Exploring the Armor of God and Its Connection to the Beatitudes (Ephesians 6:10-20)

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Pure Faith podcast. My name is Michelle, this is my brother, mitchell, and we are here to share with you our Pure Faith podcast. We ask that you like this video, subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification icon to be notified when new episodes are released. Why do I not just follow this every time? I don't know.

Speaker 2: 0:32

I went through all the work to type it out so it would be flow nice and as short as three.

Speaker 1: 0:40

I think it caught up where it says I am Michelle and this is my brother, mitchell. I think I would need to put that. But I'm like I don't even need to say that you don't have to say that.

Speaker 2: 0:46

You should just cross that out. I think by this point they know who we are.

Speaker 1: 0:51

Oh Okay, Anyways so thank you. We're going with this one.

Speaker 2: 0:58

I'm not going to record, we don't have time for that we don't have time, never mind.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Anyways. So this week we have a special episode. We weren't able to record this week, but this past Sunday I did the sermon and the message was on the armor of God. Again, if you watched last week's episode, you would see that the reason I chose this topic was because it kind of goes hand in hand with the Beatitudes, and I don't know if I talk about that during the sermon or not, because we're recording this before I give this sermon and at the time of recording this I don't even remember it's done.

Speaker 1: 1:35

I didn't even start it yet.

Speaker 2: 1:36

Oh my God. But I started doing the research and all that Okay. I just haven't heard any news yet.

Speaker 1: 1:40

All right. So if it's not about that, then you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Yeah, and this will be about something completely different.

Speaker 1: 1:49

So we really hope you enjoy this episode. Oh, how long do you want to be?

Speaker 2: 1:54

Two hours Is that too much A little.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Don't work it for 14 minutes, okay, I can do it.

Speaker 2: 2:03

No, I can't, anyways. So the message I'm giving today is on the armor of God. This is probably very familiar for a lot of you. A lot of you probably heard this preached on multiple times, and the reason I chose to go with the armor of God one is because Paige told me to and two is because I actually had this thought to preach on the armor of God. So whenever Paige did tell me that, hey, you should do the armor of God, like before she even finished saying it, it hit me. I was like, yes, that's what I'm doing it on.

Speaker 2: 2:37

Because whenever we finished up on our podcast those that followed the podcast we just finished up the Beatitudes and we did like 10 week sermon or 10 week. We did like 10 weeks of the podcast or 10 week thing on the 10 week series on Beatitudes. And I really think that the armor of God fits well with the Beatitudes and I'll cover that as we're going through this so you can see where the connection's really made. So that's what we're going to do today. So I'm going to start by reading Ephesians 6, 10 through 20. So if you have your Bibles and get your Bibles out, follow along, and I'm just going to read this and then we're going to break it down. My goal is to kind of do a little bit of an overview explanation and then hit each one of the pieces of armor and then kind of summarize it at the end, if I have enough time. So Ephesians 6, 10 through 20 reads Finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his mic. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rollers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 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 firm stand, therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flames, the flaming darts of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the source of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication To that end. Keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may be clear and boldly as I ought to speak. So that's what we're covering, and that is a lot.

Speaker 2: 5:00

But this is going to be just a brief overview of the armor of God. I would love to do another 10-part deep dive into this, but I just don't have the time for that. So the first thing I want to notice is that it is the whole armor of God. So the key word to this is well one, it's the whole armor. So we need to be able to make sure we are wearing all of it, not just one piece, not just a couple pieces. We need all of it. If we go to battle without our sword now, we have no way of fighting against our aggressor. We have nothing to fight with. If we go in without our breastplate, without our helmet, we are leaving ourselves open for attack and to be taken over. But the other thing to notice is that this is the armor of God. This isn't our armor, it is God's armor. So the strength from this armor doesn't come from us, it's not from our righteousness, it's not from our salvation. This is all from God. So, though it is armor given to us, we're asked to put on daily, it is not our strength and our power that is behind this armor.

Speaker 2: 6:17

The next thing I want to point out, before we really get into each article, is this concept of the devil. So I want to read it again. It says so. This battle, this battle is a never ending battle. It is constantly going on and it will continue to go on until Jesus returns, until Jesus brings the kingdom back down to earth. This battle we can't physically enter this battle. We can't take up arms ourselves and go and fight in this battle. This battle is in the cosmic realm, the heavenly realm. This is a spiritual battle, but that is important to us. Even though we can't physically join the battle, that doesn't mean we can't assist in the battle, and we can assist one by putting on this armor, as we're being told to, because we are protecting ourselves from the devil schemes and the demons and everybody who is trying to attack us. But we can also assist by helping to pray, and we're going to get into this as we get into the different specific pieces of the armor. So we do have the ability to influence this war, even though we can't physically take up arms and join this war. We can't influence this war. We can't influence this fighting.

