I turn you once more to Ephesians chapter six and we consider another aspect of the Christian's armor. Ephesians chapter six, stand therefore, verse 14, stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness. The last time we considered the Christian armour, we considered the waist to be engirded with truth or the belt of truth which Christians need to put on. This evening we look at the next piece of armour that Christians need and this is called in the passage before us the breastplate of righteousness. and this was an essential part of the Roman soldier's armour and there's a little picture of some of the armour that a Roman soldier would have just to give you a little idea and there of course is the breastplate. And there's more of a close-up of a Roman soldier's breastplate which we will look at in a few moments, a very essential part of a soldier's armour. And as you will see there, sometimes it had embellishments and it was carefully drawn together to give him protection. And this is what we're going to be thinking about in our message this evening because it was so vital because it would protect the heart and the vital organs of the body. A Roman soldier could get a serious injury to his arm or his leg which would not be life-threatening. But if an injury occurred that penetrated vital organs or more importantly the heart, it would be fatal. And these were made for every individual. and they were made in such a way as a soldier could move easily and so the soldier would be protected from thrusts, from arrows or knives or swords. So this is what the Apostle Paul knows about. It's wonderful when you read the writings of the Apostle Paul. Remember he's a rabbi. But he wasn't the kind of rabbi that was so closeted. He didn't know what was going on around in the Roman world. And in fact, Paul many, many times was arrested by soldiers and had soldiers confining him under house arrest and arresting him at various other times. So the Apostle Paul was a man of wide knowledge and experience. And he's referring to soldiers. in his letter to the Christians at Ephesus. And this wonderful letter to the Christians at Ephesus has gone through the great doctrines, the great truths of the Christian faith and then has made application to them as to how we should live in our lives day by day in various situations and in all times. And he's gone on now to recognise that when we are Christians, and we are on the Lord's side, and we are on the King's army, we will be under attack by God's great enemy, and our great enemy, Satan. who will do all kinds of things to destroy our faith and undermine our relationship to the Lord. And so the last time we looked at this passage, We saw that the apostle was saying, first of all, put on the belt of truth. In other words, know what God has revealed and let it closely bind you so that you are well established in what God has revealed to us in his word, and you have a clear understanding of the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ and all other essential things. Now the apostle moves on to a second piece of armour and it is the breastplate of righteousness. Let's remind ourselves what the breastplate was for. It was typically made of bronze or iron and it was laid in a way that the pieces overlapped, held together with leather. Some of them actually had a coat of chain mail that you might have seen in medieval soldiers in Europe. And the way it was built was so it was flexible. You can imagine having a very stiff breastplate and when you bend over it digs into you and you don't have any flexibility or mobility. So it would be held together in different pieces and yet it would be extremely strong so it would be a defence against thrusts from swords or daggers or spears and it would cover both the chest of the soldier and the back as well, so he would have the equivalent of what we would call today a bulletproof vest to protect him from the arrows and swords in battle. And the important thing of course was, as I've already said, is going to protect those vital organs. If your heart is pierced, you will die quickly. I've never forgotten when my boys were at school, they came home very, very sad one day. One of the lads in the next village had taken a knife from the kitchen at school and he'd put it in his pocket and he'd gone out in the playground and he'd bent over and he had pierced his heart. it shows how vulnerable we are and how careful we have to be. And the Roman soldier was very aware that he needed to protect the vital centre of his body. And Paul is kind of thinking of the heart in a spiritual way, not the literal pump beating inside us, but he's thinking about our emotional life or the control centre of our being when he talks about the heart. Maybe think of the heart as the air traffic controller at an airport. The heart, the thinking, the emotions, the choices we make, it's the very center of who we are and how we act. And as we know, one of the most important things in life is to have a healthy heart. As people get older, the heart gets weaker and some friends of mine have to have pacemakers, some have to have operations on their heart, some have to watch their arteries and be careful of cholesterol. We look after our hearts because they are the important part of the body. And in a spiritual way, it's important we have a healthy spiritual heart or soul. because that determines our actions and our habits and our feelings. Now remember that when God measures the worth and the health of a person's character, he puts a measuring tape not around the head but the heart. What does God say about David? He was a man after God's heart. He's a man who thought and felt and acted like the Lord. And so the breastplate of righteousness is going to protect a believer's mind and feelings and emotions, but in particular, the feelings and emotions that well up within us. You see to a certain extent the belt of truth, truth is going to be in the mind and in the memory and the helmet is going to be very much protecting our thinking. So when we come to the breastplate it's speaking about our hearts and whether we've got a good, healthy, feeling, sensitive