The Purpose of Putting on Armor

Our scripture reading this morning comes from the sixth chapter book of Ephesians. Starting in verse ten, hear these words.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against the enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet, put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, Take the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God. Pray in the spirit at all times, in every prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.
Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly as I must speak.
This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Okay, so I don’t have any experience as a soldier, but I do have some experience as a police officer. And I think there’s a good parallel in there for us this morning. Now, believe it or not, officers are divided on the necessity of their body armor. Now they all have the same training. They all know the same pros and cons of wearing the bulletproof vest. yet there are some who. You know, if he had let them, they would make the decision not to wear it. The only problem with that is, is patrol is one of those jobs where you never know what’s going to happen. You can literally go from paperwork to a shoot-out in a matter of seconds. You cannot afford to have the not have the vest on when it counts the most. You have to put on the armor at the beginning of the day, and you have to stay ready, because you never know when or where the attack is going to come. You know, maybe we’ve become so comfortable with this armor of God as an analogy, that we’ve missed a very key principle in the matter. It’s the very fact that soldiers need armor is because they are in the middle of battle. And the longer you stay on the battlefield, it increases your likelihood that you’re going to get hit with something. So, you’re tempted to say, I got the answer for you right here. Preacher. Sermon is over. Seems rather obvious. Get off the battlefield. Like if you, when you came in this morning. If we were passing out bulletproof vests instead of bulletins, how many of you would have said; Yeah. No, thanks. And you’d have gone home, and you probably would have started looking for another church. But Paul reminds us that our struggle is not against the enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And so, the humbling reality of that verse means that there is no getting off the battlefield, finding a safe place to hide out until it’s all over. And make no mistake about it. While the devil certainly loves to attack individual believers with his evil schemes, he loves nothing more than to attack the unity which Christ Jesus has set for us as a church in Ephesians one. I realize how defeating that might sound, right? Even if it doesn’t make you feel like defeat is inevitable. Because you know that our victory is in Christ, who overcame sin and the grave. You might be tempted to feel exhausted by the idea of being in a constant battle. And that is why we must put in the foundation of our minds not only the reality of an ever-present God who fights on our behalf, but we must also realize the necessity this brings upon us as a church, to be full of people who equip one another with the armor of God.

Okay, so every time I talk about the armor of God, people want to see the armor of God. Can you show us the armor of God, preacher? Yes. I have pictures for you, and I want to walk through the armor. I’m going to briefly touch on each. The idea behind each piece of armor. But first, remember that Paul writes this letter of Ephesians inside of a Roman prison while he is chained at the wrist to a Roman guard. So he’s using what’s around him to illustrate a purpose, and he uses this illustration as an inspiration to teach us something about our faith journey, so that we will be able to stand strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Verse ten. So first we’re going to put on the belt of truth, and we have the belt of truth. There it is. That is the belt of truth. And I can’t find a belt like that in the store today, or I’d be wearing it. But that is the belt of truth. The belt went around the soldier’s tunic. Tunic? That outer garment that they would wear. And it gave the soldier a freedom of movement. Now, the truth that is referenced here is the ethical qualities of the faith.
Paul just spent a couple chapters in Ephesians talking about some ethical qualities right? Put away from you all bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander, together with all malice. And be kind to one another, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you. Chapter four I remember chapter four. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Don’t be foolish but make the most of the time. Chapter five. And so, if we were going to take the analogy a step further, I would say if, like being wrapped in a tunic, we cover ourselves with the commands of Christ so that we might know how to love our neighbors as ourselves. Most effectively, that’s why the law was given. The belt of God’s truth allows Christians to move freely so that we might accomplish these things. Next, we have the breastplate of righteousness. Now in first Thessalonians five eight, this is a breastplate of faith and love. And I find it interesting that in Isaiah 5917, God Himself puts on a breastplate of righteousness, and say in the Bible somewhere to be imitators God. So, remember, righteousness isn’t about piety, it’s about right living. It’s what we saw two weeks ago when Paul told us to be imitators of Christ. There it is put away impurity, immorality. So much so that it’s not even heard of among you. Another ethical statement. And so, as we live in Christ, the breastplate of righteousness allows us to reflect the life of God. What God looks like as he gets dressed in the morning. It’s an analogy. Calm down. The shoes. I told you, we we’re going to go quick this morning. The shoes. Proper footwear was a sign that the soldier was ready to move. Look at the bottom of them. It looks like cleats, doesn’t it? I try to always make the joke when I can. We’re going to put on our feet a pair of cleats like the Paraclete. And you always get that reaction. Paraclete is the Greek word for the spirit, and it rhymes with pair of cleats. It kills in the seminary. It never works in the churches. That’s okay.