Speaker 2: 8:01

And this war is a battle over souls. It's over our souls, each one of our souls, every human on earth. That is what this battle is for. It's basically the devil trying to steal and kill and destroy people's souls, where God is trying to bring all souls to heaven. So that is where this fighting is coming from. It's your classic good versus evil. So we can help to assist God in his battle by being disciples for Christ, by going out and spreading the good news of Jesus to convert other people to Christianity, because the more people we convert into Christianity, the more people that will have, wearing the armor of God, to go out and create more soldiers for Christ. So that's what this battle is about, and I've said this in the past. We give the devil too much credit and I've said in the past that the devil is not God. The devil does not have God's attributes Now, with that being said, the best way?

Speaker 2: 9:09

Well, we know how this war is going to end. It tells us in Revelation we win, christians win, god wins in the end. We know that, but the battle is still going to go on, and the reason it's going to go on is because the devil wants to bring down as many people to hell with him as he possibly can. But the best thing that I heard as far as where the devil actually ranks, the devil would actually be more equivalent to Michael the Archangel, so they would be like even fighting against each other, but God, jesus, the Trinity, is above them. So whenever God's like okay, that's it, war's over, jesus is going to come down, he's going to end the war and bring heaven down to earth. So I probably spent way too much time talking about that, but it was very important.

Speaker 2: 10:02

So now we're going to get into the Articles of the Armor, and there are six articles. It's the belt, breastplate, shoes, shield, helmet and sword. So out of these six the belt and the shoes they are more like articles that help you prepare for the battle, and you'll understand this once I get into it. But I kind of call them more of a preparatory type of articles. I'll just leave it there for now, and whenever I start to explain each one individually, that'll make sense. The breastplate, shield and helmet they are defensive, so they are to protect us from the devil's attacks and, like we've seen, devil is going to be shooting flaming arrows at us. We can use the shield to protect us from that. So that's what these are kind of for. The only offensive weapon that we have is the sword, and that is very important. So whenever we get to the sword, I'll probably have too much to say about that too. So let's start with each one.

Speaker 2: 11:05

So the belt of truth, so belt of truth literally means Girting your waist with truth, and that sounds word. We don't use the word girding very often, but the English translation, or modern day translation, for this is girl. So, although the way they use the girl and the way we use the girl today are not the same, their, their sash, is another way of saying it. It's a six inch wide linen belt that they wrapped around themselves several times, and they called it a girdle, and its main purpose was because of what they wore. So their normal clothing for Israelites back in that day was an undershirt with a long tunic, typically made of one piece without seed, and so it just hung down. So they would take this sash or this girdle and wrap it around their waist to keep everything close together. So girding up is very often or frequent saying in the Bible and it's just a way of saying bring it close.

Speaker 2: 12:16

So this here saying gird up your waist with truth. Well, another way of saying is like gird up your loins. So basically, you're taking all the loose clothing that's hanging down, because when you get all the stuff hanging around your legs, you can't run, you can't move, it's blocking you. So you pick it up, you tuck it into your girdle, into your sash, so your legs are open and exposed, so you can run and move and maneuver. So it's all about just being able to move quickly and swiftly, especially in battle, and that's what this is referring to is battle. So how can we prepare for this battle? Because, remember, this is not a battle that we can enter into.

Speaker 2: 13:05

So, whenever we are girding up our waist with truth, well, what's this truth? Well, the truth is the Bible. That's where we get the truth from, that is God's truth, and we learn that truth by studying the Bible. Yes, you can come to church, come to the church building on Sundays and hear a message. You go to a weekly Bible study.

Speaker 2: 13:25

That's all fine and dandy, but you need to be spending your own personal time reading the Bible so you can know that when the devil attacks you, he's going to use half truths and false truths. I mean, we've seen that whenever. Well, if you watch the podcast, we covered that whenever we covered the temptation of Jesus, whenever Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days and he was tempted, the devil used scripture to try to trick Jesus into sinning. He will do that same thing to us. He knows scripture. He will use scripture to trick you. He will use lies I mean, he's the father of lies so he will use whatever he can to get you to trip up and stumble and fall so he can take advantage of that and separate you from God, because that's ultimately what he wants to do. So this belt of truth is simply meaning hold that truth close to you, study the Bible, learn the Bible and hold that, close that heart.

