We'll get to our sermon text. I'll read Ephesians 6, 10 to 17. I've preached through every piece of armor with one sermon, but what I'm gonna do today is seek to summarize all the pieces together at once. The Lord says to us, finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and 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 the high places. 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 girded about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye 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. Amen. So, we have in Ephesians thus far a wonderful teaching about salvation in chapters 1 and 2, wonderful teaching about Christ and His offices. We learn about the beauty of the Church being the means by which God's wisdom is made manifest to the visible and invisible realm. We have the beauty of the Church and its doctrines in chapter 2 at the end as well. And in chapter 4, we have wonderful truths about how Christ rules as governor of the church when he takes captivity captive. And then we go into union with Christ and what it means to be dead in Him and raised. And we apply that in Ephesians when it comes to sexuality in chapters 5. We apply that when it comes to worship, marriage, family. And here we are now at the end. What do we do with all these wonderful doctrines? What do we... Where does it take us? And all these wonderful doctrines are to take us to warfare. Hence why after all these things are unpacked, the conclusion is the call to engagements in warfare. And notice something about this engagement that we engage with all these truths. is it is an engagement that is with the entirety. Paul says, more than once, put on the whole armor of God. And then again, take on you the whole armor of God. Recall to engage against darkness with these wonderful truths with entirety. We need things that are sensitive of, battle and warfare and equipment when it comes to the heart and the mind and the feet and faith and the sword of the spirits because Satan has wiles for Many things and therefore we must engage him with the completeness of many things I think one of the things that I've noticed in the church is is a great deficiency in the understanding that we need to have a Christianity that is very much about entirety, wholeness, completeness. Not some of God's commands, not some of Christ's offices, not some of the armor, not some of the counsel of God, but the whole of the matter, the entirety. We have An enemy that is quite capable and therefore engagement with the entirety of what God affords to us is importance. I think this is Errol Smith that says this. He's a divine. And speaking of this text, he says, single graces, that is, graces that stand alone, are counterfeit graces. He's speaking about the need to have a completeness in the Christian life to engage darkness. Faith without righteousness is presumption. Righteousness without truth is hypocrisy and so on. See, he's speaking about the need for us to have true sound doctrine and engage darkness, but with a completeness, an entirety. Noah is commended for his faith, but he fails when it comes to the breastplate of righteousness. Peter has shoes to walk away and follow Christ and lead everything, and yet he fails to take up the shield of faith when his life is threatened. Job has the helmet of salvation on when he loses everything, and yet when his body is afflicted, he struggles with the shield of faith. The devil would have us to engage him with not completeness and entirety and fullness, but in part. So, and a lot of the need for us to take all this rich theology of Ephesians and engage with completeness and entirety, let us consider the first piece that we must use. Now, I could say many things about the, your loins girt about with truth, that's language for a belt. I could say many things about a belt. We could talk about its centrality, which I'll do in the second sermon, we could talk about its necessity but one thing that's important about considering the belt as an essential part of warfare is that belts in warfare and in the army were not simply to hold things together but they had a decorative element to them. The belts that soldiers wore were to be having this sense of outward beauty and Aerosmiths speaking to beauty of truthfulness in this piece of armor says this what greater ornaments and beauty of religion is there than soundness and evidence of truth this is the very glory and crown thereof all other vain glosses as antiquity universality unity uniformity succession consent Multitude, pomp, revenues being separated from truth are but as so many pearls in a blind eye, which make it so much the more deformed. For the more ancient, universal, uniform, and pompous superstition, ideology, or any false religion is, the more odious and detestable it is. But the more true and sound a religion is, the more excellent and glorious it is. The belt of truth protects us in us understanding that our beauty as a church, what adorns us as a church, what is most attractive about us as a church is veracity and truthfulness. This is what God means when he says in John 16, 14 about Jesus, in the spirit of truth, he will glorify me. What does that mean? Truth is not simply to be factual and accurate, but it is to be glorious. It is to be attractive and wondrous and central. This is why the Psalms and Proverbs speak about truth with the language of beautiful stones, priceless stones. And what Satan will do to us, or attempt to do to us, is make other things than the truth, the belt of truth, that which is most beautiful and attractive in the church. He will seek to