Sermons from Lone Rock Bible Church
Stevensville, MT
Index of LRBC Sermons: www.sermonlinks.com/Sermons/LoneRock/Sermons
January 28, 2007

God's Body Armor (Part 1)
Ephesians 6:10-14

Here’s a piece of God’s armor designed for our protection. What exactly is the “breastplate of righteousness?”

1. A position: being “right with God”
2. A practice: “right living”
1. Defense
2. Offense

It was over 25 years ago when a young man up on the High Line in Havre got some wrong thinking in his head and loaded his 357 and headed west. He stopped for gas in Missoula, not to buy it but to steal it. He told the companion who was with him who was questioning why he would just drive off and how dumb is this. He patted the pistol next to him and said, “Anybody who messes with us will get this.”

A friend of Mary’s family, Deputy Al Kimery, was the one who received the call and pulled the guy over, thinking he was dealing with merely a petty theft from a convenience store gas station. Fred van Dieken shot him and killed him. It  was a tragedy, of course, leaving a wife and two children just before Christmas. The irony, though, coming from the police officers who knew Deputy Kimery, was that just this one time he had decided not to wear his bullet-proof vest and it cost him his life.

In the providence of God, he knew Jesus then. He knows Him better now, but from our point of view it seems as if a terrible tragedy could have been averted had the body armor been in place.

In Ephesians 6, we are commanded to put on the armor of God and we are given pieces of that armor. Those pieces we are talking about in this series. Verse 14 says, “Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth.” We have talked about that. The most fundamental piece of equipment in the struggle against the devil and his troops is the belt of truth. Then it says,   “Put on the breastplate of righteousness.”

Breastplate – that’s an interesting word. It took me back to grade school when we first learned about insects. The parts of an insect are the head, thorax, and abdomen. The word for breastplate is the word “thorax.” It is the home of the vitals. It’s what we call when we go hunting the “boiler room.” “I nailed that one right in the boiler room.” That means that the bullet or the arrow passed through the vitals where a breastplate might have been protective.

The police understand the necessity of body armor. The military do as well. They know they need protection because they know that they work in a dangerous world. They know they have an enemy and oftentimes the enemy will surprise them, take them where they weren’t intending, necessarily, to go. Brothers and sisters, we are at war as well, that is why the apostle, as he is languishing in a Roman prison, surrounded by Roman troops, makes the connections in his own mind between the equipment of the solider, the soldier of the Roman legion as well as the soldier of the Christian army. He is saying, Brothers and sisters, we definitely need the thorax. We need to protect the vitals. That’s what we will be doing today. We need that protection.

We are going to talk about this business of the breastplate of righteousness or the body armor of righteousness. It’s that piece of equipment that you just put on and keep there. It’s fundamentally a defensive piece of equipment. It’s to protect us.

It’s difficult to know exactly what the apostle has in mind when it came to righteousness and this whole notion of the breastplate of righteousness, which we need for defense. Righteousness can be looked at one of two ways. My hunch is that the apostle actually had both in mind. Righteousness being that position that we have in Christ that makes us right with God. We must have that. We must be right with God, in other words, or the enemy will have his way with us. He will have free reign with us.

Righteousness also means right living. Those words can fit either way. I’m suggesting here that the apostle actually had both in mind. We need on the one hand to have that breastplate of righteousness, in other words to be standing in that position of being right with God as well as the need to cultivate right living. My goal this morning is to talk about the first of the two.

Righteousness - Being right with God

This business of being right with God is something we absolutely must have. It is a prerequisite for going to heaven. In the 5^th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is talking about the Pharisees and all these good things they do. They pay their tithe and they do all kinds of righteous deeds and so forth. But Jesus, in Matthew 5:20, told His disciples that “if your righteousness does not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you don’t go to heaven.”

What is He saying? Does that mean you have to do better than they do? How do you do that? They cultivated this into a life’s art form. Jesus is saying you cannot just count on doing good deeds; you must also fundamentally be in right standing with God. You must be right with God.

Romans 5:1 is a fantastic verse. It’s a sermon all by itself. It says in the New American Standard translation: Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The word I want to key in on for a couple minutes, is that word “justified.” Some have said that means “just as if I had never sinned.” Well, sort of, maybe, in a kind of a stretch of a way, it might. Romans 8 is all about being justified. That expression is used 55 times in the first eight chapters of the book of Romans in some form or another.

To be justified is to be right with God. To be in right standing before God we absolutely must have it. In other words, what Paul is saying is, Therefore, having been placed in right standing before God, we have peace. Someone said that my soul can find no rest until it finds its rest in Thee? That’s what he is talking about. When we are standing in a right relationship with God, then the peace is available.

