In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of having a basic understanding of Christian beliefs and doctrines. He explains that putting on the belt of truth means gathering essential knowledge about God and our relationship with Him. The speaker suggests that attending church services and listening to teachings can help acquire this knowledge, but also recommends additional courses or studies for a deeper foundation in the Christian life. He then discusses the significance of the shoes of the gospel, which represent the good news of Jesus' work for our salvation. The speaker concludes by highlighting the idea that as Christians, we are engaged in a spiritual battle and God equips us with the armor of God to fight against the enemy.

We're in a series called the two pillars of Christian combat and on this morning We're going to take a look at the fourth part of our series and we're going to be focusing on the armor of God Now the verses we're going to pay with special attention to this morning are verses 14 and 15 But I'm going to start reading from Ephesians chapter 6 verse 13 where we read Therefore take up the whole armor of God That you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand Stand therefore having girded your waist with truth Having put on the breastplate of righteousness and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace Above all taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one and Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the Saints and For me that utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel Now throughout the centuries when Christians have taken a look at this important passage They've rightly laid emphasis on what Paul calls here the armor of God And there's good reason to because Paul uses the phrase twice in Ephesians 6 11 He says put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil Then again in verse 13 He repeats the same idea where he says therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil Day, well just like in any other arena the scriptures use repetition to bring emphasis In this idea of the whole armor of God and us possessing it and us using it is an important idea Because it's repeated for us. It's simple to understand. We're in a combat. We're in a fight We're in a struggle as Christians and God gives us the equipment to fight with Now let me say that this gives us right in front of our face an important principle that we need to grab ahold of right at the beginning It's simply this That we must trust the equipment that God gives us He's put this armor right in front of us But if we don't trust it if we don't rely on it, we'll never put it to use Think of a police officer who who has a gun and it's a very fine gun Well made well oiled a well loaded with bullets and all of that and there it is right there on his on his side with His holster and it's right there. It's available for use, but he doesn't trust it He doesn't trust his ability to use it. He doesn't trust in the weapon. It might be a fine weapon But for whatever reason he doesn't trust it. It doesn't matter how good the weapon is It doesn't matter if it's right there next to him if he doesn't trust in it He's not going to use it in a critical moment in other words If there ever arose a situation Where that policeman needed a draw and fire his gun and if he failed to do so his commanding officer would have every reason to Ask him. Well, why didn't you use your gun? Why didn't you trust it? That's what it's there for You're in the same way if we don't trust the equipment that God gives us. We'll never use it the way we're supposed to use it Let me give you a very handy measuring stick. You can tell by the way that you live Whether or not you really trust his equipment in other words as we go through and give a little bit fuller explanation of what this a belt of truth is like of what this breastplate of Righteousness is like of what these shoes of the gospel of peace are like when we go through and describe what these things are You're gonna see if these things are at work in your life, and it'll show whether or not you really trust them Whether there's just sort of ideas in your head that you don't trust in as a part of daily life. I Think we also need to remember what it is that were to do with the armor and that stand Did you notice it in verse 13? Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to show it off to everybody else. No, that's not what he said take up the whole armor of God so that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to Stand that we can only stand when we're equipped with the armor that God's given us in Jesus Christ And so each aspect of this symbolic armor Answers to a specific dynamic within the Christian life that enables us to stand against spiritual attack If you want to stand strong in the face of spiritual attack You need to grab a hold of what Paul is saying here about the armor of God and apply it correctly into your life Now let me stress a point here though that what we have here is a picture now It's a very vivid picture We can understand how Paul might have got the picture I mean if you picture in your mind here a Roman soldier With the breastplate and the helmet and the sword and the shield and all of that We look at that and we think it's sort of a quaint period piece that belongs in a movie Paul saw people dressed like that every day in the period that he wrote the letter to the Ephesians He was under Roman custody Either chained to a Roman soldier or under house arrest by Roman soldiers And so he saw them every day. He saw the shield. He saw the sword. He saw the helmet He saw fully equipped completely outfitted Roman soldiers every day during the period when he wrote this letter We can see how it was a very accessible image for him to grab on to but here's the point