beautify the church with the primacy of externality, the primacy of antiquity. What is most beautiful about our church is not the truth, but how old things are. This is the error with the manuscripts and modern translations. Why is it more pure? Because it's older, as if age makes things most beautiful. People will brag about beauty being an issue of uniformity. Why are we superior? Because we are all uniform. But ugliness can be uniform, correct? Uniformity in and of itself is not what beautifies us. Or people can say what is most beautiful about our church is that it is popular or has a common consensus. Or what's most beautiful about this church is that there is peace in this church that is external. Beloved, there is many churches that never argue about anything that are entirely dead. You know why they don't argue? Because they're all dead and dead people have no sensitivity to the things of God that prick them. What's beautiful about this church is that we have no struggles. But think of Jesus when he says, I did not come to send peace to the earth, but a sword. I have come to set a man at a variance against his father. and daughter against her mother. And the reason why we believe that truth is what makes the church most beautiful and attractive is because truth is connected to who? What is truth about? Why does truth have a beauty to it? Because Jesus is the word of God and every word is reflective of something wondrous about him. This is why I read Isaiah 59, 17. It connects all of these things, including the belt of truth to Jesus himself. Christ is altogether lovely, more desirable. And so, what should be most attractive, most beautifying of a church should be the beauty and centrality of truth. It is not enough, beloved, for you to hold the truth because there are many Reformed churches that have truth, but the attraction, the beauty that is central is not that. The attraction is the social. The attraction is the familial. The attraction is last names. The attraction is potlucks and traditions and personalities. But beloved, let me tell you that you are protected and safe when the most beautiful thing about your church is the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not enough for us to be truthful, but we must see this as the most adorning, attractive thing about us. Secondly, we must consider not just the beauty of a rash, but secondly, we must consider the protection of righteousness. The next part says, having on the breastplate of righteousness. Now, is this the righteousness that is imputed to us by faith, or is this the righteousness that is speaking about us applying and being made righteous? I would say that both are significant, but the latter is being emphasized. It would be redundant to say, truth, gospel truth, and then just say the same thing in different words. So the first piece of the armor is speaking about content, doctrine, truth. Second piece of the armor is speaking about what? The application of such things, the life because of such things, the righteousness that comes out of such truths. Truth is protective, not simply when it is worn and seen as the attraction and beauty, but truth protects you when virtue because of truth is applied. We must see righteousness that we get from Christ, but also live out as our breastplate, as that which protects us, as that which guards our souls, because it is a matter of life and death. The Corinthian church had gospel doctrines, but they lacked the breastplate of righteousness, and so they were struck by the Lord. Many times we think that because we have ordinances that are accurate, because we have doctrines that are Calvinistic, that we are safe. But listen to how the church, thinking that ordinances or the belt of truth is sufficient without also the breastplate of righteousness. Listen to 1 Samuel 4. And when the people come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, Why hath the Lord smitten us today before the Philistines? Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us, that when it come unto us, it may save us out of the hands of our enemies. So they gathered the thing which spoke about what was God's presence covenantally with them. But they went out with this ordinance, with this sign of grace without righteousness. And what happened when they took the ark without their breastplate of righteousness? They were struck down and defeated. Beloved, Satan will look at you with all your reformed doctrines and all your reformed practices. And if you have not righteousness as your breastplate, he will cut through your church like a wet piece of paper. Revelation tells us the church is protected in their truths, but also in that they follow the Lamb, whatsoever He goeth. Romans 13 says, let us put on the armor of light. What does it mean to put on armor of lights? Is it simply doctrinal? Is it simply categorical? No, listen, let us walk honestly as in the day. See, we are protected as we see virtue and righteousness as that which we do, which means simultaneously this, beloved. If virtue is our protection, then money is not. People pleasing is not. Ignoring and overlooking sins is not. What is securing for us is virtue. It sounds strange for me to have to say that in church, but I have heard enough things where people in church will say, be very careful. Be very careful with those people that are very concerned with the second commandment. Better watch out for that. You know what you need to be wary of? It's those people that are very, very, very concerned with obedience to the fourth commandment. Be weary of those who are concerned with