey. And not only does it dishonor God, right?

So we're in the armory, and God shows us all these pieces of armor, and we see the helmet and the sword and the breastplate, and you say,.

You know what?

I'm just going to take my stick. Well, not only does that dishonor God, but that stick that you think you're going to fight the evil one with or the world or your flesh, it will not suffice. Christ is our life.

We're united to Him by faith. We're clothed in His perfect righteousness. So let us be mindful to put Him on daily to kill sin, to stand against the devil's schemes. Number two, the futility of the wrong armor.

So the text bids us to put on the right armor, to put on Christ, to put on the whole armor of God. Let me speak to you for a moment about the futility of putting on the wrong armor. Sometimes we're like David.

You remember the story, right? David goes to fight Goliath. He tried on Saul's armor. He finds out it doesn't really fit. It really wouldn't have worked. It would have actually hindered him against the enemy,.

If you will.

If he would have tried to fight Goliath, this is all hypothetical, of course, but if he would have tried to fight Goliath in the wrong armor, probably Goliath, humanly speaking, would have won. Well, so too must a Christian put on God's armor and not anyone else's.

Let me give you five examples of false armor and its futility.

Number one,.

The first example of wrong armor I'll give to you is legality. Number one, legality. You say, I'm going to clothe myself in legality. But Paul says, put on the armor of God. We cannot clothe ourselves in the law because this armor is too heavy.

It will ultimately crush us. The law is not your defense against a holy God. We don't drag the law in and say, look God, You can't get me because here's the law.

No, no, no.

And nor does it protect you from Satan's wiles. Not because it's not good. No, it is good, but because we fail to measure up to its standards on our own. If you think that the law is your means of safety, then you have set yourself up in the trap of the enemy because what will happen is as soon as you break the law,.

And you will,.

The accuser will pounce on you to bring you very low and you'll be unuseful to the kingdom. Or the other trap is, another way is to harden you as though you're breaking the law in one area is okay since you really work hard to keep it in another area.

But either way, legality burdens the believer. Whereby his or her usefulness in the kingdom is greatly hindered. If you think that adding rules to God's Word will keep you safe, or if you think rule keeping makes you superior to other Christians, you have clothed yourself in wrong armor.

The enemy has you right where he wants you. Legality is not our armor. Leave legality and flee to Christ. Second example of wrong armor, if I may give you the opposite, carnality. Legality on one hand, the other carnality.

Paul says put on the whole armor of God, but this carnality will not do. The opposite of legalism, if you will, is antinomianism. Yet, they both stem from the same evil root, a disregard for God's law.

Legalism disregards God's law by treating it as though it's a means to God. Antinomianism disregards God's law by just simply dismissing it altogether. So if the armor of legality is too heavy, the armor of carnality is too light.

It leaves us dangerously exposed to so many deadly traps of Satan. The armor of legality says law, law, while the armor of carnality says sin,.

More and more and more,.

So that grace may abound. The armor of carnality does not commend Christ. It dishonors Him. It is bound to the flesh. It deceives. It disrupts. It disunifies. It destroys. It disqualifies. Cast the armor of legality and the armor of carnality off and put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Put on the whole armor of God. A third example of feudal armor, plurality. Paul says put on the whole armor of God. We must not clothe ourself in legality, carnality. Thirdly, plurality. The armor of plurality is just counting noses, right?

To see where the most people stand. Well, if most people believe this, I'm going to put that on. If most people behave that way, I'm going to behave that way. If most people believe that this is right, well, then I'm just going to do that as well and I'm going to find safety there.

So I don't want to stray from the crowd. But God's word teaches us that God's way is the narrow way. The road to heaven is not the crowded road. It's not the road of plurality. Few there be, the scripture says, that find it.

So clothing yourself in majority opinion is like clothing yourself in the dominion voting system. It's a false majority. God is the majority. Here's the fourth example of wrong armor. So legality, carnality, plurality.