You can over materialize The meaning of the armor here Let me give you sort of a crazy very extreme example Let's say a person says I've got to really get down the idea of the helmet of my salvation And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to buy one of those Roman helmets and I'm going to write Salvation on the side of it and every day I'm going to put it on the first thing I get up in the morning and I'm going to pray a prayer Lord. I put on the helmet of my salvation Now that's over materializing what Paul says because really what he's getting at is the meaning of the salvation that you have in Jesus Christ and Understanding that and when that's in your life the way it should be it serves as a helmet so to speak protecting and covering you And so it's possible for a person to over Materialize what are given to us here as spiritual pictures now. They're wonderful spiritual pictures. They're vivid images Describing six different pieces of armor first of all you have that the belt of truth That's what he says right here in verse 14 stand therefore having girded your waist with truth We're not talking about wearing a girdle here We're talking about a belt that would go around the waist and sort of tie up and collect the garments in it and Paul relates That to the truth. It's a belt of truth Then the second piece of armor he describes is the breastplate of righteousness The third one is the shoes or we would say in today's language Could anybody say that if Paul was writing this today that he wouldn't say that the combat boots of the gospel I mean he's talking about the kind of shoes that a soldier would wear the shoes of the gospel Then he talks fourthly about the shield of faith Then the helmet of salvation and then finally the sword of the Spirit the Word of God And so he mentions all of these things collectively together in this passage in Ephesians And I think that the first thing we take a look at when we get this whole picture together is we're struck by two Prominent facts first of all that this is the armor of God And I said well Duh look at it says it right there. No, but have you thought about what that means? It's the armor of God look at it carefully there in verse 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God now the armor is of God in two senses First of all, it's the armor that we receive from him. He is its source But secondly, it's his actual armor. I want you to think about that for a moment This is God's own Armor that he gives to the believer to fight with you say I say what possible justification Do you have for saying such a thing? Well, I think it's important for us to realize that when Paul was talking about the armor of God He wasn't just drawing on the image of the Roman soldiers that he saw every day He was also drawing on an Old Testament image And I want you to keep your finger here in Ephesians chapter 6, but turn back to Isaiah chapter 59 That's about in the middle of your Bible Isaiah chapter 59. We're going to take a look at verse 17 together Actually, I want you to begin at verse 16 just to get a little bit of a sense of the context because here shows us another aspect of Paul's thinking when he uses this idea of the armor of God and Isaiah chapter 59 beginning at verse 16 we read He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor Therefore his own arm brought salvation for him and his own righteousness. It sustained him For he put on Righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing and was clad with zeal as a cloak Now the idea here is that the Lord God Enthroned in the heavens looked down upon earth and saw if there was a man who would intercede to see if there was a man Who would step in the midst of the breach and there was none and so the Lord God enthroned in heaven says I'll do it myself and he puts on a breastplate a breastplate of Righteousness and he puts on a helmet a helmet of Salvation and he goes forth as the Lord's own warrior the Lord himself I want you to see that when Paul speaks of the breastplate of righteousness in Ephesians 6 He's drawing on that figure from Isaiah 59 when he speaks of the helmet of salvation He's drawing on the figure from Isaiah 59 a matter of fact I wouldn't be surprised if I picture Paul reading the scrolls there under house arrest and he's reading Isaiah 59 Then he reads a passage about breastplate of righteousness and helmet of salvation and then he looks over at this Roman soldier And he goes that's it This is a great picture and then he applies it to other aspects of the soldiers armor right there in front of him But what I want you to see is that when the Bible says again back to Ephesians chapter 6 at verse 13 Where it says take up the whole armor of God It's God's armor that he gives to us So that we can be equipped in the spiritual battle that we have to fight You see in a sense Paul is repeating the same idea that he wrote in Ephesians chapter 6 Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might God gives us his power his might as a resource to fight with and now we're told that he gives us his armor to fight with so friends we fight with the armor of God And we know this from Isaiah 59 17 because that describes God's armor that he gives unto us that we can fight with Now wouldn't you feel great about that? You've got the best armament in the world It's the Lord's own armor and he says here my child you're gonna fight you're gonna be fighting my battle So here you can wear my armor go forth and you are fully equipped to fight this battle That's the one thing that strikes us that he says that it's the armor of God But here's the second thing if you notice it in verse 11 and in verse 13 He says put on the whole armor of God then in verse 13 He says take it take up the whole armor of God He can't say armor of God without saying whole In other