The Armor of God: Breastplate of Righteousness

Man, it's good to be together. My name is Josh, and I have the pleasure of serving here on staff at Whitewater. And I am so glad that you're here. I'm so glad you're here. Whether this is the first time you're here and the only time you're here, or the first time you're here and you're gonna be here a thousand times after that, or you've already been here a thousand times, I'm excited that you're here, because I really do believe.

I really mean this. I really do believe that you're not here on accident, that God has something in mind for you today, that he has something to teach you, someone to connect you with, some way to challenge you and encourage you. And so my prayer is that you're just open to that, whatever it is, and we're glad you're here. So two weeks ago, we started this new series on spiritual warfare and the armor of God and man. It's been good.

It's been really good. And I love the conversations I've been having. I've been getting text messages, emails, Facebook messages, and I'll just say if these. If any of the messages at any time are impactful to you, whoever's up here teaching, would you just send us a note and tell us how this has been impactful to you, how this has been challenging to you, because quite frankly, that stuff is fuel for the fire. So we'd love for you to do that.

But I loved hearing from a woman last week in her 70s. Her husband has been in ministry his whole life. She's been a Christian, and she was a missionary's kid her whole life. And she said to me last week, she said, I learned something this week. I said, yeah, what was that?

And she said, I learned. I thought about this for the very first time in my life that I don't have to just live defensively, constantly shielding myself from the enemy, that I can stand offensively in power against the enemy. Praise God. Praise God. I had another conversation with someone who told me that after week one, when we challenged each other with this idea that we're going to have to put some things off to be able to put the armor on.

They went home and they spent time and they wrote out everything in that list that Paul gave. Put this off and put this off and put this off and put this off, and they prayed over that list, and they really considered what they needed to put off in their life. This. Because quite frankly, if it just lands on your ears, here and you nod and smile and go home and it makes no difference, then this is all useless. This stuff needs to go with us.

And I want you to know that my prayer regularly, my prayer is that God would use those of us who are teaching that the words that come out of our mouths are like seeds that get planted in a row. This week, week after week, a row of seeds gets planted and that over time, all of that grows into a forest that's producing eternal fruit. This is why we're here. We're not here to feel good. We're not here for entertainment.

We're not here for sin management. We're not here to feast on spiritual junk food. We are not here for a pat on the back or to be able to check the box. We come here as a body of believers to equip each other in this fight, to encourage and challenge one another. We're here to be hope to the world, to welcome the lost and the hopeless and the broken.

We are here to point the way to those who are far from God. On the way to get to God, we gather to worship. We gather to be convicted. We gather to be changed by his word. We gather to rest up and train up and power up and then get up and leave, right?

To go carry the light and the hope and the truth of the gospel into our homes, into our schools, our workplaces, our sports fields and our neighborhoods. And I have no interest in leading a church who gathers at the trough to gorge ourselves on something and then aimlessly stumbles back into the world. God has far more in mind for his people than that. He has far more in mind for his kingdom than that. And if you're one of those people who's here for a snack and some entertainment, I hope you're a little offended right now.

I really do. I hope you're uncomfortable. Because God has much more than this. God is calling his church to wake up and get in the fight. That's what this series is about.

Church. We're at war. We're at war. And this is what we've been talking about. But we've been talking about how the Bible tells us that this war is not against flesh and blood.

It's not against my spouse. It's not against my neighbor's ugly fence. It isn't against the jerk at work that took credit for our idea. It isn't against our bills. It isn't against knives and bombs and guns.

It isn't against world powers or political people or laws. This isn't to say that there Are not physical realities to this spiritual war? Of course. Of course we experience physical realities, consequences of evil. But while the world keeps telling us that there's a physical, rational reason for all things, predominantly lack of education, lack of civilization, trauma from childhood, poverty, whatever it is, right?

And the world tells us that if we just solve these physical and mental and psychological and social problems, that by civilizing and educating people and eradicating poverty, then we will overcome somehow racism and injustice and violence and evil. We can just look back through history at one of the most civilized, educated civilizations in history. And from it came World War II and the Holocaust and racism and terrible hatred and murder, Right? Paul tells us that the source of our struggle isn't physical, it's not psychological. It's actually the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

And he tells us that if we want to join in the fight, then education and wealth and psychology is not how we fight. There is a special kind of armor that we need to wear in order to be effective in this fight. Because similar to the way that you cannot fight a forest fire with a gun, right? It's the wrong kind of weapon. It's the wrong kind of weapon.

And you cannot fight spiritual power with physical weapons. It struck me this week that Paul, he just says, put on. Put on. He doesn't say, here's your shopping list. Go gather all this stuff up and find it.

He doesn't say, here's your build list. Go gather all the resources you have at your disposal and build this. He says, put it on. Put on the whole armor of God. This has a massive assumption built into it that we have access to the full armor of God.

It's all here. Now, think of it this way. When we show up to the recruiting office and we swear our allegiance to King Jesus through faith, repentance, and baptism, the recruiting officer takes us through a locked door into the armory and he says, here's everything you need. Put it all on. Put it all on.