heart that is beating well. As it says in one of the proverbs, watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it springs, for from it flows the springs of life. So this is the breastplate. The breastplate is the state of our heart that needs to be protected. But what is meant by righteousness? Paul talks about the breastplate of righteousness. Well, righteousness is a word that we don't often use so much in daily speech as we used to, but it figures very, very large in the Bible. Because it's a word that helps us understand about God and about ourselves. We have to keep in mind that the Bible reveals to us our God is a righteous God. One of the Psalms says, oh, praise the greatness of our God. He's the rock. His works are perfect. And all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong. Upright and just is he. So God's righteousness means that God acts in accordance with all that's right. He is the ultimate standard of what is right and correct. Now, I'm told that in Washington DC, there's a building that's called the National Institute of Standards and Technology. And that's a place that's responsible for storing perfect samples of weights and measurements. And they are what are called prototypes of weights to assess the weight of things and measuring rods to accurately and meticulously measure things. Now when it comes to righteousness, the authoritative standard is God himself. and all that he reveals to us about his character and about what he approves of in us. Biblical righteousness means to live a life that conforms to the holy, upright, just, perfect character of God. A God that's always true to himself. It's not for us to decide what is righteous and unrighteous. This is revealed to us in the scriptures that God has given to us. And so we can judge whether actions are wrong or righteous by the scriptures, by what's revealed about our God and his requirements of us. It's not for society to decide what is right. Because society always drifts farther and farther from God and the more people forget God and the more ignorant they are of his word, the lower the standards get. Romans 7 says, the law is holy and the command is holy, righteous and good and it's an unchanging standard. And as God is righteous, he expects those who are made in his image, you and me, human beings, spiritual beings, with eternity in our heart, God calls us to be righteous. And our conscience, if it's a rightly sensitized conscience, tells us this. And if we are honest, We know that however hard we try, and however old we grow, and however knowledgeable we are about the Lord and his word, we still do not attain to the righteous life that is required by the Lord. So what is the righteousness that is here being referred to by the Apostle Paul when he says it's a piece of armour, a piece of something that protects you as a Christian that you put on? Well, it's the imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ which we receive when we put our faith in him. is what God provides for his people to give them a right standing with himself. It was said of Abraham that he believed God and it was imputed or reckoned to him for righteousness. So the righteousness here that he's given to us is the righteousness of the righteous life the perfect, flawless life of the Lord Jesus Christ. The moment we confess our sin and humble ourselves before God, there's a great exchange that takes place, and God's righteousness is given to us, and our unrighteousness is taken away by the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that's why I read that chapter of the Prophet Zechariah. We find a little picture of what I have tried simply to explain. A person's own righteousness is pictured by Joshua the high priest wearing filthy clothes. Now remember this is the high priest Joshua. not the soldier Joshua. This is a high priest so he's got resplendent robes on. He's got garments that are colourful and stunning but they're grubby. And though he's a holy man of God and a representative of the people before God and God to the people, His clothes are described as being filthy. That's his own righteousness. We live in a people today who do lots of good things. There's lots of charitable work going, lots of fundraising going on. There are people I know who do a lot of really good work, sponsorships and spend a lot of time and well doing good in society. A lot of kindness and charitable work goes on. It's a righteous action in a sense, but it's not the righteousness that God wants of humanity. It's completely insufficient to establish a right relationship with God and to guarantee of his blessing and eternal life. Joshua's pictured as a person who's a good person, but his clothes don't make him right with God. They need to be taken away. So although he got filthy clothes on, God took them away. In other words, it's a figure of him taking away his sin and replacing Joshua's dirty clothes with clean clothes. it was an act of grace. God's righteousness was given to Joshua and as a result Joshua stood in a positional standing of righteousness or being right before God. That's what happens when we turn to the Lord Jesus Christ. He takes away our sins, he takes away the good things that we've done that are not sufficient to put us right with God. As the Apostle Paul says, God made him, Jesus, who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. So when we're talking about the armour of righteousness, When we're talking about the breastplate of righteousness, we're talking about the righteousness of the Lord Jesus which is reckoned to our account. But there's more to it. It's also imparted righteousness in the believer's life, and I'll speak more of that in a moment. You see, in chapter 4, of Ephesians in verse 24, Paul uses righteousness to refer to the new man, the righteous man, the one with righteous standing with God. And then in chapter 5 and verse 9, he refers to it in a way of righteous behavior, living in a right way, living in a way that's pleasing and acceptable to God. And there are two aspects to this breastplate of righteousness that will protect us, as I will try and