But watch what this verse says, right? It says we’re to put on our feet whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. Whatever will make you ready, whatever will prepare you to move efficiently and effectively when the time comes to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. But in these verses, in this passage right now, we haven’t been called into movement just yet. And so, the truth remains that even before we move, if we’re going to be able to stand our ground and withstand the attacks that will come, we will need secure footing to do so. The shield. It was a long shield made of two pieces of wood that were glued together. And its purpose is to stop the fiery arrows right. So, you know what they would do? They would take an arrow. They would, dip the tip of it in and fibers and rope, and then they would dip that in pitch and then light that on fire. Ha, ha. I’ve got a fire arrow I can shoot at you. Now, what would happen is, is the fiery arrow. It would go into the first layer of the shield, but it wouldn’t go past the second. But I want you to imagine it with me. Right. Okay, so we’ve got this shield. It’s made of two pieces of wood glued together, and it works. We know it works with battle tested it. But what would happen is the enemy would send this, fire arrow towards you. It would go into the shield. The shield would stop it. But as it did, it would set a small piece of the shield ablaze. It wouldn’t penetrate. But it was terrifying to watch. It was terrifying to hold in your hand. And so, the temptation was to drop the shield. But if the soldier drops his shield, then he not only leaves himself, but he leaves the rest of the army wide open for all kinds of attacks. Are you with me? Church? Oftentimes we have our faith, and we think it’s a good faith. And it is until we get tested, usually out of nowhere and without warning. Usually right when we think we are the most secure. And as we get tested, we get tempted to cut bait and walk away. We get tempted to doubt God and His promises to protect us. We get so caught up watching the fiery arrows assault us and singe our faith, that we fail to realize that the shield has protected us. The fire is nothing more than a flash in a pan. It is a sizzle compared to the one who fights on our behalf with fire from heaven. We are tempted to drop our faith, but the verse says, the shield of faith is able to quench the flaming arrows of the evil one. Your faith will extinguish the fiery arrows of temptation. We only need to keep the faith. Hold on to it and stand firm.

Okay, I’ve hinted at it a few times now. Did you catch it? What if I told you that if you slowed down and read this passage a bit more carefully, you would see that it’s not preparing us to be able to fight. It’s preparing us to be able to stand. Put on the whole armor of God. Why? So that you might be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Take up the whole armor of God. Why? So that you may be able to withstand on that evil day. And having done everything to stand firm. Stand therefore verse 14 and fasten the belt of truth on the list it goes. Armor is not about waging war. It is about withstanding the war that is being waged against you. Armor is not about attacking the enemy. It is about being able to stand firm when the enemy is attacking you. As we will see in a second. This doesn’t mean that we stand by and do nothing, but putting on the armor of God is about learning how to stand firm with your brothers and sisters in the faith. For it is only after we have learned how to protect one another, that we will be able to move forward. See, the history buffs know this, but, the rest of you, you know you can’t put this type of armor on by yourself so you can get it pumped up as you want to, about putting on the armor of God and fighting the schemes of the devil.