Don't walk through and pick your favorite things to put on. Put it all on. Put the whole armor on. And if you are in Christ, you already have everything you need. All the pieces are available to you.

Put on the full armor of God. Now, just as important as knowing what we're up against is knowing what we're fighting for. We are fighting for shalom. We talked about this. Week one.

If this is a new idea to you, please go back and listen to week one. We're fighting to reconcile creation back to the way that God intended it to be. That's shalom. Now, last week we looked at the Belt of Truth and we looked at two elements of the Belt of Truth. We said the Belt of Truth is God's truth.

God's established as the standard of truth that we anchor our lives to. And we also said the other element of the Belt of Truth is us, our truthfulness, us being a people of truth, speaking the truth in love.

Now, today we'll look at the next piece of armor that Paul describes. It's the breastplate of righteousness. So what exactly is a breastplate? Well, the breastplate was the part of the armor that covered the chest and the back. It protected and shielded the most vital parts of the soldier, the heart, the lungs, the organs.

Right. By covering them up with something that could not be penetrated by the weapons used against it. This is significant. Now, in the first century, there were a few different kinds of breastplates. Chest armor, chest and back armor.

The first kind was like scales, large scales or strips of metal that kind of overlapped each other like fish scales, and were were tied together by leather straps. The second type was what we might think of from medieval knights. It was like a chainmail type armor. And both of these types of armor allowed soldiers to move freely. They were super practical in battle, and they were protective at the same time.

But there was a third type of chest armor of breastplate that was called the cuirass. Okay. The cuirass was what we might think of from the movie Gladiator where the guy comes out with a big giant metal breastplate, like one big piece, right? And it's got muscles built into it. In fact, they actually called it a muscle cuirass.

The muscle cuirass was made to make its wearer look as if they had the perfect muscular physique it formed to make them look like the idealized body. Think large pec muscles, an awesome six pack, Right. It seems that the muscle cuirass wasn't actually used in battle. It wasn't worn by regular soldiers. It was like a fancy dress breastplate that was ceremonial rather than practical.

You couldn't move in it very well. It was worn by the highest ranking soldiers, the most important soldiers, or even by the emperor himself. Now, here's what's really interesting to me as I was studying this, and hopefully I'm not making too much of this, but the Greek word Paul uses here, which is the word that we get our word thorax from, seems to be referring to the super, not the super practical scaled armor or the chainmail armor, but rather to something like this muscle cuirass, more of a ceremonial breastplate that makes the wearer look like the idealized body or physique. File this away, we'll come back to it. So Paul calls this breastplate the breastplate of righteousness.

But what exactly is righteousness? Well, Tim Keller has a great working definition for this. I think this is the best working definition for us in this context. It's the idea of presentability. Presentability.

What is righteous is presentable. Like there's a standard that is expected of us. And when we are righteous, we hold up to this standard when we are inspected. In the military, they have uniform inspections. And I don't know how they go in every branch, but my dad was in the Navy.

I called him this week, I said, tell me how that went. So this is what he told me. At boot camp, everyone is given a manual called the Blue Jacket Manual. And the manual is basically all sorts of things that you need to know to be a successful and acceptable sailor. Part of this manual describes the uniform.

There are exacting standards that make sure there are no errant threads on the seams, no wrinkles, perfectly sharp and aligned creases. I remember they would come down the shirt and go straight down the pants, and they all had to be just so lined up. Their haircut had to be exactly right. Even the undershirt showing under the shirt had to be just so. If anything on the uniform was not as it should be, they'd fail inspection.

So at inspection, the sailors would stand and present themselves before the inspecting officer, and he would begin meticulously inspecting them head to toe to ensure they met the standard. Anything out of place, they failed the inspection. But if the sailors just follow the blue Jacket manual, if they just have everything as it is expected or required to be, then they pass inspection. In this sense, they would be righteous. They would pass inspection.

So let's put these ideas together. Paul says that the second piece of armor in the whole armor of God, something that shields or protects our most vital parts, and it is something that when we wear it, we are presentable for inspection. Now, on week one, we talked about how in the beginning, in Genesis chapter 2, God is done creating and everything is good. It's just as it should be. It's how he wants it to be.

This is shalom. It's in the perfect shalom that there's something that's true of Adam and Eve that many of us have probably wondered, why is this true? We read in Genesis 2:25, and the man and his Wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Have you ever wondered why they were naked? It's partly to show us how significant righteousness really is.

See, in the beginning, when everything was as it should be, Adam and Eve were naked. And the actual word for nakedness, there is a very specific word. It means innocently naked, kind of like a toddler in the bathtub has no concern for their nakedness. They're not aware of it. They're not thinking of it, right?

Adam and Eve were naked, and they had no concern for their nakedness. Even in their nakedness, they could walk with God, and somehow they were presentable. Then we pick up in Genesis 3, where Satan comes in and convinces Eve and then Adam to eat the fruit, the forbidden fruit. And then what happens? We read in Genesis 3, starting in verse 8.

Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew they were naked. This is a different word. This is shamefully naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. So suddenly, suddenly, Adam and Eve go from naked, unashamed, and somehow still presentable to God to now, naked, ashamed, and hiding. Because they have been made aware that they're no longer presentable. They become aware that they are unrighteous, even though they don't even have a word for that yet. They feel it and they experience it.