virtue. And what Satan will do is he will take things that are protective and protect us, like virtue, and he will convince us that they're not actually protective, but they're dangerous. Your church is dangerous. Why? You're too concerned with virtue and holiness and righteousness. And this oftentimes will happen when men and women spend much time in church and for some reason their love grows cold and they look at you with your zeal your belief that obeying the Lord is what keeps you safe. And they look at you and they say, I used to be like you. I used to be like you. I used to think that righteousness was very important in my life. And now I've grown, I've matured. And now I know that I am secure because Christ died for me. It has nothing to do with me living for Christ. But whenever I hear that Mentality I think of Jesus saying whosoever therefore shall break one of the least these commandments and shall teach men So he shall be called lease in the kingdom of heaven Israel's safety was always about Them putting on this breastplate when they put on the breastplate of righteousness they were able to defeat their enemies When they're presumptuous about truth and thought that they could live loosely, they were overcome. Virtue is a matter of life and death. It is our breastplate. You don't go into warfare like the 300 soldiers walking into warfare with just their bare chest. That is how you get killed. Proverbs 3, 7 says, Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and depart from evil. Why? Why must we depart from evil? It shall be health to thy flesh and marrow to thy bones. You know what's interesting about the devil's interaction with the Lord in the wilderness? He omits a phrase. So if you look at modern translations, this is what Psalms It's citing Psalm 91 in Matthew 4. Look, this is what modern translations say, but it's interesting. They say it wrong, but let's not focus on the translation thing. Let's focus on one thing, and that is how the devil quotes Psalms 91. Listen to how the devil quotes Psalm 91. He says, he shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee. This is what the devil was saying to Jesus about Psalm 91. And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. So the devil omits a phrase and he adds a phrase. You know what the devil omitted? Here's what the Psalm actually says. For he shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. The devil comes to the Lord and says, you can own the Lord's protection without thy ways. being conformed to the Lord. He omits that phrase as if we could see ourselves as safe before the Lord simply because we cling to the promise of the Lord, but we don't cling to His ways and His will. Beloved, let me tell you that it doesn't matter how gifted your church is, how blessed they are with accuracy, If you do not see virtue as essential to your protection, you will be very vulnerable to darkness. The next important thing to bring out is the mobility of verticality, the mobility of verticality. Have your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Gospel of peace could be understood as the gospel which produces peace. So, this vertical reality of peace with God that we have, how? How do we have peace with God? Through the gospel. This gospel of vertical peace for the Lord is to be understood in the language of walking and footwear. Why is that? because it is essential for us to be mobile because of what? What makes us able to walk and navigate various terrains? What enables us to be mobile? It is because we are moving, we are being moved by a peace that comes from the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is what makes us mobile and able to walk. See, it doesn't matter how much armor you have, if you're walking around with no shoes on, the smallest pebble will bring you to the ground, correct? The shoes, they prepare us to walk because the peace that we have with Jesus Christ enables us to stand and walk through any terrain. It makes us mobile and ready. It makes us able to move. I am not sure where I am going exactly. I am not sure what terrain will be there. Will it be rocky terrain? Will it be sandy? But I know this, Jesus Christ has brought peace in my life by his own sake. I have peace with Jesus because of Christ. The gospel has given me peace and therefore I have the ability to be mobile though I don't know what I will face. You have the peace of God that surpasses understanding. This is what enabled Abraham to be mobile. How did Abraham leave and go where he had to go, not knowing what he would encounter. What did God do to get Abraham to be mobile? He spoke the gospel to him, correct? I will make thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and I will make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. This is what Paul says in Galatians 3 as the gospel. The gospel of peace for the sake of Christ is what's enabled Abraham to walk and to move. It was the gospel of peace that enabled Noah to build the ark. It's the gospel of peace that enabled Elijah to go out to the wilderness to be fed by predatory birds. It is the gospel of peace, knowing that God is with me, not because of me, but for Christ's sake, that gives me the ability to walk into war. Peace with God enables us to walk and go in places that we need to go. Let me give you some examples of this. There's a new biblical practice that I am believing and implementing. What's gonna happen to me? What will happen to me if I practice this truth? our church, we have a new belief, we have a new denomination, we have a new pastor, what will happen? If you do not consider