Now this is similar to legality, but I need to address it.

Morality.

Put on the whole armor of God. He's not saying morality. Morality is similar to legality, yet it's for those who do not care so much about God's law as they do about cultural morals. So listen carefully.

This is very dangerous in the Bible Belt. In the Bible Belt, we have these, I can't quote the whole song, but we have these things where we say, we say grace and we say ma 'am, right? We have the idea of, you wait, one time when I was in seminary, I met a guy who was from Maine or somewhere, you know, somewhere north.

If you're too far north, I don't even know. I'm just joking, Canada. But he was basically like, look, I don't like people in the south because everyone smiles at you, but no one's your friend. And I was like, oh wow, that's deep.

There's a superficiality there when it comes to relationships in the south because we've created a morality. So we don't clothe ourselves. This will not protect you. I'm kind by standards of Bible Belt morality or kuth or love or whatever virtues the culture dictates him.

Well, there's also morality. There's also morality that's immorality as well. But the person clothed in morality says, well, I'm a good person. I love people.

Love is love.

And by good, they mean that they are good by the standard of the world. And then they try to be nice and generous and kind. And all these virtues that are dictated by culture. But this is not the armor that you will put on and stand against the evil one.

Legality, carnality, plurality, morality. Let me give you one more, finality. Now this armor, again, this is a Bible Belt issue particularly, but I'm sure it happens in other places. But this is the armor.

Finality is the armor that essentially says, I don't need armor at all because I believe in the doctrine of justification by death. Now, that's not a real doctrine. No one would actually articulate it that way.

But it's taught at so many funerals today. That is, this person is in heaven, why? Because they're dead, right? Where else would they be?

They're in heaven.

We're at their funeral. And so since they've passed away, since they're deceased, and now we're at their funeral, we have to talk about how they're in heaven. But that's not the teaching of the scriptures.

You can go to the funeral of some of the most immoral people, but you can hear how they're now in heaven with Jesus. Needless to say, this is not good armor. Now, as we've covered these five examples of false armor, I want to make a few more comments.

First, more and more have come to me since I've given you the outline. We won't go through a ton of them. But there are a lot of more examples that we could use. So I thought about superficiality. So like this idea of I'm in the armor of God because I prayed a prayer, right?

I prayed a prayer, I said a prayer, and now God's obligated to save me. I'll live how I want. That's my armor.

No.

Or I thought about frugality, right? I'm really good with money, and I handle money well, and I'm generous with my money, and so I'm going to be okay.

No.

Or mentality. That is, I'm a very strong thinker. Like, I don't let things affect me.

No, no.

None of these things are the armor. Paul says, put on the whole armor of God. You also understand that you could mix and match these wrong armors. So you could put on legality here and wield the sword of carnality over there.

But most importantly, what I want you to hear is this. If you have picked up any of this false armor, if any of this armor describes your way of thinking,.

Your way of life,.

Any of it about it is true about you, then you must abandon it immediately. Okay, because Christians, sometimes we do pick up the wrong armor. We're silly.

We're like sheep.

We have to be told time and time and time again. We do these things. But there's also the dangerous reality that if you're living in this kind of armor, it may be indicative that you're unconverted. The true Christian longs to be...

Tell me, if you're a Christian, tell me that your heart does not long, even now under the preaching of the Word, to be fully clothed in the armor of Christ. You may be intimidated by the evil one. You may be nervous at times about the fight that's going on in the world today.

But you hear Christ and you say, if you're a believer, you say, yes, I want Christ.

I want that. I want to put on Jesus. I don't want to put on legality or carnality.

Or morality or plurality or finality.

None of these alities.

I want Christ. So abandon these insufficient types of armor and go again to Christ our armor, our warrior King. I remind you again today of His grace and mercy. He bids you to come. How silly is the church and how foolish is the church and how ultimately wicked would the church be to reject such kindness from our Lord.

