3. Armor of God: The Belt of Truth

The Armor of God and the Belt of Truth

Okay, so as you can see, this morning we're going to be going over the Belt of Truth. So where in the scriptures is the passages about the armor of God found? Ephesians what? Good, okay, Ephesians 6. So we're going to read these, and I changed the scripture, I changed the translation instead of the ESV.

I switched to the NASB because I just think it capitalizes the verses that are pertinent in the Old Testament, that are quoted from the Old Testament. So here it goes. Finally, be strong in the Lord and the strength of His might.

Put on the full armor of God so that you will 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 so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with the 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 arrows 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 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 is, that in proclaiming it, I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. So I know we were off last week. I just want to do a real quick review. First, the scale of our need. We are outmatched. We're battling against not flesh and blood, so this is not Goliath we're going up against.

We're going up against fallen angels who completely outpower us. The scale of our provision. Say yes to the dress. Remember the illustration. We have to put on the full armor of God. God has made provision for us to stand against these spiritual forces in His armor.

God directed sanctification, so yes, we're fighting a battle outwardly, but there's also a battle inwardly going on within us as the Holy Spirit sanctifies us and conforms us to the image of the Spirit, the image of Jesus.

So yes, we're battling against the dark forces, but there's also a battle that goes on within us to die to our desires, our fleshly desires, and live according to the Spirit. The armor of God is God's armor.

Jesus wore it first, okay? You don't need to know—I shouldn't say that. Your job is to recognize that He wore that in your place. The glory of our weakness. The battle is God's battle. In our weakness, He is made strong.

When you admit your weakness, God comes in and He fills you up, okay? So what's the setting? This is the setting. Anyone who's delivered mail knows—this wasn't—anyone who's delivered mail long enough knows you might get barked at by a dog, or chased by a dog, or bit by a dog.

True? All three.

I didn't mean to bring flashbacks to Pastor Chris's mind, but this is a picture of what we're going through, right? According to Paul, one of the certainties in life is that sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later, you're going to experience the attacks of the devil, right?

That's you, the little saint, and the little devil's barking out after you. You feel better?

Okay, good.

Life as a Christian is not a picnic. It's an armed struggle against a powerful opponent. So you need to be properly dressed in the armor that God has provided. So again, we have two extremes. Oh, it's the devil under every rock, or the devil doesn't exist.

The truth is, we live in the middle of those two positions. There is a spiritual attack on us, but God has made provision for us to walk through it. In fact, those attacks sometimes strengthen us in our faith as we stand on God's Word.

So real quick, to go through each of the pieces of the armor, we have the helmet of salvation. You must take salvation as your helmet. The breastplate of righteousness, having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

Today, we're going through the belt of truth, staying your ground with a truth belt around your waist, the shield of faith, above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked one.

Then the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and the gospel boots of peace, wearing for shoes on your feet, the eagerness to share or spread the gospel of peace. So today, we're on the belt of truth.

Paul itemizes the armor piece by piece, and there is a specific order to the armor. We start with the belt of truth. The first component he mentions is the belt of truth. The belt was the logical place to start because it was the first piece of the soldier's equipment to be strapped on.

It went underneath the armor to hold all the other clothing out of the way. In those days, when people wore long, flowing robes, the belt enabled the person to run and fight without being encumbered. So you would put your belt on first and then your armor afterward.

The belt was what kept the robe in place. It was kind of like foundational. That's what you strapped on first. To update the image, it is challenging to fight if your pants keep falling down, right? The belt is foundational to any soldier's effectiveness, and according to Paul, the equivalent of the belt in God's armor is truth.

Truth is essential to the Christian life. It is foundational to taking a stand against the devil, right? We stand on truth. The Christian message unambiguously claims to be the truth, not just a truth.

We live in a world where relativism runs the day. Oh, you have your truth, I have my truth, they have their truth, right? We're not talking about that. We're talking about something that's objectively true, not subjectively true.

The difference is this, subjectively, I can ask everybody in here, which is the best flavor of ice cream? Some of you are going to say Rocky Road, vanilla, chocolate, strawberry. It's subjective. It's dependent on the person.

But if I said, listen, somebody came to me and says, listen, I have a headache. What should I take? And I offer them Tylenol or arsenic. If they take arsenic, their headache is going to be gone forever.

Tylenol, it's temporary, right? So if you take the arsenic, it doesn't matter how you feel about the arsenic. The arsenic is going to kill you. That's objective.

That resides outside the person.

So we believe in objective truth, a truth that exists outside of our preferences that we are governed by. We have the laws of logic. We have the laws of nature. We have moral laws that all exist outside of us, such that those things are not subjective.