that with the reality that peace will not be brought about by what is in front of you. Whatever's in front of you will not bring peace. But if you don't consider that with the fact that you already have peace, You have peace because the Lord Jesus Christ brought peace in history. And when you know that you have peace, when you consider what will happen if I practice this doctrine? What will happen if I take this job? What will happen if I move from this church to that church? What will happen? Me, considering myself, I'm gonna leave the SBC for the PCA. I'm gonna move to Miami to plant a church. What will happen if I don't consider the magnitude of what has already happened and the fact that I exist in the peace of God, with the peace of the gospel, I will be paralyzed and unable to encounter anything in front of me and I will not be mobile. because I will think that my footsteps bring peace, not Christ's footsteps bring peace, and so I will not be able to walk because I am seeking to get peace from things vertical and what will happen, as opposed to living and wearing with readiness the peace that I already have in Christ. When you walk, beloved, and you realize that the Lord of the universe is with you, And He's with you, not because of you, but He's with you because of Himself. And wherever you go, you walk with the Lord. You are able to be mobile. You are able to move through many, many things, knowing not what, but you know this, there is a peace that God has given me in Christ, and that could never be taken away by me walking this way or that. But oftentimes, we are constrained by the situational, the environmental, the logistical, rather than being ready and made ready with the peace that comes from Christ. I have many things where I must go, many places where I must be, many battles that Satan is calling me to, I'm sorry, that Christ is calling me to against Satan, but what moves me into those spaces, is the peace that I already have for Christ's sake. The next piece of armor that is vital to engaging in entirety is the exercise of faith. Key word, exercise. Above all, take in the shield of faith, wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. Take up speaks about the need to exercise faith. in real time and events and situations. The shield of faith is not something that you have categorically and conceptually and theologically that sits there, but it is something that you take up and exercise and use. This is why Habakkuk speaking about faith says this, Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith. A life of taking up and applying and appropriating things that you believe about the Lord. Exercising faith in the contraries, using it because, beloved, listen, faith oftentimes can be nothing more than a systematic conversation, a matter of debate, a matter of concepts, but not something by which you think that all these concepts and all these doctrines are to be exercised. Ephesians 1 to 6 are not things simply to teach through and memorize and be able to articulate. Ephesians 1 to 6 are things that are to be taken up and hidden behind in real time instances and moments. When stuff happens, we take up the shield of faith. But what happens, beloved, is oftentimes when stuff happens, we take up other things. Our doctrines are over here, but we take up not those things and hide behind them. We take up fear, accusation, shame. We take up guilt. We take up speculation and the emotive. We take up suspicion. We take up all sorts of things. We become false prophets. What do I mean by that? You know exactly what's gonna happen. So something in front of you that's scary, and all of a sudden, you say, well, this is gonna happen, and this is gonna happen, this is gonna happen, and you become someone who prophesies every event that will happen if you do this, instead of taking up the shield of faith, where God's word is what you hide behind, not what you think about this and that or other. People lose a job. They use a loved one, they go through divorce, and they take up not the things of Christ and his word, but they take up a bottle, they take up a hobby, an issue happened to the denomination, a dividing line, and rather than exercise faith and apply faith and use faith, they take up all sorts of humanistic tactics. You must take up, use faith. When women and wives get frantic about issues in Reformation, you know what you take up, man? You take up the shield of faith, not the shield of siding with your wife. When churches are struggling, when they're struggling through the various things that they encounter as they seek to walk before the Lord, we don't take up fear, we don't take up controlling, manipulating, we don't take up anxiety, we take up our doctrines, and we trust the Lord. We lean on them. We hoist them up. We take up the shield of faith. And we don't look around, we don't look around and see things and say, okay God, I'm gonna calculate how difficult this is, how problematic this is, how plausible this is, how likely this is, how complicated this is, faith does not do that. Faith takes up who God is, what he has said, and what he has promised, and you look everything that looks against it, and you laugh at it in the face. and you do what the people in Hebrews 11 did by faith, they did things that did not seem to be situationally or circumstantially plausible. They took up the shield of faith in weird, difficult, challenging moments. This is the disciples in John 6. Jesus says hard things, difficult things, and a crowd of thousands gets erased to a handful in a moment. Jesus looks at them. Are you going to leave too