This is a legal term. It means we are standing in a legally correct position before God. We have to have this. This is fundamental. If we are not right with God in a legal sense, then the devil has freedom. That means we can have no outstanding debts or offenses. How do we do that? How many have not yet sinned today? Well, stand by. It will happen.

No outstanding offenses or debts before God? How could that be? We don’t have what it takes to do that, do we? No! But Jesus does. That’s why the Bible says He is our righteousness and if we have Him, we have righteousness before God. We are, as the Bible says, justified and we are right with God.

Let me explain that a little bit. We are going back in the Old Testament, into Isaiah, for just a little bit and then we will jump back to Romans. Turn to Isaiah 64. Here is the problem with righteousness. Let me throw this in for what it is worth. Please understand there is no such thing as a self-righteous Christian. Oftentimes Christians are accused of being self-righteous. That’s an absolute contradiction in terms. A Christian cannot be self-righteous. A Christian is one who has borrowed his or her righteousness from the only One who is righteous, Jesus. Self-righteous people are those who say, “I’m good enough. I’ve been good enough.” “I can earn my way.” That’s self-righteousness. A born-again Christian, a genuine Christian cannot be. We cannot trust in our own righteousness and one of the reasons we say that is found in Isaiah 64.

If your Bible is like mine it has little subheadings underneath the chapter divisions. Mine is called “Prayer for mercy and help”  under Isaiah 64. I think that’s appropriate because verse 6 says this:

For all of us have become like one who is unclean,
And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;

Some translations say “all our righteousness.”

Do you realize what this is saying? What is the last good thing you did. Maybe you’re a boy scout and you helped a little old lady across the street. That’s kind of standard. Maybe you brought a meal to a shut-in. Maybe you stopped and let someone go ahead of you in traffic. If you can possibly dredge up the last good thing in your mind that you did, do you understand that as far as getting you to be in a right place with God, you might as well be throwing filthy rags? That’s it. God is saying you do not have it in yourself. The closer we get to the point of realizing we do not have it and cry out to God and ask Him for mercy and help, then He says you need righteousness, don’t you? Boy, do I, because I don’t have any. Oh, I can be sincere and I can try, but as far as God’s legal economy is concerned, forget it. So He says, OK, I have some. You want it? Yes, I do. It’s Jesus. Put all your trust in Him alone.

And all of us wither like a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

What do we have? We have nothing when it comes to righteousness with God in and of ourselves. We have nothing. That’s why in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 Jesus says,” Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  Blessed are those who have the insight, if you will, the humility more likely, to declare bankruptcy spiritually. I don’t have it. And that’s what this is saying. Isaiah 64:6 gets us there.

Here’s the problem. If that’s the human condition and it is, from one end of the Bible to the other. This principle comes up again and again. We, in and of ourselves, just don’t have it. If that’s true, the problem is compounded because people tend to assume all is well. It’s an assumption. I’m OK. You’re OK.

Romans 10 – this is the fundamental mistake made by the Israelites, the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, before, then, and since. I would suggest it is the fundamental mistake being made by the vast majority of people who do not understand the gospel. Here’s what we do. In spite of the fact that the Bible says all our righteousness, the best we can come up with is filthy rags before God. Yet people proudly assume all is well. Look at Romans 10:3. Speaking of this particular group of folks, the apostle says not knowing about God’s righteousness, in other words not realizing that He has a whole bunch, and He will freely give it to those who humble themselves and ask. Not knowing that, not knowing about God’s righteousness, seeking to establish their own.

For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.

That’s it and that’s where everybody is. That’s where whole religious systems are built on, on a pattern of living or behavior or practices or whatever that somehow is supposed to create for me righteousness. That’s the argument that says I’m good enough to get to heaven. I can do enough good things or be enough or I can pray this prayer or I can go here and refrain from doing that. All kinds of things. It all comes back down to how can I make my own way to heaven. That’s how this verse reads. Seeking to establish their own righteousness, based on rule-keeping. That’s where religions are and God says no, their righteousness is as filthy rags.

You can build a tower out of filthy rags as high as you want to. It’s still filthy rags. You need righteousness. You need right-standing with God. You say, “At least I’m sincere.” When it suits you. “At least I’m not a hypocrite.” At least that’s maybe true when nobody is looking.  Some would say I’m not that bad. The Bible would say, yes, you are. What are we lacking? Righteousness. Right-standing with God.

Here’s the solution. Go back to Isaiah 59, beginning in verse 1. Isaiah 59 in my Bible has a subtitle that the editors put in there that says, “Separation from God.” That’s what the chapter is going to talk about. It starts with a verse that perhaps you have memorized.

