Amen. What a great song. Well, we got the ushers gonna come forward and give you a handout here tonight. I'm gonna start in James chapter number four. I'll be here just for a minute. And then we're gonna go to Ephesians chapter number six. You cannot end a series on our adversary, the devil, without hitting Ephesians chapter six. And I recognize in 2019, we went through the armor of God at length. And so I decided to give you the armor of God made easy. And so we're going to give you cliff notes, and we're going to blow through the armor of God in two per Sunday until we get through it. Now next week we're going to look at prayer, so we won't look at the armor of God. So we're going to attempt to try to look at two pieces of the armor each Sunday night. I have some blanks for you to fill in. And this way, with a handout, I think it'll make it easier, and we need to remind ourselves concerning the armor of God as we resist the devil. I'm going to read from James chapter number 4, and then we'll look at Ephesians 6. James 4 says this, we ended our message two weeks ago. Last week was Father's Day. Submit yourselves therefore to God, verse 7 of James 4. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." And we're looking at disarming the devil. That word, resist the devil, is the same word we find in Ephesians chapter number 6. Ephesians chapter 6, the word withstand. I'm going to read from 10 until verse number 17, and then tonight we're going to look at the purpose of the soldier's belt. We'll start with the belt, and then we're gonna look at the purpose of the soldier's breastplate, and we'll make some application, very simple outline here tonight, and I think it'll be easy for you to follow, and we'll remind ourselves concerning the armor of God. Sometimes, you know, repetition aids learning, and sometimes we forget the things that are just very basic, but that will help us in our Christian life, and so I trust I debated, should I just not do this? Should I do the thing? Finally, I sensed the Lord said, well, let's just go ahead and kind of give you an overview. And so we'll do that in the next few weeks. And then we'll be finished with our series on the devil. I'm thinking about a new series on Sunday nights on prayer. And the theme would be prayer makes a difference, so we'll see how the Lord leads with that. By the way, we'll start a new series in Sunday school for eight weeks. For the summer, a series on friendship. And I read a book years ago called Quality Friendship, and in that book is some tremendous principles on being a friend. When you read the book, you think, I need a friend like that. The reality is to have a friend, you gotta be a friend. And so we'll look at that in the Sunday school hour, 9.30 on Sunday mornings for the next eight weeks or so. And then in the morning, we'll continue our series on the book of Daniel. We'll be there for a little bit of time. And so follow along now, Ephesians 6, beginning in verse number 10. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Let me stop and just say, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. All right, your issues are not with human beings. The issues are bigger than that. And often we get in conflict with one another because one or both of us are not where we ought to be in regard to our relationship with the Lord. And one of the things the devil will try to do is promote disunity, not just in a church, but in a marriage, in a family, in relationships at work. And we need to remember that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood. Verse 13, Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness. and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. So we're gonna look tonight at the devil, his disarming. Let's have a word of prayer, and then we're gonna jump in and look at the soldier's belt or the loin skirt about with truth. Father, we need you tonight. We recognize this is your church and this is your word, and we need your spirit to illumine our minds and hearts and to draw us closer to yourself. Lord, I pray that as we review concerning the armor, Lord, that you would help us to remember afresh and anew we have an adversary, the devil, And you tell us if we'll put on the armor of God, we'll be able to withstand his attacks. We love you, Lord. Thank you for meeting with us already. Thank you for the encouragement from being with the body of Christ. And thank you for the singing and the Lord, just the fellowship. And now meet with us, we pray in Jesus name. Amen. So you've got some blanks here to fill in as we look at girding your loins with truth. Now, I asked Brother Julian, do we have a slide there of the, okay, how many of you know what that is right there? That there is Israel's Iron Dome. missile system, defense system. And I put that up there because I think it's kind of cool. And we've been in the Middle East, you know, looking at the Middle East and Israel and Iran and the current situation. This is kind of a cool system. As a matter of fact, our president is talking about putting one in the United States, a Golden Dome. This thing is designed to intercept missiles that would come over. Matter of fact, some time ago when Iran sent over 300, I think it was drone missiles or whatever it was, I read an article in the New York Times that said they intercepted like 295 or something of those missiles. And the idea was it's amazing for a system like this to intercept that many missiles because this system really can't be tested. I mean, it can kind of be tested, but really the test of the system is when people are firing on you. And of course, we know that the hand of God is upon Israel, and we know what the word of God says about Israel. But this is kind of a cool, oh yeah, go and show us the next one, or I guess the next one. I