The Girdle of Truth | Dr. David Jeremiah | Ephesians 6:14

What is the Armor of God?

Message Description:

Marching defenseless into battle is a sure-fire formula for defeat. In this message, we learn about the importance of truth as a piece of armor that is designed to help you press forward into battle with the enemy.

We need to have a clear conscience toward god. We need to have a clear conscience toward our family.
We need to be able to walk into a battle not with unresolved issues before god and before people.
We need to have a clear conscience.
And the Bible says that if we don’t deal with the matters of our conscience, we can sear our conscience.
Do you know what that means?
Seared like with a hot iron, deaden the conscience, take away the sensitivity of it so that what happens to us that used to bother us doesn’t bother us anymore.
Ladies and gentlemen, to be victorious, in the war against the enemy and our culture and in our generation, it demands not only that we know some truth, but it demands that we live the truth that there’s truthfulness in us.
We’ve learned that our enemy with whom we are involved in mortal combat is none other than Satan himself.
As we learn his names, we also learn he’s a powerful enemy.
Who not only is a ruler and a prince, but as we learn, he’s the god of this age.
The Bible speaks of the Wiles of Satan so we know he’s armed with many strategies.
He wants to deceive us for he is the great deceiver He wants to deceive us because he wants to divide us.
He is the great divider, and he wants to divide us because he is the great divider, and ultimately, he wants to destroy us.
He wants to deceive us, to divide us, so that ultimately he can destroy us.
Now, his ultimate goal, as we have learned, is destruction.
He deceives and he divides in order that he might destroy.
His purpose is that he might cast every one of us into a Christless l so that we’ll be separated from god forever.
And since he cannot do that if we are believers who have put our trust in Christ, His second plan is to drown that testimony that god has given us and keep us from being useful to the lord, perhaps even being destructive in the Christian faith.
But we are not left helpless against this enemy.
We have learned that, and the Bible is teaching us that there is a way for us to be victorious.
We are not left helpless because first John 44 says, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world, who is in us, Christ, who is in the world, Satan, John tells us that the one who is in is greater than the one who is in the world.
And with Christ living in us, we are able to the devil.
And when we resist him in the power of Christ, he has to leave us resisting the devil in the power of Christ is what the apostle means when he tells us in Ephesians to put on the whole armor of god.
And in this armor, there are 6 pieces. 5 of these pieces are defensive, and one is offensive.
All six of these pieces of armor are necessary.
No part of our life can be left unprotected or exposed The Bible doesn’t tell us to choose 4 or 5 out of these pieces of armor, whichever ones we want, and to implement them.
No. We are told to put on notice the whole armor of god.
Any piece of armor we refuse to use will leave us unguarded in some vulnerable place and we will surely be prey to the enemy.
It is important to note that god has provided no protection for our back.
He expects no deserters in his army.
He wants us all to stand and face the enemy and not run away as cowards.
And as we look at the armor that is listed for us in the book of Ephesians, it is quite apparent that the armor is nothing less than Jesus Christ himself.
As we’re putting on the armor, the first thing we need to put on, it says in the scripture, the girdle of truth, we’re to gird our waste with the truth.
It might seem strange that the apostle starts here, because believe it or not, the Roman soldier never considered his girdle or this waistband that he wore.
He never thought that to be part his armor.
In fact, this 6 inch belt, which fastened around the middle, was made out of leather or linen, and it was common piece of dress that was worn by almost all Romans, not just the soldiers.
In this text, god does not use the girdle as the Romans did, no Roman would ever have called this part of his armor.
He would have understood its place as the armor was used, but he would not have considered this to be part of his armor, it was a normal part of his dress.
In Paul’s day, the girdle, which was worn outside the long flowing robes, served at least three purposes, which help us understand why we must put on this truth, this piece of armor.
First of all, The girdle was used for advancing. Let me explain what I mean.
Listen to what Peter said in first Peter 113. He said therefore, gird up the loins of your mind.
When a Roman was interested in moving from one place to another rapidly, he would pull up his long flowing robe that he wore, and he would tuck it inside the belt that he wore around the middle of his body.
He would do this so that the robe would not hinder him when he was running or advancing.
Paul is telling the Ephesians that they are to put on this girdle of truth, and that if they do that, it will fit them for the battle.