words, he's stressing the importance that we must fight with the whole armor Not just part of it. Not just a portion. He can't just say man. Do I dig that sword man? That's great That's just what I want to use. I would say no, that's not enough. You need the whole armor You need the whole package the whole outfit He wants you to be fully equipped with everything that the Bible It says that God gives the believer a full set of equipment with everything. We need at our disposal So the whole armor is important yet. I want you to notice something else That he arranges the armor into two groups of three There is the armor to have and then there is the armor to take Let me say it again There's the armor to have and the armor to take and you might say David. I think you're splitting hairs here I don't know where you're getting this from the text. Well follow with me here. Take a look again at verse 14 I'm going to read starting at verse 14 I'm going to emphasize special words in my reading and you'll catch on here says verse 14 stand there for having girded your waist with truth having put on the breastplate of righteousness and Having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace now verse 16 above all taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one and Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God You see that two groups of three the first one He says having having having the second one. He says taking take and then he puts two under the second take The idea is simply this that there's armor to have and there's armor to take and you say well That's it. What possible difference does that make? Well, I think that there is a subtle difference And since we aren't going to talk about the armor all in one week all six pieces in one week Why don't we separate it right along those lines? There's the armor to have that we'll talk about this week and then next week. We'll talk about the armor to take But the subtle distinction is this Some of the armor we must wear all the time and have as a standing foundation in our life It's just the foundation. It's how you are all the time think of the soldier there and and you know He's he's in wartime, but he's not on the front lines all the time He's not actually engaged in battle all the time, but he has to be ready And so there's some of his armor there's some of his equipment that he wears all the time But let's be serious. He doesn't walk around all the time with his sword and his shield in his hand How could he ever eat? How could he ever do anything? He's got to set his sword down and he's got to set his shield down and he probably takes his helmet off because that's hot And it's bothersome because what because he's not actually engaged in a battle at the moment But his other things his other the breast he'll keep the breastplate on the belt He keeps it on the shoes. He's wearing them all the time So there's one aspect of the armor that he has on all the time There's another aspect that he picks up and he wields at the critical moment when the attack comes That's the difference between the armor. We have an armor We take so let's take a look at this armor that we're to wear as a standing foundation in our Christian life We come first to the pieces of armor that we have and number one of the armor to have as a standing foundation is The belt of truth look at it there in verse 14 Stand therefore having girded your waist with truth Truth here is symbolically represented as a belt now in the one sense The belt is sort of protective think of a wide leather belt like a weightlifter would wear that kind of thing around the waist There's a protective aspect to it. But the main thing that the belt did was it? Gathered up the person's garments so that they could be free to fight In other words, they would wear a long flowing garment I would never call it a dress because I would never say that a Roman soldier wore a dress but it was something like that and if you're wearing a Garment that goes down below the knees or something like that If you want to do some serious work some serious fighting some serious jumping or climbing or whatever, you've got to secure that You don't see ladies rock climbing and long dresses You don't see somebody mowing the lawn in a wedding dress. It just isn't practical And so the idea here is hey You've got this thing on you better Secure your garments and tie it up and cinch it up and put it around because you can't do anything else Until you put those obstacles out of the way and you're prepared and ready to fight There's a sense in which the belt isn't even armor It's just a piece of leather around your waist, but what it does is it prepares everything else for battle everything else So here's the idea The idea is that the belt of truth puts on the biblical beliefs of the Christian as a whole Other passages in the New Testament called this the faith For example in Jude he talks about the faith once for all delivered to the Saints and what he means there is that body of basic good doctrine the basic beliefs that we agree with together as Christians that idea of the truth that we stand fast in the faith that we're steadfast in the faith This is the armor to have it's the foundation that you live upon all the time You're understanding and your confidence in the basic doctrines of the faith And do you have a sense of that? do you have a sense of understanding and Confidence in the basic doctrines of the Christian faith for example in in who God is in Who man is in relation to God in? How the work of Jesus Christ on the cross saves us? Now, do you know that and do you know it well enough to explain it to somebody else? Really? I think that's the measure. I don't think we know anything very well at all until we know it Well enough to be able to explain it to somebody else and that's a real measure in our life