They're objective. Like Francis Schaeffer says, it's true truth. He actually had to use that phrase because people who abuse the term truth all the time. He says, no, true truth. So this really comes down to a matter of worldview.

What is reality? What is the reality that we live in? Okay, so here's the question I like to ask people whenever I'm out on the street or getting into some form of argumentation with people. I ask them, what is truth?

So I'm asking you guys that. And if you haven't heard my particular answer, raise your hand.

What is truth? True truth.

True truth. Okay, good. Anybody have an idea?

Yes.

The word of God is true, sure. Jesus is true, okay. That which corresponds to reality, that's called the correspondence theory of truth. That which corresponds to reality. But usually when somebody says that, I always ask them, whose reality?

Hitler's? Mother Teresa's? Whose reality are we talking about? So I've come to adopt an answer to this question that goes like this. The biblical answer. Truth is that which corresponds to the mind of God.

Nothing is true apart from the mind of God. God thinks perfectly. Everything he thinks is perfect and true. Our job is to think God's thoughts after him. Which was a term coined by Cornelius Van Tilde, father of presuppositionalism.

We are to think God's thoughts after him. If we think God's thoughts after him and he thinks perfectly, then we're thinking in line.

With truth.

But your answers were all correct in the fact that it's the word of God. Proverbs 2 .6. The Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He is the one who informs us. He created the world.

He defined the world. He tells us how to live in it and what things are. Colossians 2 .3. Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Christ is the fountainhead. He's the source of wisdom and knowledge.

In fact, it says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, to the elemental spirit of the world and not according to Christ. So the believer's job is to take every thought captive to Christ.

Line it up to what he says. If it comports with what Christ says, it's true. If it doesn't, then it's a lie.

It's false.

Paul would say, where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? You look at the wisdom of the world. When I was growing up, we're coming into an incredible ice age.

Everything is going to be frozen. That was in the 70s and 80s. Then it was the ozone layer. There's a hole in the ozone layer. We're all going to die. And we have the scientific proof to back it up. And I wasn't allowed to use hairspray.

Not that I need it anymore. But you're not allowed to use hairspray, because that's going to cause a bigger hole in the ozone. Now it's global warming and climate change, all backed by science. In the last 40 years, they haven't been right.

Where's the wisdom of the man? Like our brother Eli Ayala says, God is the father of all facts. All facts are God's facts. No fact is a fact unless God says it's a fact.

Okay?

Because God can't be wrong. When you trust in an omniscient God who knows everything, you can trust what he says, because he's omniscient. He has all knowledge. There's no human being that is omniscient.

So anything they tell you can change at some point in time, right? So the belt of truth is primary. The belt of truth is ultimate. The belt of truth is vital. The belt of truth is foundational. If you do not have truth, you're going to end up in trouble.

Like if I said, oh, listen, I'm going to roller skate on the roof, you'd be like, mm-mm, gravity's going to take over, you're going to fall. Oh, that's just your truth. Until I fall and break my leg and snap my neck or something, right?

So what does the world say about this? The world says, you just got to believe. You just got to believe something. You just got to believe something, anything. And if you believe in something or anything, you have to be sincere about it, right?

Do you recognize people believe in all kinds of crazy stuff sincerely? And guess what? They're sincerely wrong, right? Because they believe truth is relative. It's not fixed. It's not stationary. For them, truth is relative.

Now, if you guys haven't seen the Contending Against Relativism video from the conference we had, my buddy Phil Sessa did an excellent job. In fact, I'm considering watching it tomorrow night at study because he went through a lot of stuff.

He's from New York. He speaks at 250 words a minute with gusts up to 300. So it takes a little while to listen to him to get through that, right? For them, truth is relative. But they tell you, don't stop believing.

Hold on to that feeling, right? You know Steve Perry? That's the guy who did that song, Don't Stop Believing. You know how that song came about? He was a struggling artist, couldn't get in anywhere. He was trying to put together music, was just not making it anymore.

And his father kept telling him, don't stop believing. Don't stop believing. And he listened to his father so long, he put those words to music. That's how we get the song. However, he says, hold on to that feeling.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Feelings are fleeting. They change moment by moment. Hold on to what feeling. By tomorrow, you're going to feel differently than you do today. By the time you get into the sanctuary, you're going to feel differently than you do right.

Now.

Feelings are constantly moving. They're not fixed. However, truth is changeless, immutable, enduring, permanent, stable, right? And it actually brought to mind the illustration of God separating the water from the land.

The Israelites were known as people of the land, right? The land was stable. It was something that they could stand on and not be moved. It was something they could build on. The Gentiles were the people of the sea.