because of these hard things? And says, where shall we go? What shall we do? See, faith exercises trust. When people are running, when they're angry, when they're scared, experientially in the moment, in the ways that we walk, we trust the Lord. The Proverbs say, trust the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways, acknowledge him. In all thy ways, acknowledge him. You say, Pastor, how would I know? How would I have awareness that I am exercising faith? I think I agree with the concept. Use it, apply it, exercise it. It's not just this abstract categorical out there, but you take things up, you use them, you hide behind the Lord and his word, in real moments, though things don't seem to be ideal or plausible. How do you know? A good thing to do is do the Peter test. The Peter test is this. And Peter answered him and said, this is in the Gospels, Lord, if thou bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, come. And when Peter had come down out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? Here's a Peter test. I am not walking according to Christ's commands in a certain area of my life. I am not heeding the command to walk somewhere. Why? Because I am very sensitive to the environments and the surroundings and the circumstances. And therefore, because I am looking at the things that surround the command, the temperature that surrounds the command, the tide, I will stop walking. That is a good measure of whether you are taking up the shield of faith. I see this far too often. We stop walking personally. We stop walking in the home. We stop walking as a church. We stop walking as a denomination. Why? Because we are very fixed on everything that is around the command and the environment. But faith in, see Peter was great at exercising faith in a theological conversation, right? Lord, if everybody's getting killed, I'm good. Very good at speaking of faith conceptually. But this narrative shows us that faith is to be exercised in inconceivable danger and in such a way that you continue to walk though you are potentially in the precipice of drowning. Next major points of the armor is the helmets of salvation. And the way I phrase or summarize or state the helmet of salvation is by saying this, the crown, the conscious, and conception. Conceiving things, not conceiving in another way. Our mind must be subject to the crown. Our conscious must be subject to the crown. The way we conceive of things must be subject to the crown. When Paul says, put on the helmet of salvation, what he's saying is that spiritual warfare is very much about the necessity for your mind and your thoughts and your conceptions in actuality to be subject and constrained and under the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior and His salvation. We must be protected from Satan by thinking in a gospel-centered way, having a mindset and mentality that sees all of my thoughts as being necessary to be subject to Jesus Christ. Satan primarily works by Ideas the world fell primarily by an idea and so Paul says this about how Satan works doesn't But I fear it less by any means the second Corinthians 11 as a serpent begal Eve through his subject so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ and The mind, the way we think, is what Satan targets. And he will do many things to undermine the mind as subject to the Savior. He will allow our minds, or prompt our minds, or seek to tempt our minds to be driven by all sorts of Christless things. driven by emotional things, driven by experiential things, but not a mentality that is fixed on the mindset of Christ. This is why I read 2 Corinthians. We are to cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God. Satan thrives on the mind imagining things, speculating things, listening to itself, governing itself, but spiritual warfare is about taking your mind, this is strange times, you listen to yourself thinking. You don't just think. This is the problem with us, beloved. We just think and act like it is something that we can't think about. You don't think about your thinking. And what the Helm of Salvation is saying is that as you think, you are to think about how you're thinking, and every single thought should be reflective of how God thinks about himself, rather than how we would want to think. We cannot be allowing our mind to govern itself. The mind has been saved by Christ. The mind belongs to Christ, and our thoughts are subject to Christ. Your mind is not some rogue, autonomous thing that just lets things come in and runs itself. This is Colossians 3. Seek those things which are above. Set your affection on things above. This is Romans 12. Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds. A lot of Christians think that I can simply be Christ-centered by adding more thoughts of Jesus into my mind. But that's not what Paul says. What Paul says is that you must take things in your mind and throw them out and kick them out and throw them down and add things in your mind that are consistent with Christ. This is Ephesians 4 that we, well not we, but the church we went through. And be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And since your mind must be protected by the Savior and salvation, you must protect your mind from feeding it with the wrong things. with vanity and superstition and anxiety, doubt, anger, envy and bitterness. Beloved, let me tell you something. One of the things that I encounter very often as a pastor is I talk to people and I seek to understand what is in their minds. And I don't do that by trying to speculate. Jesus says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So