So how about you now if you're not at that place you say well gee man, I don't know I mean, I have a little bit of knowledge about this. I mean, I know Jesus died on a cross I know he rose from the dead. Well, yes, but how does that save you? How does the death of Jesus save you? Many great and noble people through history have died How does Jesus's death on the cross save you there were two other thieves two of two thieves I should say not other thieves, but two thieves who also died with Jesus crucified on that day What made the difference between the death of Jesus and the death of those two thieves? Could you explain to somebody? Well, the the point is is first of all is that Jesus is the Son of God and God the Son And as he hung on the cross he hung as a perfect sacrifice for my sin and he stood as a substitute for me and all the punishment and all the guilt and all the shame that my sin deserved was poured out upon the Sinless Son of God and he stood in my place as a guilty sinner. Could you explain that to somebody? That's the belt of truth Now if you don't know it well enough yourself, you're vulnerable to attack You don't have your thinking and your mind clear on some of the most basic things And so Paul's saying listen before you can do anything else. You've got to put on that belt of truth. That's the foundation for your standing in Christian combat You know, some people believe that the church will never go forward until it takes off the belt of truth You know, well, why be so concerned about doctrine? Why do you know why split hairs? You know, sometimes people don't like to hear it and this and that no the church can only go forward with any kind of effectiveness When it has its belt of truth on and so the belt of truth concerns What we believe Do you have the belt of truth on? Now, let me explain this You can approach this in a very superstitious way you can decide. Okay, I need to do this So every morning I'm going to wake up and I'm going to wake up and I'm going to stand up out of bed And I'm going to say Lord I put on my belt of truth and then go on your way You could do that a hundred times in a day But if you don't have a basic understanding of the beliefs if you don't have basic understanding of the doctrines all those are words It's not a magic incantation that you use in your life Putting on the belt of truth means that you gather that essential elementary knowledge. Now if you don't have it, how do you get it? Well, I hope that you get it by paying attention when you come together here on a Sunday morning or on a Wednesday night I think we talk a lot about the basic beliefs of Christianity I think we talk a lot about what Jesus did on the cross for us and who God is and who we are in Relation to him. I think you'll get a lot of it just by coming on a Sunday morning But you know There's also tremendous benefit to getting together for perhaps a basic foundation the Christian life course or something like that we have those periodically here at the church or if you'd like me to I could on a personal level recommend a book to you say You read this book you go through this workbook It'll give you a real foundation or we can set you up with a personal discipleship with somebody else but the bottom line is that you should realize the absolute importance for you to be able to say I have an understanding of these basic truths of the Christian life and Don't believe that you understand it well enough until you could explain it to somebody else That's when you know how you really know it Well, what's the second piece of armor? He mentions that again in verse 14 He says stand therefore having girded your waist with truth having put on the breastplate of righteousness Now here righteousness is represented as a breastplate which provides essential protection for the most vital organs I mean a soldier would be foolish to go on the battle without his breastplate on Why the slightest sword thrust towards his chest? It's gonna just pierce through his is His shirt and go right through and he'll be killed. No, if you can put some armor plating on the outside Well, then by all means do it My friends we can no sooner battle against our spiritual enemies in our own Righteousness than a soldier can effectively fight without his breastplate the breastplate of righteousness Concerns the righteousness of Jesus in our life That's important to understand Because some people take this idea of the breastplate of righteousness and they say the breastplate of righteousness is about your righteousness Your righteous acts your righteous deeds Now here's the trouble with that. First of all My righteousness next to the righteousness of Jesus is never very good Never I mean, here's the righteousness of Jesus. It's Magnificent. I mean there it is. It's a gold breastplate sturdy strong shiny Impenetrable there it is man. You can just see it. It's just exciting just looking at it There's the breastplate of Jesus right there in front of you. Wow, it looks great Then number two, there's my breastplate It's like a couple of Kleenexes pasted together right there over the chest Say well, there's my breastplate. There it is. It looks pretty good Yeah, well, there's no comparison none at all But what's gonna have a my breast I can immediately be pierced through it stands nothing compared to the breastplate of Jesus Now here's the bad part about it too. Is that as impressive as my breastplate is sometimes I don't even have that Right. I mean, what do you do with your breastplate of righteousness if you've been stumbling? If you've been slipping and then you come under attack you have nothing to put on not even the Kleenex So, what do we do we say no I need that breastplate of righteousness, it's not an earned righteousness It's not a feeling of righteousness, but it's a righteousness received by faith in