It is the first thing they to do. It is the primary thing they do.
And perhaps it is a reminder to us of what the writer of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 121.
Listen to this. Let us throw off everything that hinders us and the sin that easily entangles us and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
The girdle of truth, which was the first part of the armor, which Paul tells us to put on, was, first of all, for the purpose of helping us advance, and you’ll see how this all fits together in a moment.
It was also important for attacking, not just for advancing, the soldier also used the girdle to support the weapons that he carried.
The swordsman, for instance, would fasten his girdle across his shoulder so that he could suspend his sword from it, and he would use this to hold his sword close to his body so he would have access to it immediately in the time of conflict.
The Bowman would use the girdle to support the quiver in which he kept all of his arrows so he could get to them quickly.
This was a very important piece of the equipment that a soldier wore.
It was important for advancing and for attacking. And there was one other simple thing that happened.
It was important for awarding because when a Roman soldier was awarded with a medal, he pinned it on this girdle that he wore around his waist.
It was the way you could determine whether or not a soldier had been in battle before.
And if you saw him coming and he had a lot of medallions you know he was a decorated soldier and one perhaps that you should be wary of.
Now, that was the purpose of the girdle of truth in the Roman days. It held up the robes.
When it was time to advance, it held in the armor that they used to fight against the enemy.
But what was the power of it? And here’s where we need to understand what Paul is teaching us.
He says, this girdle has, as its nomenclature, truth, This piece that we wear around us is called truth.
It is interesting that it is the first piece of armor at the very foundation of the soldiers armor is truth.
As Christians we must insist on the objective truth of god’s word.
Truth isn’t about our perspective or our perceptions. It’s always about reality.
A majority of us could agree that we’d like gravity to be suspended tomorrow, but our vote would have no impact on reality.
Americans embrace democratic ideals, and that gives us the illusion that we should have a void when it comes to truth.
But the universe isn’t a democracy, and truth isn’t a ballot measure.
Sometimes people say, well, I don’t believe this.
And I get the impression that they think that because they don’t believe it, that it seems not no longer to be true.
Well, let me tell you something. Truth is truth, whether you believe it or not.
Truth is not touched by your emotions, by your opinion, by your perception, and that is what’s being lost in our culture today.
Today, there is no absolute truth anymore.
Today, in our culture, your truth might be different than my truth, but it doesn’t really matter.
Isn’t all truth, just kind of truth. No, it’s not.
In a world so confused about truth, Many people say if you are Christians and you think you know the truth, isn’t that arrogant on your part?
But it’s not arrogant to believe what the Bible teaches. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Eregates is when we try to tailor truth to our preferences.
I had a lady say to me one time, we were talking about punishment, and we might even have been talking about hell.
I’m not sure. But she said, Doctor Jeremiah, I need you to know, my god would never send anybody to hell.
And I said, you’re absolutely right, because your god doesn’t exist. He doesn’t exist.
He doesn’t exist because you don’t get the right to create the god you want so that you can make him do what you want him to do.
If you found the truth about who god is and how the world was created, why do you want to spend all of your waking hours trying to discover truth that you already know?
If you don’t believe that truth is in this book, then search on my friend, but if you’re a Christian and you believe god has spoken and it is true, why spend all of your waking hours trying to find some kind of truth that isn’t gonna be true when you find it?
Jesus Christ is the truth, and when we arm ourselves with him, we are ready to face the lies and the deceit of the enemy.
Now, the common explanation of what this means ought to be evident to all of us, how do we arm ourselves with the truth?
What Paul is teaching us here is that the believer in order to do battle with the enemy needs to know the truth the truth about god, the truth about Christ, and the truth, which is in this book, we call the Bible.
Why have I chosen to be a teacher because in my heart, I understand that what people need today is the truth.
They don’t need three points and a poem.
They don’t need some little uh, Diddy, which is the church life for for Christianettes. They need the truth.
They need the truth of god’s word. We have never needed it before now.
Like we need it now, and it has never been so scarce as it is now.
And therefore, we are falling prey to all of the deceptions that come into the church And so every day you turn around and you wonder what in the world is going to happen next.