You can feel the strong and as invincible as you ever have and confident about being victorious. More than you ever have before. But realize that it is impossible to put this armor on by yourself. If we’re going to put on the full armor of God, and we should, but we are going to need each other to do it. I mean, look at this next picture. Look how the soldiers stood together in battle. Now, as long as the Roman soldiers stood together and did not break ranks, the legion was considered virtually invincible. We too, must stand together as the people of God and not let our ranks be easily broken in the war against the rulers and the authorities of this world, in the war against the cosmic powers of the air. Going at it alone is not an option. If the church isn’t unified as one body, moving in tandem, closing the gaps, and focused on the life of the person next to you as much as your own life. Then our ranks will be easily broken, and we will know nothing but defeat. And what this means is, it’s not always about liking everyone and getting along at all times and in every way. That’s a surface level idea of the unity of the church that is inevitably going to lead us to backbiting and gossip. This is about coming together because it’s the only way to survive all of our petty disagreements and annoyances with one another. We’ll go away immediately when we grasp the realization that our very survival as a church is dependent upon how well we stand together.
Finally, we need to put on the helmet of salvation. Ephesians two five reminds us that there is a salvation that has already been accomplished. There is a Savior name, Jesus Christ, and he gives us protection to all his people now and forevermore. And so now we are free to carry. We must carry the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God. It is the only weapon on the list. It not only allows us to stop the attack, but it allows us to take back our ground. So we don’t want to just resist temptation. We want to drive it from our presence. And I want you to notice that this word of God in the text, it’s the little word of God. Okay, so the capital W word of God, that’s Jesus. And the Greek word that Paul uses for Jesus, that word in his gospel is logos. Logos. But the Greek word used here in Ephesians, it’s not logos, it’s haruma. And rhema refers to that which is said or expressed. Kind of like how we did a little creed or statement at the beginning of our prayer.

Ephesians reminds us that when we speak, whether it be about the meaning and purpose of life or the hope that we have in the life to come, or the assurance to know that God is still present and active in this dark age. When people, when we speak, people should hear our inner speech, the gospel which is our salvation, marked by the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1:19. The Word of God that we will use as our offensive weapon to fight this battle is that Jesus Christ is God’s only begotten son. That Jesus became man, walked among us and died on our behalf, taking our debt against God and paying it in full that Jesus is our only salvation. He is our only way back to the father and that he bestows upon us a full inheritance as co-heirs to the kingdom. Watch this. This is good. So, if you’ve checked out on me, go ahead and tune back in. So, we get to verse 18. A lot of us, we like to think that the Armor of God analogy is done. Paul is just kind of wrapping up so he can move on. No, no, no. Nay, nay, nay. Scholars point out they said in the original Greek, there’s no obvious separation here between the encouragement to stand strong in the Lord and this exhortation to pray.