we speak and we converse, we ask questions, And the mind begins to overflow in the words. And when I hear words, something becomes clear to me very often. Dear Christian, your words convey a way of thinking that has absolutely nothing to do with Christ's thoughts. And then when you begin to discuss this, it's like, well, this is how I think. This is how I think. Respectfully, you don't get to think how you want to think. You cannot think one thought because you feel entitled to think it. All of your thoughts belong to Jesus Christ. And everything that comes out of your mouth should be protected and driven by a Christ-centered mentality. And when something comes out of your mouth that conveys a Christless mentality, you don't just say, that's how I think about it. You say, Does Christ think this about this? Does Christ think that these thoughts about him or about this situation is correct? No. Paul rightly says, I don't want you to be ignorant about things. I want your mind to be clear about God's thoughts about you. And one of the ways, also, that the devil will seek to have a while for the helmet of salvation. One of the ways he will do this is by giving you a presumptuous mind. He will play into you having a presumptuous mind. What is a presumptuous mind? What is a mind that thinks presumptuously rather than thinking with the helmet of salvation? Here's what it sounds like. I'm good with Christ. and I'm not at war with my sin. I'm good with Christ, even though I'm not at harmony with his people. I'm good with the Lord, even though I'm constantly in a rebellious posture towards elders. I'm good with the Lord, I'm good with the Lord, though my home is an absolute catastrophe and disaster. I'm good with the Lord, why? I just feel like I am. Have you ever heard that before? I just feel the presence of God, and I'm like, so why? Do I just feel right with God? I am good. Why? I sing psalms, I have a head covering, and I go to a covenant church. I'm good because of that. I am good with the Lord even though I care very little to read his word and pray and confess my sins. I am good with the Lord because I'm not that bad a person or I see myself, others see me as good. Beloved, that's presumptuous. That is presumptuous mentality. The Lord wants us to have a mindset that says, I am good with the Lord, you know why? Because my mind is regularly thinking about everything in my life in light of God's thoughts after himself that I think. I don't think myself good because of presumption and judging according to external and superficial things. I think myself good because my mind My mind is thinking God's thoughts after Himself. And the Lord wants us to be strong-minded people. The Gospel is not just a doctrine, it is a mindset. And I will tell you, beloved, please, protect yourselves from people that lack this kind of mindset. Part of the helmet of salvation being stated in helmet imagery is to tell you that you are to protect your minds from those that don't have this mindset. What do I mean? Protect your mind, beloved, from people that are led by emotions and not thoughts of Christ. I've been in many rooms where we're discussing the scriptures and how Christ thinks. And you know what comes in the room? An emotional narrative to bypass the mind and manipulate people. Do not let your mind be penetrated by those that lead by emotions and emotional narratives. Do not be led by those who think according to their own understanding. Do not let your mind be penetrated by those who always have some argument or some reason or some excuse why we shouldn't be mindful about Christ in this situation. Beloved, being mindful about Christ and bringing Christ's thoughts into how we're thinking is appropriate for every single situation. Be mindful of that. Be mindful of those who want to reason and rationalize first, and then think about Christ second. Protect your mind from the Christless mind. And here's the last piece of the armor. And I'll do this again with different points. Last piece of the armor is the polemics of the sword and spirit. The polemics of the sword and spirit. And take up the sword and spirit, which is the word of God. Now, A sword is used for what? Is it used for patting people? Do you use swords to build bridges? No, you use swords for combat, for warfare. Paul is saying the truth, God's truth, is to be understood as something which calls us to warfare. It is the sword of the spirit. And by the way, it is not the longer sword that would be for space combat. It is a shorter sword for very close combat. And by the way, the word wiles is a word for people wrestling with each other and trying to deceive each other into submission. So this is the picture of truth with men resting on the floor with small swords and seeking to stab one another. And this is, sadly, sadly, this is one of the things that is often most resisted in many Reformed churches. The reality that we are supposed to fight for the truth and fight with the truth. And part of that issue I have no problem with you ladies, what I'm about to say, let me just say, I have no problem with women. But I do have a problem with women taking the lead in churches. Because when women take lead in churches, they're not made for fighting. They're not made for that. Just think about how God, how Satan deceived in the beginning. How did Satan deceive in the beginning? I'm gonna get the woman not made to fight me first. If man sees a serpent in the garden, we don't talk. Let's have a conversation with the serpent. No, we don't talk. We fight. But the women, wired differently, she has a conversation. So the woman not wired, mostly for Aggression against darkness and combating against darkness not most to lead that she takes a lead and all of a sudden There's a conversation with darkness and not a war with darkness. What Adam should have done is be quiet. Don't talk to him I'm about to take a sword and chop off the serpent and he reverses and all of a sudden now we have churches all over the place and that think that the concept of striking and fighting and contending for the truth is some kind of inappropriate carnality against grace and gospel. But let me read some verses to remind us of this concept of the need to be warring with and for truth. 