And there seems to be very little discernment because Once again, the way you can determine when something isn’t right is because you have studied and you know what is right and what is phony and wrong, begins to show up immediately when it’s measured against the truth.
When Jesus Christ was encountered by Satan in the wilderness, He used the truth.
Do you know what he said when Satan tempted him?
He said, it is written, and then he quoted from the book of deuteronomy versus that offset the temptation that Satan was bringing against him.
God gave us this book so that we would have his truth.
God loved us so much that he put it in the language we could comprehend.
I I want to tell you this, and I hope you know this, in between the covers of this book is everything god wants me to know.
There’s not anything outside the covers of this book that god wants me to know.
He has put everything he wants me to know, everything he wants you to know, inside the covers of this book, everything he wants us to know about himself, about his son, about eternity, about life.
If you major on the study of this book, you will become schooled in the things thought important by your creator.
So that’s the first thing. God is interested in the truth of god. That’s part of our armor.
The more we know about god, the more truth we know from the word of god, the better able we are to go into battle and to be victorious.
But there’s another part of this that oftentimes is is is missed when we talk about this implement of warfare, This is not just about the truth of god.
It’s about the truth that is in us. We might render this verse in Ephesians 6 like this.
Therefore, take unto yourself the girdle of truthfulness.
Truth as we have talked about it is objective. It’s there.
It’s true or it’s not true.
But truthfulness is whether or not the truth we have about god has caused us to be people who are truthful.
Is there truth in us? Is there hypocrisy in us? Is there are we posturing?
Are we are we just faking the Christian life?
The Bible says, if you wanna be a warrior in the battle against Satan, you have to have integrity.
You have to be who you claim to be.
And if we are like that, if we are people of integrity and of character, and sincerity, we can go into battle with the power of god in our lives.
We can take this objective truth that god has given us, and we can wield the sword and we can be effective.
And we’ll see what that means as we go along here in these moments we have left.
John wrote, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth.
He didn’t say that my children know the truth.
He said, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
In other words, they’re living a life of truthfulness.
Such a walk implies that we are dealing with the realities of life, with sin and with ourselves, and we’re not allowing any conscious hypocrisy or any excuse, or any vindication for doing wrong, nor condoning sin, or anything like that.
We’re we’re trying to be honest before the lord and live our lives as we want people to see us and as god has prepared us to live them.
In other words, we’re not faking it. We’re not phony.
We’re not putting a spin on what it means to be a Christian.
When we do battle with Satan, there cannot be any pretenders.
When you go into battle with Satan, you can’t be standing there with the word of god and know that there’s something really deeply wrong in your life that you haven’t dealt with, and you want god to use you in a powerful way.
Someone had said, you cannot traffic in un experienced truth.
I have to tell you that as Christians, and I’m a second generation Christian.
By that, I mean, I grew up in a Christian home.
I knew Christianese when I was five years old. I knew all the right words.
I knew the these and the vows and all that stuff. Man, I could talk Christian. Can you talk Christian?
How many of you here can talk Christian? Man, we can talk Christian. Can’t we? We just talk Christian.
And if we’re not careful, we talk Christian, but we don’t walk Christian.
And what this armor is telling us is that we’re to put on the girdle of truth, not just the objective truth of god’s word, but the truthfulness and integrity of our own lives.
That’s how we are victorious in battle, which is always interesting to me because when we do battle with Satan, there cannot be any pretenders when we do battle with Satan, reality is required.
The reality of the Christian life is one of the greatest assets you have as a warrior.
I think our lord illustrated the power of that in his life. I was thinking about that this week.
Do you remember when Jesus was about to be taken away so they could crucify him.
And he said to them, which one of you convinces me of sin? And they stood speechless and dumb.
And they did not know what to say. Nobody said a word. Do you know why?
Because they did not have anything they could say against him.
He was absolutely everything he had claimed to execution, watched him die, and this is what he said.
Truly, this man was the son of god. How did he figure that out? He just watched him.
The thief who hung in the cross said, this man has done nothing amiss, Why would he say that?
He saw the reality of Christ. Christ was girded with the girdle of truth.
Six times in his pastoral epistles, Paul speaks about the power of a conscience.
He talks about good conscience, a pure conscience.
He also mentions that a conscience can be defiled, and it can be seared as with a hot iron.