You ever see the sea? Up, down, it comes in, tide comes in, it goes out. It's forever moving, right? You want to be an Israelite who builds his house on the rock, on the truth, because the truth doesn't change.

You build your house apart from the truth on a lie, it's going to be shifting. It's never going to be stable. So the armor of God, this is the way I like to categorize these. The belt of truth is your foundation, it's truth.

The boots are your missions, the gospel of peace to bring the gospel to all people. The breastplate is your why or your motivation, your heart, the inclination of your heart has changed. You now love God and you love people.

The shield of faith is your protection by which you extinguish the darts of the evil.

One.

The helmet is your mindset. You want to make sure that your mind is fixed on truth and is pursuing truth and not the bad things of the world. And the sword, the word of God, is your solution. That's where we go to for unchanging truth.

So we begin with the belt of truth. The Bible unequivocally declares that it matters what you believe. Christianity, according to the Bible, is not simply one way among many of getting to God, it is the truth.

Jesus is the only pathway through whom we may approach God the Father. The Apostle Peter declared, there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

You can try to get to God around Jesus, it will end up in judgment. The only way you come to God with boldness and full assurance of faith is because Jesus is your intercessor. He is your shield. We now have access to God the Father through Jesus Christ.

He's not one of many ways, He's the only way. He would say, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. That's a claim to exclusivity. Truth is exclusive. One plus two equals three.

Not four, not two, not anything else. No one has a problem with exclusivity when it comes to math. They all have a problem with exclusivity when it comes to truth claims in religion. We all belong to these different religious clubs, but we're all going to the same place.

It's all God. Not according to Jesus, not according to the Apostles, not according to the Word of God. In fact, Jesus would rail against those people who were the most religious, the Pharisees and the Sadducees of the day.

First Peter 3 .15, but in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Most apologists leave off that first part of the verse, honor Christ the Lord as holy, set him apart.

And what do they do?

They start using the evidence, the scientific evidence in the world to point to God, rather than standing on the rock of Jesus Christ and say, Jesus said this, this is what he.

Said.

When we argue with a Jehovah's Witness, with a Muslim, with a Catholic, with a Jew, what.

Do we use?

The Word of God. But when we argue with an atheist, we step off the Word of God and use science. No, you use the Word of God. That's your foundation. You stand on that and that alone. The scientific evidence comports with what the Bible teaches.

Colossians 2 .3, we went over this, in Christ in whom all hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, see to it that no one takes you captive by hollow philosophy and empty deceit. Second Corinthians 10 .5, we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

We take the knowledge that the world feeds us, we bring it to the Word of God and compare it to what Jesus says, and Jesus wins. Jesus says, sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. You recognize that not only is the truth a weapon to fight against the spiritual forces, it's working internally in you.

That's what your sanctification is. Your sanctification is the Holy Spirit preparing you for heaven, preparing you for your final resting place.

Okay?

So you're being conformed to the image of Christ daily. When you die to your fleshly desires and you give yourself over to someone, which is the definition of love, giving yourself over to someone else for their benefit, it's difficult.

Sometimes.

Right?

Again, I say it all the time, if I had 10 religions to choose from, Christianity would be the last one. Love your enemies, bless those who persecute you, die to yourself, who would want that? What unregenerate person would want that?

None of us. That's why God has to do the work in our hearts first. In Ephesians 4 .21, Paul contrasts Christianity to the pagan approach to life that the Ephesians had previously followed, saying you were taught in him, in other words, Jesus, as the truth is in Jesus.

The pagans were all about fleshly desires, right? Much like America is today, but the truth is in Christ. And when you go through sanctification and trials, those trials are meant to strengthen.

You.

Don't reject the trial, just ask God, God, Father, what are you working in me? How is this going to be used for my benefit? Because it will be. Christianity claims loudly and boldly to be the truth, right?

And again, in a day and age of relativism, when someone says this is true and only this is true, you're going to get backlash. But I'm standing with Jesus, I'm not standing with anyone else. And the truth with which you are to be belted in order to face up to the devil is, first and foremost, the truth of what we believe.

The gospel message of, what is the most important truth that we believe as Christians? Salvation. Okay, and what does that mean?

Yes.

Who God is and who we are in Christ, right? You are either in Christ or not in Christ. Again, the book of Ephesians uses that term, in Christ, 13 times. Paul's making a statement by saying it that many times.

The truth is revealed to us in the word of God, the scripture. So I want to remind us, let's go through some of the things that Paul says about being in.

Christ.

Because if God's word is true, then these words that I'm going to put up on the screen are true. In Christ, you have every spiritual blessing reserved in heaven. Do you believe it? In Christ, you are chosen before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless.