forgot about this one here. This kind of shows you how it works. It intercepts incoming missiles. and would blow those missiles up in the air before they would land and hit your house or whatever. And I thought I would show you this by getting started as we think about our adversary, the devil, and the armor that we have that would disarm his attacks in our life. And so I thought that was cool. So now we're going to look at the armor. Do we have a picture of the man in the armor right here? I have my little thing here, because I didn't know if his picture was going to be big enough. Well, it kind of is a small little picture here. But we're looking at it. Actually, look at this. This won't even work on this TV. Wow, look at that. Isn't that interesting? Can you see my red light? There you go. Thank you. I like that guy right there. Look at that. Technology. I don't even need my little pointy thing. We're looking at the belt of truce. And we're looking at his soldier here, because I think there's some parallels here as we look at our armor for us. So we look at the soldier's belt and we ask ourselves, number one, what does the soldier's belt do as we think of this protection? Number one, the soldier's belt unencumbers, that's the word, unencumbers. When you're in a battle, you've got a belt, you need to be able to get from one place to another. You need to be able to say, hey, we're moving the troops from here to here, and we need to be unencumbered. The soldier's belt also would secure and support the weapons. So you see, oh, look at him. He's got it there. See the weapon there? And not this one. Don't give him the answer on this set free yet. Get rid of that one. We're going to give you the answers in advance. You know, sometimes when you take tests, let me tell you this, those of you who still take tests, so they'll ask you a question, and sometimes the answer to that question will be in the following questions. And so they might say, like, the purpose of the belt, and then they say, we know the purpose of the belt is this, but what about this? And so anyway, if you're still taking tests, think about that, college, maybe that'll help you. Okay, so we see number one, it's to unencumber. Number two, it's to secure and support weapons. So when the guy is out in battle and he needs his weapon, his weapon is there, right? How many of you guys put your cell phone in the back left pocket? That's where you hold it. Back right pocket. How many of you keep it in your... How many of you guys just hold it, you put it around a necklace? I mean, what do you guys do here? I know where girls put it. Girls, it's always in their purse, right? It's always in their purse. Front pocket, front pocket. Somebody's got a case. Cases are not cool. I'm just telling you. I used to have the case and my kids said, Dad, what's up with this case? Just like the style is to untuck your shirt, you tuck it in. I think if guys tuck it in, they look more ripped. If they leave it out, they look more fat. I don't know. But the style, what are we talking about? How did I? Oh. Sometimes people lose their phone. They put it here and there and everywhere, right? Because they don't have a secure place for it. Imagine being in battle and you're ready to fight and you go, oh man, what did I do with my whatever, my sword? All right, so it secures the weapons. That's how we got. I was wondering how did we got way far away there. Number three. If you look at this belt here, you will see that the belt protects the lower part of the body there. So we've got these three functions, and we're going to carry those over, and we're going to look at how the belt of truth would help us. And then I'm gonna use some practical ways to put the belt of truth on. And then we'll shift and we'll look at the breastplate of righteousness, all right? So now let's look at how or what is the belt of truth and what purpose would it serve for us? Number one, just as the belt unencumbers or frees a soldier, it frees us. Truth frees us. And I just try to give an overview. Number one, it frees us from hell. John 3 and verse 16, For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son, whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Aren't you glad you can know you're on your way to heaven? I have found in recent days some individuals, you know, you find different things out when you go out and you bang on doors. And I have found there's more of an emphasis with people that don't want to trust Christ on thinking that somebody that can know they're on their way to heaven is arrogant. I think you and I might have been out on a visit. I know Steve and I was out on a visit. And the guy said, it's arrogance to say you can know. Well, we can know because God's word says that we can know. And the truth gives us assurance that when we die, we know we're on our way to heaven. Number two, it frees you from yourself. 2 Timothy 2 and verse 4 talks about no man that woreth and tangleth himself with the affairs of this world. When you read the word of God and you read in the book of James, and James says, friendship with the world is enmity with God. As you look at the truth, you think, okay, I gotta be careful that I'm not a friend of this world. When you look at the truth of the word of God, it says, be not conformed to this world, be transformed. You look at the word of God and you say, okay, I have to be careful. It helps me in my relationship with the world and frees me from my own self and my own self-centeredness. Number three, and there's much more that could be said here. Again, this is an overview. It frees you from your sin. John 8 says, and you shall know the truth, and the truth does what? What does the truth do? It sets us free. I love the passage there in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 