Jesus It's a general sense of confidence. It's awareness of our standing and position Saying listen, I I am righteous in Jesus Christ because of who he is and because of what he has done. That's my standing Now when you have that breastplate on when you have that fortification before the Lord You are strong before the attack of the enemy you are you have an impenetrable Covering over your heart over your most vital organs that breastplate of righteousness You can't trust your own righteousness you can't trust your own feelings of righteousness, you know how it is in the Christian life Look, sometimes we feel pretty righteous. Don't we sometimes you feel like yeah, you know, I got this Christian thing pretty wired Yeah, you know me and God we're just great. We're the dynamic duo. I've got such a great Christian life Yeah, you know, sometimes you're feeling pretty good about your Christian life. Sometimes you're not feeling good about your Christian life at all And we thank God for experiences and feelings in the Christian life, but we don't rely on them You don't put on the breastplate of experiences You put on the breastplate of righteousness not the breastplate of feelings the breastplate of righteousness And it's the received righteousness that we have in Jesus Christ So we don't come to the devil and say look at my breastplate. It's all that I've done for the Lord. That's Kleenex We don't come to the devil and say well look at my righteousness look at how great I feel before God right now No, no, that's just Kleenex over your chest right there. It's shaky ground, even though sometimes it feels good Now we come clothed armed in that breastplate of impenetrable righteousness that we have in Jesus Christ What a defense against spiritual depression and gloom and all those other things that just sort of come against our gut is Realizing our righteous standing in Jesus Christ and let me say one other thing If we really understand and grab a hold if we apprehend what it means this righteousness that we have in Jesus Christ many of us Consider that only as being a not guilty verdict before God I mean there you are you're in the courtroom of heaven and and you know there that you got the Prosecuting attorney and that's Satan and you've got the judge that's God the father and then your own defense attorney That's Jesus and we think that somehow having the righteousness of Jesus for us is is God the father Pounding the gavel from the judge's bench and saying not guilty. No, we like that verdict, right? That would be great I mean, I'd like to hear that but it's much more than that You see what God the father does when we are clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ he pounds the gavel and he says not guilty and Positively righteous It's just that we don't have any sin charged to our account It's that we are credited with the righteousness of Jesus Christ That's a breastplate we can stand So what do we have here this this standing this armor that were to have? Well, first of all, it's the belt of truth Secondly, it's the breastplate of righteousness but now thirdly that the third aspect of armor to have as a standing foundation look at it here in verse 15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace the preparation of the gospel is Represented as the protective shoes or sandals worn by Roman soldiers today We'd call them combat boots and nobody can fight effectively or go about their business Effectively without this piece of equipment. Let me sort of give a summary statement here The shoes of the gospel are connected to the good news of Jesus's work for us That's what gospel means, isn't it? It means good news and there's good news about what Jesus Christ did for us to accomplish our salvation and that's our standing You know when your feet hurt just about everything else is miserable in your life, isn't it? It's hard to meet a cheerful person with sore feet And when your feet are well protected when they're secure when they're firm when they're well-established we feel like you can stand Picture two people going in battle against each other. Maybe sort of on a muddy or a grassy field. One of them is barefoot Another one has a great pair of football cleats and which one is going to win in that fight. You would figure almost Immediately the person with no shoes on the person who's barefoot is going to lose because they don't have any stability in their standing They can slip they'll fall all the other person needs to do is step on their foot and they're going to be ruined So here's the point the shoes matter everything in battle and it's interesting to know from history that Roman soldiers Were well known and famously equipped with great sandals Other nations remarked on this and said this is one of the big reasons why the Romans win their wars is because their military Infrastructure equipped all the soldiers with marvelous thick leather sandals most the time studded on the bottom with metal cleats so that at the critical time in the battle they could really dig in and Hold the line and then on long marches they weren't barefoot. They had good shoes. They could take long marches They were an army that was ready to dig in an army ready to go It was all because of their shoes now friends that correlates to the good news of Jesus Christ What Jesus has done for us? The fact that he came down from heaven and that he lived on this earth and that he died on the cross dying as a Sacrificial substitute for our sins and that he rose again from the dead to demonstrate that the price was already paid That's our foundation, that's our standing we need that to be mobile That's the idea of the word preparation here in verse 15 where it says having your shot having shod your feet with the preparation of the Gospel of peace the idea of preparation is really readiness The way it must