And so what this means is what Paul is saying is that having put on your belt and your breastplate, having shod your feet, having secured your shield, and having your helmet on. Now pray. And, you know, just just what if Paul knew what he was doing? And it’s no coincidence that he puts this exhortation to pray right after talking about the sword, the Word of God. So, if you’re one of those who are struggling with your prayer life, know first off that you’re certainly not alone. Clergy are included. But has anyone ever told you about praying the scriptures? So not only are the scriptures full of prayers themselves, like the ones we see here in Ephesians or the Book of Psalms, but you can also take any part of the scriptures and turn them into a prayer. So, as you read the stories of the Bible, everything that’s going on, all of these things that these people did and the way God interacted, all these various ways, what convictions do you have? What promises do you see? What wisdom do you understand? What revelations are being beginning to reveal themselves to you? So, for instance, you could say, you know, okay, God, I, I see here that even though David committed adultery and murder, that you forgave him, he was still called a man after your own heart. God. I’m a sinner in need of your mercy and your forgiveness. Cleanse me like you did, David. Help me to rid myself of this evil for I know that I will perish if you do not intervene or might say, God, I see how Job maintained a faith even when everything in his life went horribly wrong. And while I don’t yet still fully understand why you allowed this to happen, I also see that through it all. You are a God who loves his people and restores to them everything that the enemy has taken away. So, give me a faith and an assurance like Job. Help me to know you the same way that Job knew you. That I might not fall into temptation and curse your name when it feels like my life is falling apart around me. As you read the Bible. What understanding do you still need to gain toward the mystery of God that are only revealed by His Holy Spirit? Ephesians three I pray that you will be strengthened by the Holy Spirit within your inner being. Why? So that you might have the power to comprehend prayer that is a part of the armor of God is prayer that is done under the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the same spirit that possessed Jesus when he walked on this earth. It is the same spirit that inspired the biblical authors, and it is the same spirit that is given out at Pentecost. It is the spirit, the breath of God, that speaks life into our dying souls that will repel the spiritual forces of the air. And there’s something interesting that verse 19 teaches us about this weapon of prayer.
It has to do with what we call intercessory prayer. Again, something you participated in a moment ago. Not only are we supposed to help each other put on this armor. Not only are we supposed to stand shoulder to shoulder so that we might withstand the schemes of the devil, but we are supposed to pray for one another as well. And intercessory prayer is more than just you praying for someone else. Now, that’s not wrong. You continue to do that if you’re doing that. But intercessory prayer is also about you going up to someone and asking them to pray for you. Like Paul doesn’t say, like, hey, I heard you guys are praying for me. Thanks. I can feel it in my heart. I know it’s true. I know your spirit and you’re just such a wonderful church. Oh, I love your prayers. No, no, no. He goes deeper than that. He encourages them to continue praying for all the saints. And then he says, pray also for me. Gets better, right? Verse 19 and 20. There should be a memory verse for those of you, myself included, who feel unworthy, unqualified or un knowledgeable to preach the gospel.
What Paul says, pray also for me that when I when I speak, a message may be given to me to be known. The mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, As I must speak. Are you seeing this? So, Paul, the greatest missionary who ever lived, a man who wrote almost half of the New Testament, says that he needs people to pray for him, that he might have something to say. And that he might be bold in saying it just blew out both sides of my mind on that one. It’s actually very comforting and reassuring, isn’t it? You are not alone. Paul felt insufficient too. Paul felt inadequate too. But Paul also felt the power of the gospel. And that feeling one and despite becoming a master evangelist and church planner, even Paul knew he needed help. Even Paul knew that this idea that it’s just me and Jesus against the world that wasn’t going to get it done. Brings me back to this other idea of police work that applies to our conversation this morning. And it’s the use of force. Now, see, I say use of force. And you start thinking about fighting and weapons, just like we typically come to a conversation about the armor of God.
We go straight into this idea of being able to fight rather than being equipped to stand firm. But do you know what the first use of force is for an officer? It isn’t the attack weapons, gun, pepper spray, baton, all of that stuff. No, no, no. Its presence. The simple yet obvious presence of a uniformed officer is the first level of defense against evil. What do you mean? Well, you might want to break into the car, but you’re not going to do it. If a uniformed officer standing on the other side of the parking lot. Ha, ha! And I got you fam. right? Yeah. You’re right. Don’t email me. There is evil out there that does not care and will even attack you precisely because you’re wearing the uniform. What you say about that preacher? Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to take off my shining new robe of righteousness that identifies me as one of God’s children. And I’m not going to take off my body armor that identifies me as a soldier in God’s army, simply because the devil prowls around looking for someone to destroy. I’m going to call for backup. I’m going to increase presence. I’m going to make sure that when I go out, I’ve got brothers to my right and to my left and behind me, because that is exactly how the armor is designed to work.

Let’s pray. Father, bless our hearing of your holy words. That they may be inscribed on our hearts. Remove from us anything that did not come from your spirit and grant us grace to do that which you have commanded the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.