11. The phrase there is, it starts off, and such were some of you. He's talking about all the sins, the sins that the individuals in the church of Corinth were involved in. And then it says, but ye are washed. You're washed. You know, as God's people, we do not have to be enslaved to sin. I'm thankful for the different billboards we see around here, probably more in the Lancaster County than here, that promote that. I saw a billboard the other day, I was driving back, probably from the Lancaster area, and there's a billboard that said, having trouble with pornography, the truth sets free. And sometimes God's people will have issues with pornography and with viewing things that aren't going to help them spiritually. And sometimes we can believe, I can't help it. Don't tell yourself you can't help it, because the truth sets free. When we think about that aspect of the truth, it frees us, it unencumbers us. I could say it focuses us, doesn't it? It focuses on what really matters and what doesn't matter. Number two, the belt of truth, just like it would secure and support weapons, it secures us. It secures us, it gives us clarity. Psalm 119, 105 says, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Romans 10, 13, I put that in there because sometimes people have a tendency, we could also put John 10, maybe I put that in the next one, okay. Gives clarity, whosoever is called upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. You know, we need to be in the book. We really need to let truth permeate, let the word of Christ dwell in us richly, and we have clarity concerning what God wants us to do. Sometimes people say, you know, I have a hard time understanding the will of the Lord for my life. Are you reading the Bible? Get in the Word of God. God will burden you in His Word and He'll help you to get a sense of purpose. And how does God want me to serve Him in the world in which I'm in? Not only clarity, it gives us certainty. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that's what I've committed unto him against that day, 2 Timothy 1. John 10 has that aspect of being in his hand and no man can pluck me out of his hand. I'm secure in him. You ever wake up one day and don't feel saved? You ever have someone say to you, I don't think we should ever do this. Sometimes people backslide. Sometimes, you know, Peter, Peter was a good guy, but Peter had a big, big problem. He denied the Lord. You know, sometimes people want to be very quick to say, you know, you're not saved. You're not saved. You need to get re-saved. Well, obviously it's between you and God, right? But the reality is we're saved and once we're saved, we're always saved. Sometimes we can fall away from the things of God and we need to get right with God. We don't need to get re-saved again. But that aspect of security and certainty. How many of you have been to heaven? I haven't been there either. I guess I've been to the blue one, as Scott was talking, right? We've been to the blue heaven there. We haven't been to heaven heaven. How many of you are on your way to heaven? See? We don't need not a shadow of a doubt. Why? Because of the truth. The truth secures us. Number three, it gives us confidence. He's able to, actually, I wanna turn to the passage in Philippians. Philippians chapter number one, you know that one, but the one in chapter four, in verse nine, somebody took Philippians out, here we go. One in verse six, being confident of the very thing that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians four, nine, those things which ye have both learned and received and heard and seen in me do, and the God of peace shall be with you. That aspect of confidence. He never leaves us nor forsakes us. How many days do we get up and do our thing unaware of His presence in our life? The truth reminds us He goes with you. He never leaves nor forsakes. Number three, the belt of truth, just like it provides protection for the lower body, the belt of truth protects us. It protects us, number one, from error. from error, Romans 16 and verse 17. Remember a number of years ago, Brother Fisher, evangelist, he was evangelist at the time, came into my office and he said this to me. Let me read the verse, Romans 16, 17. Now I beseech you brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you have learned and avoid them. And he came into my office and said, preacher, how you doing? I said, good. He said, something's wrong with his book. I don't really know what it is, but there's something in this book that isn't right. And he gave it to me. And I read the book or read portions of the book. And I said to him, brother, you're right. There's error in this book. There's doctrinal error in this book. Why did he know something wasn't right about the book? Because he had been in the truth of the word of God enough. Maybe he didn't know exactly the specifics of what was wrong, but he recognized that there was error. And it's important for us to get in the truth that we might recognize that there is error. Hey, there's a lot of preaching out there on the internet. There's a lot of, you know, sermon audio, whatever. You can find podcasts on any subject, anything you want. But just because somebody might be articulate doesn't mean that they're accurate and they're preaching truth. There's a lot of stuff. The devil gets in a lot of stuff in the back door in people's lives. The truth protects from error. Number two, it protects us from worldliness. First John 2 says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. Right? If we love the world, a love father's not in us. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. And we recognize that. Alright, so. Its purpose, it helps us in at least these three areas. And I think on a regular basis, we need to be reminded of these things. So you say to me, how do I put on the belt of truth? This is going to be real basic. You're going to go, duh, I could have come up with this. But sometimes we forget the basics. Number one, you ready? We're going to put the belt of truth on. Here we go. We must read it. Read your Bible, pray every day, and you'll grow, grow, grow, right? And when I was a kid, we'd say, don't read your Bible, forget to pray, and you'll shrink, shrink, shrink. Anybody come up here and grow and shrink for us? All right, good. Read it. Number two, study it. Study to show thyself approved unto God. Study it. I don't have time to study it." You know, it only takes three or four minutes to look up a word, to find a cross-reference in your Bible, to read the context of something, and to study it. Number three, meditate on it. And really, meditation and memorization come together, but meditation really has the idea of just thinking on it. We're all good at meditators. Some of you are professional meditators. I mean, you're really good at meditating. You're just meditating on the wrong thing, right? Yeah, my knee hurts. I wonder what it is. I wonder if it's cancer. I wonder if I should go to the doctor. I wonder if I'm going to die from this. You know what I'm saying? And then, of course, we ask our friend, and our friend says, yeah, my grandma died. She had her whole leg chopped off, and then it came to the other leg. You know, that doesn't help you when people tell you those crazy stories, right? We're good meditators. We've got to meditate on the truth of the Word of God and allow God's Word to change us. Number four, we must live it. Be a doer of the word, not a hearer only. And number five, we must proclaim it. Sometimes it helps me to proclaim truth to somebody else. You ever try to help somebody and you find yourself saying things and thinking, wait, that's what I needed to hear. Don't hide God's Word. Proclaim it. You can hide it in your heart, but don't hide it under a bushel. I heard Vilma this morning, I was downstairs singing, hide it under a bushel. No, I heard you, Vilma. And the Lord heard you too, and he was blessed, and I was blessed too from that. And if you'd like, we could sign Vilma up to sing a special in church. Hide it under a bushel. No. Flip the page over, all right, the belt of truth. Now we're going to go to the breastplate of righteousness, same format as we think about our second piece of armor that we put on that help us. Don't you think sometimes counseling is just getting people to think about truth and what the Bible says? And we've got to immerse ourselves in the truth of the word of God, all right? Now, I think this is important. Do we have a breastplate up there and a little blue dot that goes around? Looky there. Oh, there's the blue dot. Man, I tell you, Julian, I am impressed with technology here. There's the breastplate. What's the purpose of the soldier's breastplate? Number one, they're really all centered around the same thing, but I had to kind of expand it. It protects the heart. It protects, number two, the lungs. Number three, it protects the abdomen. So we've got the protection of vital organs in our body. Now I want to think concerning the breastplate of righteousness. I want to look at it from the aspect of we are righteous. When you get saved, 2 Corinthians 5 says, For he, God, hath made him, Jesus, to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Whether you feel like it or not, you have Christ's righteousness. That's what gets us into heaven. His righteousness, not our own. And to give you a couple thoughts here concerning this, and then we'll look at the practical aspect of it. Number one, the righteousness of Christ, or the blessed breastplate of righteousness, will protect you in your thinking, in your mind. Sometimes we can beat ourselves up. Sometimes we can think things about ourselves that God isn't thinking about ourselves. You know Romans 8 once says, there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, no condemnation. You have the righteousness of Christ. God sees you through Jesus. He, the word is justified. He sees you just as if you haven't sinned. I can't get, amen, I can't get my, wrap my mind around that either. But we have His righteousness that helps us in our thinking. Number two, it helps us in our feeling or in our emotion. Proverbs 7, 23 says this, As he thinketh in his heart, so is he. Your thinking affects your whole being. How we feel. Sometimes this is where, you know, if we don't feel like doing something, we don't do it. We have to change our thinking to change our feeling to change our action. You know, we're emotional beings, right? And many times we don't feel like doing right. And righteousness, we'll see this in a minute, righteousness does, this aspect of righteousness does have an aspect of doing the right thing. But sometimes we don't feel like doing right. We can't live by feeling. And when we recognize this, we say, hey, I'm gonna not live by my emotion. And then number three, it protects you in your doing or your action. Matthew 15 says this, Matthew 15, and you're familiar with it, I would quote it, but I think I'll botch it up. So Matthew 15, verse 18, the Bible says this, For those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, but goes beyond that, murders, adultery, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemy. We have to think right in order to do right. So let's put this together and figure out, okay, how do I put on the breastplate of righteousness? You say, I want to put on the breastplate of righteousness. Number one, I think it's important to know right. And when it comes to this matter of knowing right, we need to acknowledge the futility of self-righteousness. How many of you ever thought that you have to kind of