demonstrate in a few moments. You see, when God removed the high priest Joshua's filthy clothes, he replaced them with rich garments and rebuked Satan, and then remember what God said to the high priest. He said, If you will walk in my ways and keep my requirements then you will govern my house and have charge of my courts and I will give you a place among those standing there. So there was a subsidiary action of God. that God was going to instruct him and God was going to strengthen him to not only be made righteous in his standing and acceptance with God, but he was going to continue to live in a righteous way that was pleasing to God, a practical righteousness applied to his everyday life. So that I believe is what the Apostle Paul is saying is the breastplate of righteousness. But how does it become a breastplate? How does it protect us? Because this is the whole point of the argument of the Apostle Paul. You see, the whole thrust of this last few verses of his letter to the Ephesians is to help us to stand up to the devil and the devil's attacks and the devil's temptations. Because when we come to Christ, and even though we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ, Satan's not going to give up having a go at us. He's not going to leave us alone. It's very clear that we need this righteous breastplate because Satan wants to knock us down or to set us back. In the book of Revelation we have a verse that tells us about Satan. Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ for the accuser of our brothers. who accuses them before our God day and night has been hurled down. In other words, here's a picture of the end of time when the people of God are gathered and one thing that's going to be absent is Satan continually making accusations against God's people. He will continually be enticing to sin and then he will be accusing us of failure. Most recently, people have said to me, I feel guilty about prayer. I feel guilty when I pray because there are times when I neglect it, or there are times when I don't feel my prayer is very real. One was an elderly Christian, and one was a younger one, perhaps weaker in faith. And that's exactly what Satan is constantly up to, to try and make us feel so guilty about our personal failures and our weakness that we don't pray with confidence and assurance. Satan will suggest, how do you think God's going to answer prayers like that? How do you think God's going to be with you when you're such a poor Christian? Satan suggests so many things to our mind. When we perhaps fall into something foolish, we make a bad decision, we speak a wrong word, Satan's going to play on our feelings. He's going to say, look, how can you be a real Christian when you do that or say that? Play on our feelings and confuse our consciences and make us feel hopeless and condemned. the times he will come to us and he will make us insensitive and careless and we'll drift into bad habits or neglect of various important things. He gets at us. He accuses us. He gets into our hearts and our feelings. And there are times when often we do feel bad. Particularly if we're unwell, we're sure not to feel too good. And very often when we're not feeling too good physically or emotionally, that's Satan's opportunity to thrust into us with an accusation. How can you be a genuine Christian? How can you expect God to bless you when you feel like this? So what do you do? there are times when Christians do feel out of sorts well Paul tells us very plainly here Satan's going to be the accuser he wants to knock us down he wants to make us feel bad he wants to disturb our emotions we put on the breastplate of righteousness we put on the righteousness of Jesus Christ now come back to your soldier The soldier's got to go into battle. He knows that there's enemies out there who've got arrows and are going to be throwing spears and are going to try to get in close contact and stab him. What does he do? He puts on the breastplate. Before he goes to battle, he makes sure it's there. He makes sure it's fastened tightly. And then he can go out to battle with a sense of confidence. because he knows his essential organs are covered. He might feel nervous, but he trusts what he's put on will give him the protection that he needs. And in our spiritual warfare, our defence against Satan's lies and accusations against us gives us the focus that we can answer him. We can say, yes Satan, I have failed. Yes, Satan, I'm not all that I want to be. Yes, Satan, it's true. You're right, Satan. And we say to him, yes, what you say about me may be very true, but my life doesn't depend on my sinless behaviour and my personal perfection. My safety and my standing with God rests on Christ's sinlessness which is reckoned to my account. Job took Satan's accusations to a higher court. When all kinds of things were being said about the integrity of Job, people were wrestling to understand why are so many dreadful things happened to Job? And his three friends came along and they tried to analyze what had gone on and they had these suspicions that Job was a failure and God was against him. And Job said this, even now my witness is in heaven, my advocate is on high. We can tell Satan that our poor performance doesn't lose our standing with God. We are reckoned righteous forever. When a child fails you, when you're disappointed with your children, when you're hurt, does that child cease to be a child? No. A child is still your child that you love despite their faults, despite their repeated mistakes. And in just the same way, if we're a child of God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we're a child of God forever. Christ's righteousness is ours forever. There's a story of a man in America Terry Schaefer, his name. She was a young wife living with her husband in Illinois and she wanted a special gift for her husband as a Christmas present. And she started looking for it early in December and found it. And she took it home ready to give to her husband on Christmas Day. but actually she was so excited to have it for him she couldn't wait until Christmas Day and she gave it to him one day and that