In Christ, you are predestined to be adopted as children. Do you believe it? Do you remember the orphan train?

Right?

You were an orphan.

God put you on that train and delivered you. You're now seated in the heavenly realms. You are an heir to everything he's created. Do you believe that? In Christ, you are given grace, have redemption and forgiveness, and receive wisdom.

In Christ, you are marked with God's seal of the promised Holy Spirit as a guarantee of the inheritance. In Christ, you have resurrection power. You are going to be resurrected from the dead. In Christ, you are made alive.

You were dead in your sins and trespasses, but in Christ, you were made alive. In Christ, you were created anew. You are a new creation. In Christ, you are brought near to God. The Gentiles were separated from God, far away, and now they've been brought near in Christ.

In Christ, you have access to the Father through the Spirit. You can go to your heavenly Father without the fear of condemnation. In Christ, you are built and joined together into a spiritual temple. The church is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

In Christ, you may approach God with freedom and with confidence. You have been adopted by God. We are heirs of everything He's made. The devil wants you to forget that. Remind yourself of this over and over and over again.

When the devil comes at you and makes an accusation, I saw you do this, wait till God knows. God knows already. All I say to the devil when I'm caught in something is, wait till you see what happens. I say, I saw what Jesus did.

I recognize I'm a sinner. I recognize I need a Savior, but I have one because I'm in Christ. You need to remind yourself of that. You need to remind the devil of that, not speaking to him.

You know what I'm saying.

That's going to put you on the foundation of truth. Now you can battle. My sins have been paid for. Yes, I don't like them. I don't want to sin, but I have a Savior. He knows I was going to fall. He knew what he was getting when he bought me.

He doesn't all of a sudden change his mind. Truth doesn't change. Okay, wearing the belt of truth. The belt is foundational to any soldier's effectiveness. According to Paul, we read that. The equivalent of the belt in God's armor is truth.

Truth is essential to the Christian life. It's foundational to taking a stand against the devil. The Christian message unambiguously claims to be the truth, not just a truth, but the truth. But what's the thing?

You have to put it on. If you don't put on the truth, you're walking around without your mind in the right direction. You're walking around on a faulty foundation. You're walking around trying to walk on water that is not stable.

You're listening to all the things that are on social media, all the things that are on the news, in the newspaper, and all this junk. We are at a point in time in society where we are in truth decay.

You don't know what is true anymore. And now they have deep fakes where you have somebody speaking and it sounds like the guy. You're like, look what he said. You go to find out it's not really what he said.

Somebody programmed that. The only thing that you have is your Bible that's going to tell you truth 100 of the time. Set your mind, set your feet, get your head in the Bible. A belt is no help to you hanging in your closet.

You have to put it on. Similarly, truth is of no value to you hanging unused in God's Word. You need to put it on. You need to become adept at connecting the Bible to your life. Listen to what James says.

Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and once forgets what he was like.

But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. You recognize, I'm a sinner, Jesus is a Savior, I was created to be dependent on him, he paid for my sins and now commands us to go.

You walk in that. You boldly proclaim Jesus as Lord. You proclaim the Gospel. When you read, the enemy tries to distract you. I don't know about you guys. You start to think of all the things you need to do today, you know, the to-do list, you open up the Word and go, okay, pray it, I'm ready.

It's like, oh, wait a second, I got to do this, I got to, right? You need to suddenly check your email, social media, the weather. Oh, it could be raining today, I don't know. Like, all these things are pulling you away.

Why?

You start to remember who you have to speak to and what you have to, oh, yeah, I got to tell so and so that, yeah, the meeting's on for today, not tomorrow. You start thinking of things that weren't an issue 10 minutes earlier, right?

Why?

We get distracted by the world, the flesh, and the devil. I want to encourage you to make an appointment, whether it's the morning, afternoon, night, whatever is your good time, make an appointment to sit with the Lord and keep that appointment.

Ask God to help you keep that appointment. Pray and read God's Word and let God's Word read you. Okay, so how do we battle against these principalities? How do we battle against Satan? Well, Satan, we answer him with the truth.

The devil wants to persuade you to believe a lie. As a result, he will go to extraordinary lengths to limit your contact with God's Word, which is the truth. Once he's separated you from truth, he starts with his perverse words.

God doesn't have your best interests at heart. He is out to spoil your fun. If you're a Christian, your life is going to be miserable because God's laws restrict your freedom. Sin is the way to true happiness and fulfillment.

Those are lies of the devil and the truth with which to answer them effectively is found in the Bible. How did Jesus do it? Thus says the Lord, thus says the Lord. It is written, it is written, it is written, right?