get favor with God by doing right? You know what I mean? Sometimes we say, well, God, I did this and I did this and I did this, so you should do this. Our righteousness is as filthy rags. The key, by the way, to making an impact is Christ in you, the hope of glory. What brings him glory is what I do in dependence upon him, or what I allow him to do through me. The key to the Christian life is not a list of do's and don'ts. And many people in independent Baptist churches get saved and they think, I gotta check these boxes, and if I check all these boxes, then God's gonna smile and I'm gonna be right with the Lord. The works come from a love relationship with God. They don't create that relationship. We tell people that when it comes to being saved. We need to understand and recognize that I am righteous because I have Christ's righteousness. That obviously is going to help us when it comes to the matter of doing, which is the third thought here, because I recognize that because I am righteous, because I have His righteousness in me, I don't have to do that which is unrighteous. See? Understanding self-righteousness, and there's many people, many people trying to work their way to heaven, which we can't, and we're not going to work our way into favor with God either. God blesses what? Faith. Right? If we're going to please Him, we have to believe that He is, and there's an order of them that seek Him. Right? We walk by faith, not by sight. You can come up here and play the most beautiful piano offertory. You can play the best hymn in the hymn book. The Awakening Chorus is not in our hymn book. There are some big ones. Master of the Tempest is Raging. Are you familiar with that one? That one goes all up and down the keys. You can play the Hallelujah Chorus on the piano. Perfectly! And you can play it in the flesh and it will do nothing. It will amount to nothing. Because Jesus said, without me, you're nothing. So we live the Christian life by faith, depending upon Him. We allow Christ to live His life through us. And this is so helpful, at least to me it is. As I think about my Christian life, the key is what? I gotta fall in love with Jesus, and I need to live my life to please Jesus. And I need to love Him and depend upon Him, and let Him do that work through me. Lord, I need you. I'm about to go up there and sing. I'm about to go up and pray. I'm about to do whatever. Lord, I need you. I am doing this dependent upon you. That's key. And so this aspect of knowing right, really these all link together, thinking right, accept your position in Christ. You have His righteousness, 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 30. I've already quoted 2 Corinthians 5. 1 Corinthians 1. And verse number 30, the Bible says this, as soon as I get to it, I'll read it to you. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Somebody's back there saying amen, and they just took him out. He was amen-ing me big time. Accept your position in Christ. And then number three, There's an aspect of doing right. An aspect of doing right that helps us. Colossians 3 in verse 23. What we do, we do as unto the Lord. And whatsoever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men. An aspect of doing the right thing that helps you by, you know, you think about it, sometimes we don't, as I said already, sometimes we don't feel like doing right, sometimes we don't feel like coming to church, sometimes we don't feel like witnessing, and then we find ourselves doing it, we find ourselves witnessing to somebody, and that person trusts Christ as Savior. By the way, we prayed for you, Stephen, last week, and Stephen came back and said it was a good time. He was able to lead a guy to Christ, and God used him, and we're thankful for God using him. It's probably an aspect of him that didn't feel like going from here to Illinois, but he did what was right. And so the aspect of our righteousness is knowing, understanding, hey, I am in Christ. I have his righteousness, and he'll enable me to do what's right. as we set out to say, Lord, I want to do what's right and I want to please you. And so we got the belt of truth. Let me encourage you. And I know I encourage you this on a regular basis. Get into the Bible every day. If you don't feel like it, do it anyway. When I was a young person, I'm sure as an adult, too, there were times when I really wasn't where I needed to be spiritually. You could say you weren't right with God. Uh-huh. I still get up and read the Bible. When you're not right with God, that's when you really need to get into the Bible, right? When you don't feel like it, ask God to give you a verse. Get into the truth and let's let the truth free us and let the truth use us in other people's lives. And then put on this belt of righteousness and recognize that what you do, you have to do in dependence upon Him and we're His children. And we have His righteousness. We don't have to live in sin. We're free! We're free to serve God. Right? We have liberty in Christ. And what a privilege it is to be His child. And these things will help us in our attack, or as the devil seeks to attack us, they'll help us as we fend off our adversary, the devil. And my amen corner's back in here. Alright, let's have prayer. Thank you, Lord, for the privilege to remind us about the armor of God. Lord, I pray that you would speak to us. Spirit of God, would you help us as we recognize areas that we have a tendency to be lapsed in? Lord I pray that we'd renew ourselves afresh and anew to say hey I'm going to get into the word and I'm going to get in and understand my position in Christ as his child and having his righteousness. Lord would you meet with us now as we give people a few minutes to talk to you and we'll thank you for what you do. Heads are bowed, eyes are closed.