night he went out on the night shift and he happened to be a police officer and at seven o'clock in the morning she had a phone call to say that her husband had been shot at point-blank range by a .45 caliber pistol. He was arresting a robbery suspect and he was shot amid that arrest. But the phone call went on to say he'd survived. The gift that Terry had given to her husband was a bulletproof vest. It saved his life. she'd given her husband the gift of life. The Lord Jesus Christ has given us a bulletproof vest. It's his righteousness. It means we've got the gift of eternal life. We may make mistakes, we may fail, and we may feel bad, but our feelings don't change our standing with the Lord. We may feel cold and spiritually dry and unfruitful, but that does not change our standing with Christ. We don't rest on our good feelings, we don't rest on our senses, but we rest on what Jesus Christ has done. There's a story told of two boys on Passover night. I'm not convinced it's a real story like Terry Schafer's story. But these boys heard of the coming of the Angel of Death to bring death to every oldest son. And they knew that every home had to kill a lamb. and put some of its blood on the doors if they were going to escape the angel of death coming to their home. So the boys both made sure that the blood was on the doors of their houses where they lived and they went to bed. One boy went peacefully to sleep all night. The other boy lay awake worrying all night, unable to sleep. Which of those boys was safest? They were both equally safe. One was less comfortable because he had less faith. The other was more comfortable because he had a stronger faith. We brothers and sisters are safe. However new or old, however strong or weak our faith, if we are trusting in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ to cover our sins, his righteousness has been imputed to us, and we should be at peace with God. Romans 5 says, therefore, since we've been justified through faith, Faith that brings the great exchange of righteousness. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Peace like the boy who slept through the night, knowing that the blood had been shed and put on the doors of the house and the angel of death would have nothing to do with our home. We must put it on. Every day of our lives when we get up in the morning, we put on our clothes. Our clothes are going to be part of our life through that day. Whether it's school uniform, whether it's a suit to go to work, whether it's your working clothes. You put it on and it covers you and it makes you presentable. It makes you what you are. A postman, a policeman, a member of a particular school or whatever. That's the purpose of clothes. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 13, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. Every day we go out knowing that we are safe in Christ. Whatever people say about us, whatever Satan says about us, the Lord Jesus' righteous life is reckoned to our account and our sin and our guilt is taken away. That's the major part, I think, of what Paul is saying in us taking the breastplate of righteousness. But as I said earlier, there is two parts to the breastplate of righteousness. Earlier on in Paul's letter he'd written this, put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. And again in chapter 5, we are to walk as children of light for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. In other words, if we are people who believe that Christ's righteousness has become ours and we have this good eternal standing with God and we can never be condemned, whatever the enemy or whatever our enemies say about us, we should be consistent and aim to be consistent in our conduct, walking like God's children in this world. growing in conformity to the righteous Lord Jesus Christ. There should be progress. We should be growing in holiness and uprightness and fruitfulness and Christ-likeness. And I think this is so important. When the Lord Jesus referred to Satan, he said, the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me. Sadly, when Satan comes to us, we are not like the Lord Jesus Christ, who was absolutely, perfectly righteous. And Satan will sometimes get a hold on us. He will look at us and he'll say, oh, failure. We take, first of all, then, the imputed, reckoned righteousness of Jesus and say to him, Lord, we're safe in Christ. But then we also look at ourselves and we say, Lord, help me to be more like you. Lord, help me to reflect your grace and your righteousness. That's our desire. If we're bound for heaven, which is a world of righteousness, we're going to be very uncomfortable there if we haven't got a love of righteousness here on this earth. Tragically, there are some who bear the name of Christian and they don't give much evidence of being righteous. and one would have to question that kind of faith. So how do we deal with guilt and unease? The fruit of righteousness will be peace. The effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever. Nothing else can give us lasting peace in a troubling world other than trusting in what Christ gives to us and what Christ graciously continues to work in us If we have peace with God that is such a wonderful thing in an uncertain and unsettling life And how do we guard ourselves from falling into the tolerance of our degraded culture and the moral relativism? We take the imputed righteousness of Christ and then we seek the practical righteousness that the Lord Jesus demonstrated in our lives and we pray, Lord help me to be like you. And the more we are like the Lord, the more safe we will be against the arrows of the enemy that he's going to try to get into our innermost feelings. We stand in Christ. We stand in him and find peace and find acceptance. Brothers and sisters, we're beginning a new year. no bounds what's going to happen, no bounds what's going to be said, no bounds what Satan's going to concoct against us. Take the breastplate of righteousness and put it on and keep it on and know God's peace and know confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ. May God bless his word.