The Bible gives us truth which we can answer the devil and thus stand firm against his schemes. But like a belt, in order for that truth to do us any good, we have to bind it around us afresh every day.

You need to put the belt of truth on. Our hearts are leaky containers, constantly losing our hold on the truth. Day by day, we need to refill our mind with the fresh measure of God's truth revealed in the scripture so that we will be equipped to stand against Satan's lies, right?

Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word out of the mouth of God. So, I want you to answer this question. Why are you a Christian? Who wants to answer that?

Anybody?

Yes. Good.

Thank you, right? If your answer begins with, I, you're on the wrong ground. That's what Satan wants you to say. I chose God. I did this. I read my Bible. I go to church. I, I, I. That's exactly where Satan wants you.

What he does not want to hear is, Jesus saved me. He died on the cross in my place. You see the difference? One points to yourself and your weakness. One points to Christ and his strength, his strength to save us.

Stand in the Lord, in the power and strength of his might, not your own. Because if, like John McArthur says, if you could lose your salvation, you would. No one in here is strong enough to maintain perfection for the rest of your life.

So, what does, what does the Apostle John say? He came to his own and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of.

Man, but of God.

You were born of God. He doesn't change his mind. He doesn't make mistakes. If you're born of his spirit, you are his child forever.

Forever.

You have to stand on that truth and not be moved off of it. If you find yourself falling into sin, recognize that if you confess your sins, he is faithful and just to forgive them and cleanse you of your unrighteousness.

When you're in sin, your flesh is going to want to move away from God. You need to move closer to God, a system of truth, totus scriptura. Who wants to tell me what totus scriptura means?

Yes.

That's sola scriptura. That's okay. That's good though. Sola scriptura. Scripture alone. What is totus scriptura? All of scripture. The totality of scripture from Genesis to Revelation. So we don't just pick a verse here and a verse there.

We pick all the verses and we marinate in the whole counsel of God, not just the verses that say God loves you and forget about the judgment ones, right? And hell and all those things that we don't want to think about, right?

We need all of scripture to inform our conscience. What the Bible gives us is not simply little nuggets of truth. One truth over here, another truth over there, but rather a whole system of teaching of doctrine.

All the different parts of the Bible are related and interrelated and when you put them together as a whole, they teach us what we must believe about God and what God requires of us. Most people's theology, they have a puzzle piece here, a puzzle piece there, a puzzle and they don't know how to put them all together and they never see the box top to see if their puzzle lines up with that.

We need to preach the whole counsel of God and hopefully we do that here at Hope so that you have a comprehensive understanding of who God is.

God is holy.

God is love.

Yes.

But if you separate those two things and teach only that God is love and then you misunderstand what love means, you're going to come up with a deficient explanation of who God is. The idea of doctrine is not very popular in our day and age.

People don't want someone telling them what they should believe or what they should do. Even Christians can fall into that way of thinking. Let's not talk about doctrine. Doctrine divides us and I say yes, doctrine does divide truth from error.

You need to know, right? Let's talk about our experiences instead. Experiences unite us. Unfortunately, what these people fail to realize is that they too are pushing a doctrine. The doctrine, that doctrine doesn't matter but experience does.

So let me ask you something. Do you want the authority of an experience or do you want the experience of the authority in the word of God? Now I don't know if you guys know who Leonard Ravenhill is. He's an old time Pentecostal preacher.

He's really good, right? But he came up with this quote. He says, a man with an experience of God is never at the mercy of a man with an argument. A man with an experience of God is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.

Do you think that's true or false?

Huh?

False.

How many people say false?

One.

How many people say true? There's only one person in the room apparently. Okay. Can a Muslim have an experience with God? Can a Mormon have an experience with God? You start basing truth on someone's experience, you're in big trouble.

You're in big trouble. So here, I'm going to give you a different quote. This is my response.

A-U-V.

You ready? A man with the truth is never at the mercy of a man with an experience. You stand on the truth, you don't need to worry about experience, right? Because your experiences, like your feelings, are going to fluctuate.

So a man with the truth is never at the mercy of a man with an experience. People do not want a God that tells them what to do. They want to be God. They want to experience God that way. Their doctrine is that experience is what counts.

In reality, you can't get away from having doctrine. Everyone, even atheists, have a system of beliefs about God, about who God is, and what he requires of man. Whatever you believe, however, you inevitably have a system of doctrine that explains what you believe about God and what he requires of you.

You cannot base your relationship with God on experiences. You need to base your relationship with God on the Word of God. Jesus wore the belt of truth first. Here comes the good news. Jesus wore the armor of God first and perfectly employed it on our behalf.