¹Behold, the LORD'S hand is not so short
  That it cannot save;
  Nor is His ear so dull
  That it cannot hear.

His arm is fine and His ear is fine. There is nothing wrong with God.

²But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God,
 And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.

You have a problem. It has to do with lack of righteousness. Then the chapter goes on and on and further describes the state we are in. What is interesting to me is the fact that the unrighteousness or the iniquities or the problem that is described has everything to do with how we handle ourselves. Even the parts of our body are mentioned.

³For your hands are defiled with blood
  And your fingers with iniquity;
  Your lips have spoken falsehood,
  Your tongue mutters wickedness.
⁴No one sues righteously and no one pleads honestly
  They trust in confusion and speak lies;
  They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity.
⁵They hatch adders' eggs and weave the spider's web;
  He who eats of their eggs dies,
  And from that which is crushed a snake breaks forth.

All of this doesn’t sound very good, does it?

Verse 7 – Their feet run to evil. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity.

Verse 8 – They do not know the way of peace. There is no justice in their tracks.

We have problems with heads, hands, feet, ears, fingers. Our bodies, that which encases our soul, turns on us and proves consistently that indeed, we do not have that righteousness, that we would like to fool ourselves into thinking that we have.  It just isn’t there.

⁹Therefore, justice is far from us,
And righteousness does not overtake us;

He’s right. We are not trafficking here in righteousness.

We hope for light, but behold, darkness,
For brightness, but we walk in gloom.
¹⁰ We grope along the wall like blind men,
We grope like those who have no eyes;

What do you need? You need light. You need help. You need salvation. You need something. Someone better step in because this is a fairly desperate situation.

We stumble at midday as in the twilight,
Among those who are vigorous we are like dead men.

¹¹All of us growl like bears,
And moan sadly like doves;
We hope for justice, but there is none,
For salvation, but it is far from us. 

¹² For our transgressions are multipled before You,
And our sins testify against us;

We’re in a big world of hurt (I paraphrase). Look at verse 15 and hang on. It says “The Lord saw.” He is looking at this mess, and it is.

Now the Lord saw,
And it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice.  

¹⁶ And He saw that there was no man,
And was astonished that there was no one to intercede;

He says, “Who is going to help you?”  You have a politician in mind? I read a great quote the other day about politicians. It goes back into the 1800’s where they were about like they seem to be today as well. Somebody said, “I want an honest politician. An honest politician is one who once bought, stays bought.”

God is looking for someone and there isn’t anyone. Look at verse 16, “His own arm brought it. That’s what it says.

Then His own arm brought salvation to Him,
And His righteousness upheld Him.

God says there seems to be no answer here. I will have to step in. And He did. That’s what grace is all about. Grace is not some license to behave anyway we want. Grace is the happy fact that God has invaded our helpless situation and done marvelous things that we don’t deserve. That’s what grace is all about. So He stepped in. His righteousness upheld Him.

17 He put on righteousness like a breastplate,

Now we know where Paul got that expression. The key to understand here is that this whole business of righteousness is not something that we ever originated nor could we ever originate. This is God’s to do, and He did.

God’s righteousness is available. There is a similar passage in Jeremiah 23. Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet. He is weeping because everything is falling apart because of the unrighteousness of all the people. So Jeremiah points out as he observes that his whole culture, his whole community and society is crumbling around him and his people are going away into exile and God’s righteous wrath is being leveled. He is looking around and saying it won’t always be this way.

Jeremiah says the day will come when God will deliberately and directly and obviously step in and then it will be said that the Lord is our righteousness. We won’t have to say, hey, here are some filthy rags. No, we will understand that all of our righteousness is found in Him and Him alone and we will boast in the fact that it isn’t anything we have ever done. It is all about what He has done and He indeed is the righteous One.

Jeremiah 31 describes that process very thoroughly as does Ezekiel 36. You have heard me say these verses before. Jeremiah 31, verse 31 and following is the longest quote in the New Testament where verses from the Old are quoted in Hebrews 8 and Hebrews 10.

Here’s a promise from God:

Jeremiah 31:31

“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,

It won’t be like the one I made before, coming out of Egypt. It won’t be like that one at all. They broke that one. Nothing wrong with Me. Nothing wrong with the covenant. Everything wrong with them. So they couldn’t keep it, and they didn’t, so we are going to do it differently:

³³ “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after  those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

I will work in their lives. I will provide for them and do for them what they could never provide or do for themselves. It will be mine to do and I will do it. I will be their God and they shall be My people. Their sins will be forgiven. They will walk in newness of life.

Ezekiel 36 is even more descriptive. All the things that God will do, because He knows people cannot do it for themselves.

Ezekiel 36:25
Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.

