Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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As we consider these things. Let's
turn now to Ephesians chapter six and consider
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the armor of God. Ephesians six. Please remain standing as I read to
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you tonight. I'm focusing this evening
on verse fourteen, but I'll read from
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ten to twenty. Let's hear the
word of our God. Finally, be
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strong in the Lord and in the
strength of his might. Put on the
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whole armor of God that you may
be able to stand against the schemes of
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the devil, for we do not
wrestle against flesh and blood, but against
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the rulers, against the authorities,
against the cosmic powers over this present darkness,
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against the spiritual forces of evil in
the heavenly places. Therefore, take
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up the whole armor of God that
you may be able to withstand in the
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evil day and, having done all
to stand firm. Stand therefore, having
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fastened on the belt of truth,
having put on the breastplate of righteousness and,
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as shoes for your feet, having
put on the readiness given by the
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gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with
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which you can extinguish all the flaming
darts of the evil one, and take
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the helmet of salvation and the sword
of the spirit, which is the word
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of God, praying at all times
in the spirit, with all prayer and
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supplication to that end, keep alert
with all perseverance, making supplication for all
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the Saints and also for me,
that words may be given to me,
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and opening my mouth boldly to proclaim
the mystery of the Gospel for which I
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am an ambassador in chains, that
I may declare it boldly as I ought
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to speak the God, bless his
word to us, may be seated.
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So I said the focus of the
sermon was on fourteen. I should have
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said fourteen and fifteen. We're going
to give our attention tonight to the first
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three pieces of armor. I'm not
really an expert in armory stuff, so
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I might be using the wrong terms. They're I'll look that up, but
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until then we have these, these
three these three things, a belt of
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truth, a breastplate of righteousness and
shoes, shoes that are described as readiness
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in the gospel of peace or of
the gospel of peace, or given by
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the gospel of peace. Now you
remember in this section Ephesians chapter six.
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Here at the end of effusions,
Paul is reminding us of something that we
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sometimes forget, sometimes we're surprised by, and that's that the Christian life is
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a struggle. It can be even
describe, be described in military terms,
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battle, armor, fight. The
Christian life is one that requires fighting.
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It requires strength, it requires withstanding, standing strong, standing firm, not
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getting knocked down, extinguishing darts,
being protected and so on. And so
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though the Christian life can rightly be
described as a battle, as war,
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as a struggle, we also see
in this passage that this battle is unusual
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for two reasons. First, because
the enemy is hidden. Paul says,
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we do not wrestle against flesh and
blood, but against rulers and authorities,
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against the cosmic powers over this special
present darkness, against the spiritual forces of
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evil in the heavenly places. The
enemy is hidden. We cannot see him
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now. Certainly Wi will experience fless
and blood manifestations of that work, even
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as a Herod for example, sought
to destroy Jesus when he was born.
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These was very flesh and blood activity, but behind that work was something more
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ultimate, where the true battle is
being fought, and that's the first thing
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that's unusual about it. We are
tempted to see everything in terms of this
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world to see everything in material terms, but the Bible tells us that there
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are immaterial things, spiritual things,
both good and evil, which we cannot
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see, and the battle is ultimately
being fought on that level. That's one
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reason this, this battle, is
unusual and important to remember. Similarly,
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there's a second way in which the
battle is unusual, and that's that the
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battle we wage and the armor we
fight in is also unseen. This armor
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that is going to be our defense
and our strength in the battle is also
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a spiritual one. Ultimately, it
comes from standing in Christ, who none
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of us can see, not because
he cannot be seen, because he has
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a true body, a human body
that is glorified, but his body is
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not here, it's in heaven.
We wait for his return and as long
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as we can't see him, he
therefore remains unseen. We stand in him,
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somehow, though. Stand firm,
stand strong in the Lord, in
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the strength of his might. How
do we do that? By means of
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the Holy Spirit, WHO UNITES US
to Christ. And again, the Holy
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Spirit is UN seeing. Now,
so we have this, this extremely important
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way in which we are supposed to
frame our lives, supposed to think about
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this struggle we are engaged in,
and yet we recognize that there is a
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difficult aspect of it. Perhaps we've
had the opportunity to consider the enemy now
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for a few weeks. Now I'd
like to turn and consider this way in
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which we fight, this spiritual unseen
and yet very real. Just as real
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is Christ himself, this spiritual armor
that we wear so that you may stand
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firm, as God says, even
in the evil day, even in the
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darkest hour. And tonight what I
want to do is consider the first three
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strengths. We might call them three
pieces of armor. The first three strengths
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that we get from Christ when we
stand in Him Truth, righteousness and readiness
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of the gospel of peace. My
hope is that as we think about these
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three things, as we come to
understand them better and why they are useful
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to us in battle, our faith
might be strengthened and our courage for the
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fight. So First, truth.