Speaker 2: 14:34

Oh, the next one is the breast plate of righteousness. So I'm not going to get too much into definition of what a breastplate is, because for the Roman soldiers, because that's where a lot of this is coming from. Paul was writing this when he was imprisoned and he had Roman soldiers around him, but different Roman soldiers wore different types of armor, and not only that. Over the years the armor changed, so we assume this is the old, traditional armor, where it's literally a metal plate that goes over your chest. But at the time this was actually written, they didn't use that anymore. It was all this different kind of chain mail and then it moved on to a bunch of different things. If you're interested in that, just look it up and you can learn more than you want to know about ancient Roman armor. So I'm not going to cover that.

Speaker 2: 15:29

The big thing to understand when it comes to this breast plate of righteousness is that it is protecting your vital organs. It's protecting your heart, your lungs, everything here, and we use the same thing today. Most of you know I am still in the army for now and we wear body armor Gleese Force, they wear body armor, a lot of security forces, they wear body armor and that it mainly just covers your chest area and your back because you're protecting those vital organs. If you get hit in the arm, you'll live. If you hit in the leg, most likely you'll live. But your vital organs? They're called vital organs for a reason, because they are very important. So that is what this is protecting.

Speaker 1: 16:15

What so what is?

Speaker 2: 16:18

this Again, this is the breastplate of righteousness. Like I said at the beginning, this is not our armor, this is not our righteousness, this is God's righteousness, amen. So what does that mean by God's righteousness? What is righteousness? Well, again, in the podcast, we have covered this multiple.

Speaker 2: 16:42

There are two ways you can view righteousness. You can either view it as our righteousness or as God's righteousness, and depending on which angle you're looking at it will change a little bit of how things happen. So, in this case, this is God's righteousness. So what is God's righteousness? Well, righteousness is simply doing what is right. So what would be right for God? That would be to keep the promises that he made to us, to our ancestors, to Abraham, isaac and Jacob, to anybody that he has ever made a promise. His righteousness comes from keeping those promises. So, for example, god said that he would never leave us nor forsake us. So we know that now, today, as Christians, since we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, that promise comes to us as well. So we know that the Lord will never leave us and he won't forsake us. So, for God to be righteous, we know that that is true. So that is what His righteousness is. So all the promises that he has made over, there's way too many to cover. But I'm sure most of you realize that there are a lot of promises God has made to the ancients that came before us. So that is His righteousness those promises, keeping it to us. So that is what this armor is knowing that, no matter what, god is going to keep His promises. But I think this also goes both ways, because even though this is the breastplate of God's righteousness, that doesn't mean that our righteousness goes out the window, because in order to receive those promises, we need to keep our righteousness, and our righteousness is keeping or doing what is right in the eyes of God. So this is where the beatitudes, I think, really come into play, because, like I said, we did a I think 10-part series on this and in the end it's all about doing what is right for God. That's what the beatitudes are all about Different ways of living, different ways of developing a relationship with God in order to have that righteousness. And if we can live our lives according to the beatitudes, live our lives according to the way God calls us to live them, then we will have righteousness. And with us, keeping our righteousness, it opens a door for us to receive God's righteousness. Hopefully that makes sense.

Speaker 2: 19:26

Moving on, I don't know how much time I got Shoes for your feet, so this was actually an interesting study for me because I didn't realize this. So what the warm the Romans wore for shoes? It was basically like a multi-layers of leather underneath their feet that had spikes in them for traction, and then there was ribbons tied to those that they would wrap around all the way up their calf to keep them secured on. And whenever it was done right, they were just as good as modern-day combat boots, but it allowed them to be light and move quickly, especially when they're in battle. And then the spikes allowed them to have traction. So whenever they were fighting then they had that ability to move and not slip and fall. But then the reason they were sticking leather pads is because apparently I didn't know this the enemy would go out and put you know, modern-day we have land mines and stuff that enemies would go and put out. Well, they would go out and put little spikes in the ground, only just so high, and then they'd be covered in grass. You wouldn't be able to see them. So when the enemy would come and step on them, they would puncture their feet and then I mean it wouldn't necessarily take them out of the fight, but that's going to cripple them in a way. So by putting on good, thick shoes that are going to protect you and allow you to move swiftly again, this goes back to the girding up your loins it allows you to move swiftly, it allows you to not be held back by weighty shoes and by being tripping over yourself and all this other stuff. But the point of these shoes, again, readiness. So the readiness is being able to move quickly.

Speaker 2: 21:21

But this readiness comes from something. It comes from, wasn't it? The Gospel of Peace? I'm pretty sure it comes from the Gospel of Peace. So what is the Gospel of Peace? Again, this is the Bible. I mean, that is the Gospels. But this Peace, where does this Peace come from? Again, this is something else we covered in depth in the Bible study.