be mobile Flexible ready to run with the truth This is a place to have in the Christian life to live in constant readiness and flexibility and say well here I am Lord use me. I've got my feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace the good news of Jesus Christ And what I want you to see is each one of these aspects of spiritual armor have a great deal to do with both our thinking and our trusting the belt of truth Truth is something that you have to think about but it's also something you have to trust in the righteousness of Jesus Christ It's something you have to think about but it's also something you have to trust in And then we come to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's something you have to think about there's an intellectual There's a mental aspect to it, but you have to trust in it also with your heart So friends This is the aspect of the armor that we must have as a standing position as a standing foundation each one of these three aspects the belt of truth the breastplate of righteousness and then finally the shoes of the gospel of Jesus Christ Let me conclude with just a couple final thoughts on this. What what difference does this make? I believe it makes a huge difference I mean what what's the difference between the Christian who lives with the mental and the heart felt Equipping of these things and the Christian who doesn't live with the equipping of this both in his mind and in his heart What's the difference between the two? Well, first of all, I think one of the difference it makes is towards God The God difference if you will that it makes is that it deepens our relationship of trust with God to have this armor If you know that you need that breastplate of righteousness every day if you know that you need that belt of truth and the shoes Of the gospel if you know that you need that every day now, that's your standing You're gonna stay close to the person that you need them from and who do you need them from from God himself? He's done it this way so that you'll keep in touch with him a lot So that you'll be there and you'll come back to him all the time You'll rely on him you see because for God's heart it's not just about winning battles God doesn't have a scoreboard up in heaven and you know, he's marking it. Well, they want a battle they want a battle That's what it's all about is winning battles. You know what it's all about for God It's about relationship with us If you won every spiritual battle, but your heart and your mind were still far from God wouldn't please God at all It's about relationship you see the way he set it up is that you can't win the battles apart from relationship He's connected the two to drive us towards relationship and so the God difference that these things can make in our lives is if we walk in the belt of truth and the Breastplate of righteousness in the shoes of the gospel it will deepen our relationship of trust in the Lord Second difference it makes is towards men towards people The people difference is all about what it does in our life first of all, it makes us less of a burden to others and more of a help to others Are you aware of that? Sometimes you sometimes you sort of get haunted by the feeling that you're a burden to other people Well, maybe the reason is is because you're looking to them for pieces of armor That only God can give you Now we know that the breastplate of righteousness that you can't find it in yourself, right? That's Kleenex, right? It's the breastplate of God now might I say that your neighbor or your friend or your brother and sister? They don't have much of a better breastplate to give you It's God's you need to seek it from him and Sometimes when we feel like we're being a burden on other people It's because we're looking to get things from them that God alone can give us now I guess the thing to do is to plead with them and say hey, can you help me come to God and receive it? I'm not looking at from you. Let's go to God together and receive this And so when we really appropriate these things in our life, we find ourselves less of a burden to others But better yet, even than that we're more of a help to others then we can really help others There's someone in the midst of spiritual battle. We can come along Let me stand with you and fight with you and we can come to Jesus and I'll get you equipped to Jesus Come on, let's go and he has a breastplate of righteousness for you And he has a belt of truth for you and he has shoes of the gospel for you. Let's come and get equipped He's a supply officer. He's issuing right now. Let's go Makes us less of a burden and more of a help to others Friends, are you ready? Are you ready to have this armor? You're ready to say Lord make me founded in these things drill them deeply in my mind and in my heart So I'm gonna live and walk with this equipping and next week We'll complete the picture by taking a look at the armor that were to take up in that critical moment, but friends Don't leave here without it God wants you to have that armor. It's his gift to you Receive it from him now in Jesus name. Amen. Let's pray together father. That is our prayer this morning That you would completely equip us That you'd make us ready to embrace to receive to have This armor that you offer to us Lord It's from you that we get the truth It's from you that we gain the righteousness. It's from you that we receive the gospel It doesn't come from ourselves. It doesn't even come from our best friends It comes from you So Jesus right now. We're here before you This morning to do so to speak our business with you speak to our hearts Prepare us and equip us Let us walk out of this room together Lord better equipped than when we came in Do a work in our hearts Lord as we love you. And as we trust you as we express it in worship right now in Jesus name Amen