2 Timothy 4, I have fought a good fight. 1 Timothy 1, This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before thee, that by them Midas wore a good warfare. Second Timothy two, thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Beloved, the sword of the spirit which is the word of God being stated in such a way tells us that as a church and as a family, you are to fight for the truth. You are to fight for the accuracy and integrity of God's word. You are to fight for the purity of worship in Zion. You are to fight for God's virtues and his law and his commandments. You are to fight for the doctrines of grace. And you are to fight for all the doctrines of God. You are to fight for justification and sanctification. You are to fight for the Lord's right to govern His church according to His law and His will. You are to fight for everything that God says is true. It is said to be a sword for contention. And the second I say that, there's all this what about, what about. There's other verses that speak about many other things. where we can talk about other things. But beloved, we as a church are fighters. We fight against pluralism. We fight against the papacy. We fight against everything that is raised up against Christ. I remember one time I was at a Acts 29 conference. It was in Dallas. Somewhere here in one of these mega churches in Dallas. And the pastor said, you know, Jesus does not need pit bulls that fight for him. Now, I understand where that phrase may come from, but let's be clear, Jesus in these verses is saying that I call and command my people to fight for me with the truth. Jesus does not need us to fight, but he calls us to fight because he wants to call us to the good warfare where we contend for the truth. And when Paul calls us, when the Holy Spirit calls us to contend for the truth, you know what it means, beloved? We don't fight for other things. We don't fight for preferences in church. We fight for the truth of the word of God in church. We don't fight for denominations in church. We fight for truth in denomination. You know the difference? There's a lot of warfare that has nothing to do with truth but fighting simply for a name of a denomination or the name of a church. We don't fight for our friends. What happens in church sometimes? Here's what happens. I'm friends with them. They're my friends. I hang out with them. They're angry. They're bothered. I'm on their side. I fight for them. Beloved, you never fight for friends. You always fight for truth. And when your friends, and when your co-elders, and when your co-members are on the side of truth, you fight for the truth. But you never fight for a party, or a side, or a name. You always are fighting for, you don't fight for preferences and traditions, or a practice that you prefer. We fight for the truth. You say, why do we fight? Why is it that we fight? Do we fight because we are insecure and have this need to be endlessly fighting? That happens sometimes, beloved, when men are fighting in their churches for truth, when men are fighting in denominations for truth. They say, you know what your problem is? You have a toxic masculinity that is obsessed with fighting, and the reason why you wanna fight is because you are dysfunctional, your mom didn't hug you enough, and you don't understand the grace of Jesus. But you know why we fight. Do you know why Paul calls us to fight? Here is why. Acts 15.3, the Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. The Lord, beloved, is a warrior, and he calls us appropriately and wisely to fight for his truth. Our history, beloved, is a history of fighters. And if I could say, if there's one thing that I do believe that is an issue in the reform world, oftentimes, is we have a lot of doctrines, but not very many fighters. And it's not enough to have doctrines if you don't contend for them. That's the whole point of Jude. Contention and fighting for truth is essential to the preservation of truth. Psalms 94 says, who will rise up for me against the evildoers? Or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity? How often are we called to have this mentality? It is always that. I'll close by saying this. So we talked about all these pieces in separate ways, but I would like to do one thing to close, and that is to connect all these pieces with each other. I want to just end briefly, hopefully briefly, on how all these pieces have a necessary connection to them, all the other parts. So, for example, what does it matter if we have a sword but we don't have the belt of truth as we yield the sword. If truth is not central to you, if truth is not at your core, what you find most necessary and beautiful, you will fight for the wrong things. You will strike the wrong things because you are seeking to enter into combat lacking truth as that which adorns and holds things together. Or how about this? How about having the sword of the spirit, but you don't