When we stand in the Lord and find
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our strength in Him, part of
this strength relates to something called truth.
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Now you will know, without much
proof, that people don't always use truth
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for strength. In fact, just
the opposite. Lies are very powerful lies
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and cunning and deceitful ways have great
power in them, are very strong,
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and yet we, as Christians,
reject them. We take something that is
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evidently very powerful, used constantly throughout
our world and in our lives, and
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yet we reject them as a way
in which we are going to fight this
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battle. Why would we do that? Why would we take something that others
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freely strap around their waists and reject
it and instead take a different piece of
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armor, armor called truth? Well, there's lots of good reasons for that.
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Why is truth strong? Why is
truth the right thing to wrap around
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us to prepare and be prepared for
battle? One reason is that though lies
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and deception, cunning deceit, these
things are powerful, so is truth,
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in fact, even more so.
Truth is powerful and that it always stands
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even when it's under attack. It
does this because truth is a characteristic of
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God, it's an attribute of God, and God him self is immovable.
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Lies and deception do have a certain
power, but always and only for a
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limited time. Lives are powerful,
but they have a very short shelf life
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in getting you what you want.
We have all kinds of ways of describing
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this. Right in English we have
various metaphors and idioms. We talked about
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a web of lies, right,
the way in which it the things that
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are required to keep it all together, the intricacies with which it must be
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woven in order to be useful.
It's hard work lying, it's hard work
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deceiving. We have another way.
We talked about this you. We talked
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about lies and deception like a house
of cards. Right, something that is
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impressive in a way. It takes
a lot of work and doing that goes
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into it, and yet the ease
by which it all falls apart is also
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stunning. Lies are like this.
They have this this way of being established,
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or looking established, and yet also
not. Or consider another thing.
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Have you ever been in a workplace
or a family where lying was normal?
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Was Their strength in that? Did
the family hold together? Was the family
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stronger because of it? Not?
Ultimately, strengths of relations, the strength
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of relationship, ships of will,
these kinds of things, they're built on
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trust, and trust is built on
truth. When we set aside lying and
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cunning and deceitful practices and instead choose
to speak truth, to do so in
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love, our task becomes simpler,
nobler and more lasting. The truth is
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also powerful because it works within reality. Right. God, who is true,
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has created the world in a particular
way. When you are lying,
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you are working against the grain,
constantly, constantly, working against reality.
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But when you tell the truth,
when you act and wise and true ways
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according to the will of God,
there's strengthen that. This is, of
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course, what Jesus himself did.
He always spoke truly, he accomplished everything
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he said he would do. His
promises remained true to the end, and
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his resurrections a perfect example of this. Jesus said, I will die,
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I will be killed and in three
days I will rise again from the dead.
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Jesus and in his disciples weren't scrambling
around trying to figure out how to
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manage this lie that they had told. No, Jesus just rose from the
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dead. Just that's not fair.
But the point is is that when you
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stand in truth, you stand in
truth. The truth stands on it us,
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on its own. My Dad always
used to say, it's not something
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that has to be propped up in
all kinds of ways. In a way,
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you can just kind of say it
and walk away. When you stand
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in the truth, when you stand
in reality, you stand in God.
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What does it look like to put
on the truth. What means rejecting lies
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and rejecting lying. It means learning
the truth. It means learning to detect
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what is a fraudulent trick and what
is the genuine thing. Practically, this
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means believing God at his word and
learning it, learning to distinguish what is
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wise from what is foolish, what
is true from what is false, and
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we do that by learning his word, by memorizing the catechism, in the
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scriptures, for example. We begin
to put into our into ourselves, the
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truth of God, so that when
we hear deceptions, when we hear lies,
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even when they be be covered or
coming at a different way, we
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can detect them, we can know
them and hold fast to what is right.
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And, of course, living truly
also means a not just believing in
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it, but of course living it
out as well. That brings us to
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this second piece of armor, righteousness. Righteousness is related to truth. Righteousness
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is the State or quality of being
upright, the state or quality of being
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true, of being a true person
in one's whole self. And the Bible,
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righteousness usually has an an outside of
it as well. Usually has a
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kind of legal sense, that of
having been judged as good as righteous,
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as just as morally right, or
perhaps as one who is able to be
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judged and stand in that judgment right. Judge me, my conscience is clear.