Leave off false armor, put on the armor of God. This leads us to our last point. We have considered Christ as our armor. We have considered the futility of the wrong armor. And now let me mention the terror of the armorless.

Imagine waking up in a battlefield, having no weapons and no armor. So Paul says, put on the whole armor of God. If you refuse this, number one, you're separated. You are wandering around an active battlefield with no commander, no platoon.

You're just wandering through life separated from God. Those without any armor or those who have donned false armor are separated. Secondly, they are alienated. That is, to fail to wear the armor of the King is to wear the enemy's colors.

You understand?

Like if I'm not going to wear the armor of God, you understand what happens. And there's been so many battles in the history of warfare where people have been shot wrongly because they were wearing the wrong colors, right?

You understand if you're not wearing the King's armor, then ultimately you're wearing the enemy's colors. The armor of Christ, the army of Christ only has one type of armor. There's only one type of armor that the army of Christ wears.

And it is Christ.

Those who are in the army of Christ, they wear His colors. They wear Christ, the armor of God. But the enemy wears a multiplicity of uniforms. That is, it doesn't matter. Satan doesn't care. You're clothed in legality.

You say, yeah, but that's really scarce Satan. He doesn't care. He doesn't care if you're clothed in legality. He doesn't care if you're clothed in carnality. He doesn't care if you're a Pharisee. He doesn't care if you're the most wretched, miserable, openly atheist person who's ever lived.

He doesn't care that you're not clothed in the armor of Christ. He doesn't care which false armor you're clothed in. It only concerns him that you are clothed in false armor, not the armor of God. And the point here is that those who are not in the armor of God are not merely separated from God, but they are alienated from Him.

They are traitors to God and His camp and His cause. Those without the armor of God are separated, alienated. Thirdly, naked. Put on the whole armor of God. And if we don't, we're naked. We may have fig leaves like Adam and Eve, but it's not enough.

Those without the armor of God are exposed. They are exposed doctrinally. That is, Ephesians has already taught us that they'll be blown about by every wind of doctrine. They will believe anything or they'll believe nothing or they'll believe everything.

They have no doctrinal integrity when it comes to be rooted in Scripture because they're not wearing the armor of God. They are exposed morally.

That is, their morality,.

And listen to some professing Christians today, their morality will be governed by what feels right or what the culture says is right and not ultimately the Word of God. Well, I just think that we should be doing whatever.

And that's what you hear from a Christian or a professing Christian, maybe a false Christian, who is not clothed in the armor of God. They will quote Matthew 7, 1 to you, judge not if you ever call out their sin.

This is because they're exposed doctrinally. They're exposed morally. Ultimately, they will be exposed spiritually. Here comes the onslaught of the evil one. Here come the fiery arrows of temptation and doubt and destruction.

You remember that Jesus says that the evil one, that he seeks to devour, right? Jesus says that he's come for life and that the evil one has come to destroy life. So here come the fiery arrows, right?

They come and they're shot at you. And then the person who is naked has no armor to stop these arrows, no shield to defend themselves, no sword to cut down the evil one. They are exposed spiritually. First of all, if you're an unbeliever, these things should terrify you.

Yes, what should terrify you above all is certainly that the wrath of God awaits you in eternity. But there are other earthly terrors to contend with too, terrors in this life, that you are exposed doctrinally, morally, spiritually.

It's terrifying that you'll just be blown about.

By every wind of doctrine.

You'll believe anything, you'll live any way, and you have no weapons to stand. Against the onslaught and to the Christian, does this not motivate us all the more to put on, to clothe ourselves in the whole armor of God?

Because when Christians fail to do this, we can, and listen, don't think to yourself, you're very prideful if you look around and you see a Christian stumble and you think, I could never do that. Try not putting on the whole armor of God.

Try living in this wicked world without actively and consciously and consistently putting on Christ. Some of you have fallen into sin. Some of you have fallen into doctrinal error. Some of you have fallen into immorality.