Deaden the conscience, take away the sensitivity of it so that what happens to us that used to bother us doesn’t bother us anymore.
Ladies and gentlemen, to be victorious in the war against the enemy in our culture and in our generation, it demands not only that we know some truth, but it demands that we live the truth that there’s truthfulness in us.
We need to be obsessed with that. The best way that we can. And I think David was like that.
Do you know that I don’t know that I’ve ever read a prayer like this in the Bible, but David prayed this prayer, and it’s one that we should pray often.
Sometimes we we think we can hide our sin from god or that we can maybe do some other good things, and maybe he’ll forget about what we did.
Do you know what David prayed? Listen to this prayer from Psalm 139.
He said, search me, oh, god, and know my heart try me and know my anxieties and see god if there’s any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
Why did David pray that prayer?
Because he realized that if he had sin in his life, it would unfit him for the responsibility that had been placed on his shoulders.
He not only wanted to see what he could see but he wanted god to shine the light of his holiness on his life and revealed to him if there was anything in his life that he needed to deal with so that god could use him to the fullest extent of his usability.
Rather than covering up, we ought to be opening up and asking god to see us and tell us where we need to make changes or where things are not right in our lives.
The apostle says that the first piece of equipment that we put on before we go to battle is the girdle of truth.
Let me tell you something about armor. You don’t put it on after you get in the battle.
You put it on before you go to the battle.
You cannot be out there with bullets flying over your head trying to get dressed.
You had better be armed before you get into the battlefield. You may pastor?
I’m not in any war right now. Well, good for you, but hang on. You will be.
And in order to be ready when the battle comes, you have to go to some boot camp, and you have to learn the word of god, and you have to ask god to give you integrity in your life.
All of us must do that.
The only implement of warfare that the Roman soldier had and you will see this as we go along.
There’s only one offensive weapon in this whole list of weapons, and that’s his sword. That’s it.
And the Bible says, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of god.
I can’t wait till we get to that message, because that’s a powerful truth.
The sword that was spoken about was a short sword that was used in hand to hand combat, And it was used to inflict injury on the enemy, and watch this.
The sword of the warrior hung from the belt of truth.
The sword of the spirit, which is the word of god, hung from the belt of truth.
The wonderful thing to remember is that god’s word transforms us it makes us holy.
It changes us from the inside out.
And that was the whole thing Jesus prayed for in the high priestly prayer He said, sanctify them god by your truth.
Your word is truth. Everything starts from the truth.
If you’ve got the truth, you’ve got some place to go.
If you don’t have the truth, you’ve got no place to go.
Don’t go into the battle without the truth, or you will lose. Every time.
But you can take god’s truth to yourself, and then you can embody that truth in your life.
God will begin to show you how you can be victorious on the battlefield that we all face.
I don’t know what your issues are, but I can promise you for every issue you have, whether it’s fear or anxiety or worry or guilt or whatever, there are 10 or 12 great passages in the word of god that if you put those into your hard drive when the attacks came you could do what Jesus said.
You know what Jesus did? Jesus said, Satan, it is written. And then he quoted the scripture.
When he comes to you with the anxieties, you can say, Satan, it is written.
Take this and quote the scripture to him. You do that enough.
You will discover something that you may never have never thought of, that through the power of the word of god, you can be victorious in your Christian life.
And we’ve fallen away from that to some degree in our churches.
We don’t talk about it very much.
And yet I wonder what would happen to us if now with the incredible need that we have to be strong soldiers for Jesus Christ.
We get back to some of the basics that could prepare us to be victorious.
And now, with one last word for today program. Here is Doctor Jeremiah.
Of putting on our spiritual armor because it was Jesus who said, I am the truth.
To know Christ, that’s to know the truth.
And to know the truth is to be prepared for Satan’s denial and distortion of the truth.
You that will help you know truth your greatest turning point, and the other is our monthly devotional magazine turning points.
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We’ll gladly send them to you free of charge. If you will contact us here at Turning Point.
Next time on Turning Point,
The righteousness I always have with god, no matter what’s going on in my life, almighty god sees me through what Jesus did in the cross, He knows that my sins were forgiven by his death, and he knows that the righteousness which Christ earned through his perfect obedience was transferred to my life I now have the
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