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I am right or I am righteous. This is where the truth,
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standing on its own, sort of
stands in us, in our state and
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in our position toward God and his
law. So, broadly speaking, you
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might say righteousness has to do with
one's character or one's relationship to the law.
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One easy way to think about this
is in superhero terms. In Superhero
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terms, the righteous person is the
good guy right, he's the one who
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has the the the the the the
good guy close and the good guy attitude.
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If you've ever read any comic book
books are seeing a superhero movies,
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you will know sometimes, however,
that a superhero will will drink a potion
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or a spell will be cast or
something will happen and then all of a
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sudden becomes sort of the bad guy
version of themselves. He's still the same
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guy, but the uniform changes,
it transforms in his way and indeed his
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actions change. The reasons he fights
change. The reasons why he fights also
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changes why, because he's a bad
guy now. Right, good guy,
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bad guy, righteous, unrighteous,
now, our uniform, our armor rather,
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God says, ought to be marked
by righteousness. Christians are supposed to
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be the good guys, remember truth. When we stand in truth, we
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stand not in our own reality or
our own version or understanding of the truth,
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we stand in the truth of God. The same is true. This
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is critical. The same is true
for righteousness. We Are Christians, are
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called to be the good guys.
are called to be righteous, not simply
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by living righteously, although that's a
part of it, but by actually being
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the good guy, by actually being
righteous. How does that happen? The
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same way it happens with truth.
In truth, we stand in the truth
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of God, and for righteousness,
we stand in the righteousness of God.
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The righteousness that we have in the
Bible is extremely clear on this point.
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Is a righteousness that is not of
our own. It's from Christ and this
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is really important because when you're thinking
about putting on the armor of God,
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this breastplate of righteousness that is going
to protect you and mark you and identify
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you, it's a good question to
ask. How strong is it? How
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Strong is the righteousness of Christ?
Well, my friends, it's so strong
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that it preserved Jesus himself from death
when God judged him for the sins of
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the world. Remember in Psalm Eleven, when we reign about God pouring out
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wrath and judgment and coals and a
scorching fire on the unrighteous. That's what
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was poured out on Jesus and he
withstood it. He withstood it because he
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was righteous, because he was when, because he went to the cross as
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a perfect as a righteous a sacrifice
so strong that he was not only able
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to endure that wrath and judgment,
but he perfectly completed it, so that
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our sins have been atoned for.
Do you want proof that your sins have
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been atoned for? Do you want
prove that the righteousness of God in Jesus
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is is so strong that it can
preserve you from death itself? Will remember
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that Jesus rose from the dead.
That's how strong his righteousness is. I
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don't know how much a more to
commend to you, then putting on the
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righteousness of Christ. If you want
strong armor against the schemes of the evil
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one, against his flaming darts and
the things that he might throw at you,
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put on the righteousness of Christ.
Speaking in these terms in Romans AP
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Paul says. There is therefore now
no condemnation for those who are in Christ
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Jesus, no condemnation, and because
of that he promises us that nothing can
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separate us from the love of God. When we stand in the righteousness of
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Christ. We are good guys,
to put it in a very sort of
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simple way, we are good because
he is good. We stand not in
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our own righteousness, but in his. It's not just good, it's perfect,
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perfect goodness, perfect holiness. So
when the accusations come at us from
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Satan and says, how dare you
think that you confide on the side of
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God? You did this, you
did that, you thought this, you
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thought that, we say, true
enough, but I'm wearing the breastplate of
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Christ's righteousness. I stand in his
strength, in his might, not my
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own, so far away I cannot
die. Nothing can separate me from the
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love of Christ when we stand in
his righteousness. How do you do that?
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How do you put on the breastplate
of righteousness? By rejecting your own
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righteousness, by rejecting and leaving aside
every other hope of salvation, your words,
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your works, your feelings, whatever
it is you might want to put
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on, whatever protection you might want
to put on. Don't do it,
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throw it aside. Just take the
righteousness of God that is given to you
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freely, take it and refuse all
else. When you take the righteousness of
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Christ by faith, nothing can hurt
you. The last thing I'll mention tonight
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is these shoes, the wret described
as the readiness given by the gospel of
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peace, or readiness of the gospel
of peace. This is a reminder to
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us that God does not declare US
righteous and put us into this, this
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state of justification, so that we
might be assumed into the great oneness of
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Blah Blah Blah. He puts us
in this state so that we might be
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his servants, so that we might
be ready and move, ready to move
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and live for him. We are
justified before God. We are put on
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the right side of the right army
so that we can be ready, so
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that we can be ready, ready
for what? To fight, as the
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armor would suggest, or to bring
peace, readiness of the Gospel of peace?