Speaker 2: 21:50

So I would recommend, if you haven't watched it, go back and watch it, because we spent way too much time talking about the word Makarios and Makarios is a Greek word. Easy peanut gallery. You were a part of it, so you're just much of blame. So Makarios is a Greek word. That means its actual definition is happy, not the feeling of happiness. It's a state of being happy. But we don't use happy in that way anymore today.

Speaker 2: 22:22

So modern day translation of that would be joy, having joy. So each one of the attitudes started with the word Makarios, and in most of our translations it's blessed R. So but this is joy. And where do we get joy from? Joy comes from knowing that, no matter what happens in this world, no matter how good it is, how bad it is, no matter what kind of hardships we face, no matter what, we have joy, knowing that when we cross over, we will have eternity with God, we will have eternity with Jesus. So, and whenever that point comes, there's no more pain, no more suffering, no more turmoil. Everything is going to be amazing, full of love. So that is where we get our joy from, that, makarios, and that is where you get your peace from. That's where you get your internal peace from is knowing that, no matter what, I'm going to have eternity with Jesus. That should bring you great peace and great joy. So that's what this gospel of peace is about.

Speaker 2: 23:30

Shield of faith. So the shields that the Romans would use. They were roughly three foot wide, roughly five foot high. They were big enough that you could tuck down behind it and it would fully cover you. So I've heard multiple things. The one thing is that they were made of a thicker wood, that they would soak in water before going into battle and enemies would typically fire flaming arrows at them, because that is a good way to really disrupt your enemies, to fill them full of fire. But with these heavier wooden wet shields, whenever the arrows were penetrated into the shields, it would extinguish the fire and render them harmless.

Speaker 2: 24:18

Well, the devil is going to be firing flaming arrows at us. It's going to be arrows of doubt, arrows of self you know I will self, whatever anything evil that you can think of. Those are the arrows that he's going to be firing at us, and some of them may not seem like they're that big, like pride Probably most of us have pride issues or just that's something that doesn't get talked about enough. It's something that kind of goes under the radar. But any kind of sin, the even past sin, sin that you've already been forgiven of, the devil will take that arrow, fire back at you again to try to bring that back up to you, to try to tell you you're not worthy to be a Christian. So we have to have that shield to block those flaming arrows, to keep them from entering into our person and causing us harm. But again, this is a shield of faith.

Speaker 2: 25:17

So, faith, what is this faith? Well, again, this faith comes from God. This isn't necessarily our faith. This is the faith that comes from God. Well, what is God's faith? Well, that comes from the fact of knowing that God will fulfill those promises. It's going back to righteousness. So we have faith. So God's faith comes from knowing that he's one to fulfill his righteousness. So that makes any sense at all. We can trust that he is going to do what he says he's going to do, that he's going to protect us and not forsake us. So that is what faith is.

Speaker 2: 25:53

The technical, biblical definition of faith is believing without seeing. Well, we don't have to see God doing everything in order for us to trust that he is there. I mean, just because we can't see God working or we can't see God physically doesn't mean we can't see him working. He is working in our lives, trust me, he's working in my life right now and with me and Paige. I see it, and so it's just. I can see him working, but I have never seen the face of God, and none of us can until we reach, until we go to heaven. So we just need to have that faith and trust in God's faith that he has our best interest at hand.

Speaker 2: 26:38

So next is the helmet of salvation. And the helmet is exactly what you think it is. It goes on your head and protects you from the same thing the shield does. For some reason, you are peeking over your shield and you shouldn't be, and an arrow comes flying by. It could help protect your head from being pierced. And take that a step further. Yes, the helmet protects your head, so it protects your brain. But go a little bit deeper. It protects your thoughts. It protects your mind. It protects really the central part of your entire body, because all your vital organs can work fine, but if you don't have your head well, you're still going to be in a very bad way. So it is also a very important part of your armor.

Speaker 2: 27:30

But again, this is the helmet of salvation. Again, this is not our salvation, this is God's salvation. To be more specific, it's Jesus's salvation, because Jesus gave us salvation when he died on the cross, when he went to the cross and he sacrificed himself for all of our sins. That is where we get our salvation. But salvation isn't just a one-time thing.

Speaker 2: 27:57

So that was the salvation Jesus gave us when he died on the cross, but we still need to work on our salvation today. Jesus is still giving us salvation today. We have to work through it. We need to accept Jesus Christ as who he is, as Lord and Savior, in order to receive salvation today. But then there's going to be a final salvation whenever Jesus comes back the second time, whenever he comes back to bring heaven back down to earth. There's going to be a final salvation then, too, where all of us will have the opportunity to join him in heaven. So salvation isn't the simple thing. And again, this is something else we've discussed multiple times on the podcast about salvation how you get it, can you lose it or not?