He doesn’t say here is a list of rules. If you keep them, I will favor you. It doesn’t say that.  He says I gave you a list of rules. There are at least ten. You didn’t keep them. Not because there is anything wrong with the rules. Not because there is anything wrong with the rule-giver, but because there is everything wrong with you.  What do you need, new rules? No, you need a new heart. You need a new disposition in order to keep them. You can’t make it on your own righteousness. Yours is filthy rags. God says how about Mine? Take mine.

²⁶ Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

²⁷ I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.

This is grace! This is God doing for us what we could never to for ourselves. And this is the righteousness that we must cry out for from Him. He is offering it. He says My Spirit, I will give you Myself. You don’t get much more righteous than that.

In I Corinthians:1:30 the apostle says to the believers in Corinth:

But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus,

He washed you. He forgave you. He put a new heart in you. He put a spirit in you. By His doing you are in Christ Jesus.

who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.

Jesus is our wisdom and Jesus is our righteousness. So when the apostle Paul later on in Ephesians says put on the whole armor of God, put on the breastplate of righteousness, he is saying the same thing in Ephesians 6, as he says in Romans 12, when he says put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not think for a minute that you have what it takes either to be right with God or to defeat the devil or to stay out of hell or to get yourself into heaven. You do not have it. You must have Jesus.

That’s why Jesus could say with absolute confidence that He is the way, He is the truth, He is the life and no one comes to the Father but by Him. He is God’s gift of righteousness to you and me. How do we avail ourselves of that? We just surrender to Him. Just put all our trust in Jesus only. It’s so simple. Is it easy? No. Is it simple? Yes.

I have a friend from a previous ministry. His kids had come to youth activities at the church and I knew his wife to be a professing believer and yet I didn’t know him very well. He started showing up. He was in a church service one Sunday, then he was there another Sunday. It got to be where he was pretty much there, then he came to Sunday School. He came, and I was really quite curious because it was obvious something had happened, something was going on with this guy.

One day he said I need to talk to you. So we sat in my office. It was a very interesting conversation and a joyous one. He told me he was frustrated. He was really interested in this Christian thing. Of course his family had been more involved than he had, but he was working the problem. He was showing up at stuff. He was listening to the sermons. He didn’t say much but he didn’t miss much either. But he said it doesn’t seem like it is real to me. It looks like it’s real to everyone else but I’m finding that I don’t have any difference in my life. I have this interest, but nothing is changed inside.

It was like a light went on with me and I suggested to him, “Are you trying to live like a Christian?” He said yes. I asked him, “Are you a Christian?” He said I don’t know. He was trying to be a Christian without becoming a Christian first. It’s a matter of you putting all your trust in Jesus only for this life and the next. He bowed right there. Last I heard, he was teaching Sunday School.

So many people go through life that way, with this kind of moral code. Sometimes it’s made religious and we have these rules in our heads. If I’m sincere, not a hypocrite, don’t kill anybody, not as bad as Dahmer and Hitler and those guys, I’ll probably be ok. No, the Bible says all your good is filthy rags. Just admit it. Realize that before God a pile of filthy rags is just filthy rags.

God says I have righteousness for you. Theologians call this imputation. When we come to Jesus by faith and say, “Dear God, I don’t have it. I know you have it. I have to get me some, and it has to come from you.” The Bible says He imputes (places) the righteousness of Jesus to me. At the same time in that transaction He imputes or He places or applies my sins to Jesus. There is a transaction there that is real, though it is spiritual. It is real and it is eternal and Jesus takes my sins, all of them. How many of your sins were future when Jesus died on the cross? He took them all.

He took our sins and we get His righteousness. He pays our debt and we get heaven. All my trust in Jesus only. I can think of no more important message to share. I come back to my friend who was struggling, who had some turmoil because he was trying to be a Christian without ever becoming one. I think of Romans 8:1 that says, “There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ.” No condemnation, and having been made right with God by faith (Romans 5:1), having been justified by faith, having been made right with God by faith, we now have peace. Peace, eyeball to eyeball with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Bible says put on the breastplate of righteousness. This is fundamentally first. Don’t even try to go out there and do good and be good and be religious or a Christian without first coming to Jesus and saying I need what you have and I desperately need you to take what I have. Hand Him your sins, all of them, and trust Him for His righteousness. It’s yours so that when the devil is there accusing what a sinner you are, when God looks at you, He sees Jesus because we put Him on. The righteousness, which is Jesus, is our body armor and we are thereby protected.

I don’t know where you are today with Him. He knows and you know. This is important business. I have time. If you do not know for sure that Jesus’ righteousness is yours, then I would humbly request the privilege of talking to you about that. It would be an honor for me. I would very much like to talk to anyone who isn’t sure.