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Of course, the answer is both, and it takes us back to
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the unusual nature of this battle,
the unusual nature of the armor of God.
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God makes war by bringing peace.
He brings victory through suffering. He
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brings power and identity through self sacrificial
love. When we put on the armor
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of God, when we stand in
Christ against the schemes of the devil,
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we stand as those who are ready, those who have peace with God and
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who are ready to bring it to
others. And when people come to Christ
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under that Gospel of peace which we
share with them, the work of Satan
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is conquered. When the Gospel goes
out and is proclaimed, this gospel of
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peace with God, through the work
of Christ, those who are once enemies
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become friends. God is glorified,
Satan's work is undone. You remember Paul,
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for example, the very one who
writes this letter and now sits in
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chains for the sake of this Gospel. He himself was once a persecutor of
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the church, but now peace.
And of course, it brings peace not
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only for those who come to Jesus
and come under his authority, but it
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also preserves peace for them against any
who would try to break it apart,
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any who would try to destroy it. Psalm, too, talks about this.
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It says the people, the nations, they take counsel together against the
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Lord and is anointed. How will
we break apart their union, their bonds.
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The Lord sits in heaven and laughs. Psalms who says he holds them
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in derision, is going to break
them in peaces for like a like a
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pot smash. This is important to
realize because when we think about what it
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means to be safe in Christ,
are like we read in Psalmilevin, why
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are you saying to me? Run
Away and be scared? I have the
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Lord. That kind of strength,
that kind of confidence. That's what this
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passage is about. Standing strong in
the strength of God. Why? Because
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it's God, because of the ways
that he has given to himself to us.
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In Christ, he establishes us,
peace for us, peace between him
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and with one another. When we
come under his authority, when we come
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under the gospel of peace, the
good news of peace, and for those
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who reject it and would try to
harm those who are under it, we
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know that we are safe, that
there will be peace. I don't have
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any fancy conclusion. I just hope
that you have heard something of who Christ
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is tonight what it means to stand
in him, in truth and righteousnesess and
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readiness, in the gospel of peace. If you do not belong them,
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if you do not belong to him. If you find your strength in the
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things of this world and lies and
selfjustification and pride and anger and war and
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self protection, then I hope that
you will see that the call here to
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believers that you are hearing is a
very attractive one, very safe one,
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verse strong one. I hope that
you will see and connect the dots that
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those who stand apart from Christ will
be destroyed by him. Lies will come
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undone, the sins that you have
committed will come down upon your head,
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the war that you have with God
and with man will end in your final
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and everlasting defeat. In hearing God's
call to his children to put on this
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kind of armor to the one who
stands outside of that should cause you to
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fear. But I should also call
you to hear and hear the word that
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the Lord is gracious and though he
is at battle with Satan and his schemes
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and all those who would stand on
his side, he is also saying come
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on over, freely cross amnesty will
be granted, forgiveness will be given to
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all who come to him. This
powerful king, who can crush all who
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come and defy his authority, is
also the one who is powerful to save,
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and indeed has even given his own
son to die for the salvation of
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all of us who are once dead
in our trespasses and sins and now fight
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on his side. Any who come
to him in repentance, who confess their
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sins, and he who who are
forgiven belong to Christ and receive all of
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his life and all of his strength. So this week I admonish you to
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be alert, to be sober minded
about the work of Satan in this world,
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about the powers of darkness, about
this present evil age, and to
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put on and keep on the armor
of God through faith in Christ. You
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remember when David had to put on
the armor of Saul and it didn't work
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because it was too big. And
the Lord's armor isn't like this. The
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Lord's armor is spiritual, which is
great, because you're never going to get
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sweaty in it. You can wear
it at all times, me night or
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day, hot or cold, anywhere
you are in the world. It's not
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something you take on and you take
off. You can wear it whether you're
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in fancy clothes or plain clothes,
whether you're alone or with someone. Because
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it's spiritual means that it's always with
you. God is always with you,
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it is go always good and comfortable
and safe and strong. So wear it,
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put on Christ and stand firm.
Let's pray