have the breastplate of righteousness? What hypocrisy, beloved? You know what that reminds of? We contend for truth, but we don't do so with a heart and a center and a core. that loves Jesus and reflects His grace. It reminds me of the Marines or the Green Berets. They'll go into a place and they'll kill some wicked man who is awful and then celebrate by pornography, drunkenness, and debauchery. They kill and strike something wicked, but yet they have no virtue. That's not us. If we swing the sword of the Spirit without the breastplate of righteousness, we will use warfare for attention. We must swing with virtue. We must yield the sword with righteousness. But how about this? How about having the sword of the Spirit without the shoes? Beloved, how could you have the ability to wage war if you have not peace with God? How can someone who has turmoil in their soul, and lacks peace because of God, how can you swing rightly? The man who has not peace because of Christ will be fighting everything and everyone all the time. You need the shoes of the gospel of peace in order for you to swing the sword well. I don't have peace from fighting people. Amen? I have peace in the Lord. And because I have peace in Christ, I fight. But if you are somebody, have you met these people in our circles? They only have peace when they're fighting with somebody. They have the sword, but they have not shot themselves with the shoes appropriate. How can the Lord direct your swings if your footsteps are not directed by the gospel? Or how about this? How about you have the sword. You have the sword and you don't have the shield of faith. You know what the sword without the shield of faith looks like? It looks like two things. So you have the Word of God, which is a double-edged sword, but you don't have the shield of faith. It will lead to two things. It will lead to you being the men in the trees, in the woods, hiding from Goliath, though they have all the equipment. They have all the equipment, but they have not the faith that David had. Or, if you have the sword of the Spirit without the shield of faith, it will lead to you doing a peter. You're chopping off ears, when it's not time to chop off yours. He is afraid. Some people are afraid and it leads them to strike in fear. And some are afraid and it leads them to run and flee. How about this? How about having a sword and not your mind being secured with the helmet of salvation? Beloved, if you are not sure about the Lord. If you're not mindful of the salvation, if your mind is not constantly considering the reality of Christ and how He has made you right, you are never going to know when to swing and you're always going to be doubting every swing because your mind is in absolute confusion and double-minded and too many directions and so therefore a mind that is not subservient and under Christ and filled with thoughts of Christ will be unable to swing. A mind distracted with endless crisis things will not know what to do. One more illustration about all these things being related. You know what it reminds me of when men have or women have the truth of God's word but they don't take up the shield of faith and exercise in the moment. You know what it reminds me of? Have you ever seen the people that they go to boxing gyms and they hit the bags And they look very capable. They look very confident. They're grunting. And the second that they're in an actual moment where people are slinging at them, all of that confidence, all that confidence, it disappears immediately. Have you ever seen somebody who thinks because they go to a shooting range and they can hit a target over and over again? That means that they could shoot in a real place where people are actually, there's bullets whipping by? Beloved, if we do not exercise gospel faith in actual, real moments, I don't care how much sword sharpness you have, you will be like that person who can swing a million times with confidence, but when it comes to swinging, when there is something swinging at you, you lack the faith and ability to take it up when things are happening. So, a all-out warfare with darkness demands a complete armor, and every piece is important. in the battle, and every piece is related to everything, every single piece. Let us pray. Lord, as we consider your word, we consider this one thing, or at least we would like to consider one thing before you, and that is that the sword belongs to the Spirit. We have used the Word of God, which is His sword. We have read it. We have sung it. But it is His sword to apply. It is His sword to make effective. So Heavenly Father, would you please, would you please use these words that belong to you and would your spirit take them, take them from our ears and bring them down to the depths of our souls that it would wound and mend and penetrate where appropriate. Lord, I pray that we would not live a mindless life of vanity as we consider this. I pray, Lord God, that you would enable the truth that is adorning and sensual to be exalted in our eyes. that virtue would be that which we hunger and thirst for and long to grow in. I pray that our footsteps would be vertically driven by the peace that comes from the Savior. I pray, Lord, that we would see the sword as absolutely necessary, just as much as every other part. And I pray, Lord, that your words on our lips one more time, would, as they come from our mouths, and as we speak to one another in hymns and psalms and spiritual songs, I pray, Lord, that you would have our minds and our breastplates and our belts and our shoes and all things fortified with your word. Amen.