Speaker 1: 28:47

Four times, Michelle was saying no, I'm saying four minutes oh four minutes.

Speaker 2: 28:50

Yeah Well, I want to ignore you. So, yes, it's something else that we've discussed multiple times. So, for this particular helmet of salvation, it is knowing that God died for us, or Jesus died for us, and that is his salvation that we can trust in. So, no matter again, no matter what happens. This is also tying back to the joy, to the peace. No matter what happens in this world, we will have salvation through Jesus at the end. Finally, the sword of the spirit. I am skipping a lot of stuff, but that's okay. Michelle is yelling at me.

Speaker 2: 29:27

This is the only offensive weapon that we have and we wield it Again. We don't wield it physically, because this is a spiritual battle that we're fighting in, but we can wield it by or through prayer. So we pray. That is, our biggest weapon is prayer. So we pray for those who are being persecuted. We pray for anybody and everybody.

Speaker 2: 29:55

As you've seen, it's said to pray for, pray in supplication for all the saints. Who are all the saints? That is, everybody. Back in biblical times, we weren't called Christians as believers of Christ. We were called saints. So saints was the old word for Christian. Nowadays we just use Christian. So that's all your fellow Christians. Pray for them. In supplication, that means you're praying on their behalf. So whenever you hear somebody being spiritually attacked or going through hardships or anything that's going on in their lives have you hear about it? Pray for them. That is how we can help to fight in this battle. Whenever people are being attacked by the devil, pray against the devil for them. That is going to help stand that battle. That is helping to fight with them.

Speaker 2: 30:52

Again, in this battle, we need to go out, we need to evangelize, we need to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. We need to share the gospel. It's through that, through creating more Christians, that we can build the army of Christ. And the last thing I want to cover is stand, because I'm going back up towards the top, as this was mentioned three or four times. Redsbury, beginning in the short period it said, paul said to stand. What does that mean? That means we are to stand up against this war, this battle against the devil and his demons. We need to stand up. We can't cower, we can't fall to our face and hide. We can't turn and run. We need to stand and fight. We fight through prayer, we fight with the sword of the spirit. That is how we fight, and we need to stand. We can't run, we can't turn, we can't give an inch to the devil, because then he wins. So we need to stand and fight. So hopefully that's good for time.

Speaker 1: 32:04

Yeah, one minute.

Speaker 2: 32:04

Sure.

Speaker 1: 32:06

Do you mentally or physically put on the armor of God?

Speaker 2: 32:12

That's actually a good question. There are some that believe that you need to. It's not physical, because we don't actually have it. Well, I do it like going through, like Some people believe you need to put it on daily. I don't feel that way. I think once you put it on, you have it on because, like going back to the better truth, knowing the scriptures. Well, once you know the scriptures, once you know the Bible, you know the Bible. It's not something you have to go and re-know every morning. You know it. So, therefore, you have it with you all the time.

Speaker 2: 32:47

Now you need to bring it up mentally in your mind, knowing like, when you're in a situation, something comes up, yes, you need to be able to pull it up. That's why it's called the belt of truth, because you need to have that at hand. But you should always be wearing that belt. Same thing You're always going to have God's righteousness. You always have the promise that he is going to fulfill the promises that he has made in the past. That's not something that necessarily needs to be renewed every day. That's in my opinion. I've listened to a lot of other people say the opposite. It's really a matter of opinion when it comes to that. But for me personally, you need to know it, you need to think about it, but it's not something you have to mentally go through every single morning saying, okay, I'm putting on the belt of truth, I'm putting on the breastplate of righteousness, you don't have to go through that every single morning, but it is something that you need to realize, that you have on every day.

Speaker 1: 33:51

I just wanted to add because I have written in my Bible from some past sermon about it. It just says prayer is not preparation for the battle, it is the battle. I just thought that was neat when you say it.

Speaker 2: 34:08

Yeah, prayer is the most important thing that we can do. Any other questions or comments. One once, going twice, that's okay, oh Shout out.

Speaker 1: 34:21

So we thank you for joining us for another episode of the Pure Faith Podcast. You can contact us on our PureFaithLivingcom website and send us a message there if you'd like. As always, if you like what you hear, then we ask that you share this show with others so we can all work together in spreading the great news of Jesus Christ. Don't forget to subscribe and we will talk to you again next time.

Speaker 2: 34:46

Have a blessed day everybody.