And their unrighteousness powerfully opens their eyes to the reality that they need to find something to cover themselves. Because unrighteousness gives us this sense that we are uncovered and need to be covered. They quickly find some leaves to cover themselves. And then God, in His grace, he comes to them and he makes them coverings out of animal skins. He says, I'll give you a better covering, but it's going to cost the life of something to give it to you.

He provides a covering for them. And then from then on, all of mankind will feel this deep need to be covered. Not because we're cold, not to protect us from the sun, not because of any of those things, but because solely because we are unrighteous, unpresentable, and we know it. Now, fast forward. And God provides not just a temporary covering of unrighteousness through the death of something.

He provides a covering that's able to make us present forever through the death, the burial, and the resurrection of His Son, his perfect Son, Jesus. Through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, a breastplate of righteousness has been provided. A covering. It is a covering that cannot be earned. It cannot be constructed.

It can only be received. Now, we said that each week of this series we're going to talk about how in order to put something on, we have to take something off, right? To be able to put this piece of armor on. So what do we need to put off in order to put on righteousness? Well, if you're like me, the very first thing that comes to mind is the opposite of righteousness, unrighteousness.

We need to put off unrighteousness to put on righteousness. There's one major problem the Bible tells us we can't put off unrighteousness. It's like a tattoo on our hearts that's unremovable. All we can do is cover our unrighteousness. It's actually something else that we have to put off once we become unrighteous.

It's not a temporary condition. What we need to actually put off is, is self righteousness. Self righteousness. Now, I think that all of us, even those who don't believe that there's a God, we all want to be viewed as a good person, don't we? Everybody likes that idea.

It's a very good thing to be viewed as a good person. If you don't think that's true, just imagine how you would respond if I walked up to you and I said, you're not a good person, you're not a good spouse, you're not a good parent, you're not a good friend, Right? If I told you that you're not a good person, the very first thing that you're gonna be thinking of is all the reasons that you are, in fact, a good person. I do lots of good things. Quite frankly.

I volunteer. I'm generous, I'm a great mom, I provide for my family, I go to church. You fill in the blank. Immediately. We'd all be explaining how either the person saying this just doesn't understand or the standard they're using to measure is way off and how we, in fact, are good people.

This is self righteousness. This is self righteousness. And if you don't think you're trying to do it, you're lying to yourself. Because we're all trying to do feels justifiable to us. But this is where Satan, the father of lies, creeps in and he wages war against our minds and our emotions.

He convinces us that we either already have or can do enough good Things to undo our unrighteousness, our unpresentability. He convinces us that through our good behavior, we construct our own breastplate of righteousness. This is what every other world religion teaches. Actually, just like the military, your presentability is earned by following the rules and expectations to construct your own breastplate of righteousness. It's only Christianity that actually teaches that there is a standard that none of us can meet.

We fail, and the result of failing that standard is death. But it also teaches that the great inspector is also the great Redeemer. And he has provided this breastplate of righteousness for us through his son, Jesus. Now this is not to say that good behavior isn't part of the equation. In fact, when we put on the breastplate of righteousness, it not only makes us presentable, it also produces in us righteousness, our righteous behavior.

Righteous behavior rather, will not be what earns us righteousness, but it is certainly the result of having been made righteous. When you are righteous, you do righteous things. And yet many of us sitting in this room convinced ourselves that just by showing up today, by showing up each week singing songs, giving money, nodding our heads during the sermon, being in a small group, whatever other good behavior is how we earn our righteousness. We're like that person we all know or the celebrity we've all seen that wears so much makeup that when they don't have it on, they're unrecognizable. Some of us come here every single week covered in self righteousness.

That's really nothing more than thick, caked on clown makeup. Nothing more than fig leaves. And we go home, we wash it off, we go into the world and we're unrecognizable without our makeup. We're naked, we're ashamed, we're hiding, just like Adam and Eve. God's invitation.

Hear this, don't miss this. God's invitation today is to take off all the makeup, all the costumes, all the masks, all the cologne. Come naked as you are. Because he has a covering for us that's not temporary. The covering is eternal.

And we talked about this last week. We looked at second Corinthians where Paul says for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin. God made Jesus sin in his perfection. He made him sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God Church. Jesus did not die on a cross so that we could put on self righteousness makeup.

He did not die on a cross to provide lipstick for pigs. Jesus did not die on the cross to teach us to Be better at pretending to be righteous. Jesus died on the cross to transform our sin, our unpresentability into actual righteousness. Real, true, eternal righteousness. And when we put on this breastplate of righteousness, like that muscle cuirass, we present ourselves to God.

And when he looks at us, he sees the ideal perfect physique. When we have on the breastplate and he sees us, he sees Jesus.

Church. Righteousness is not worked for, it is not earned. It is a gift given. And Paul says, put it on. But first you have to take off that cheap, worthless, fake self righteousness.

Here's the crazy reality. When we put on his breastplate of righteousness, we are not beginning the process of becoming righteous. We are righteous. We are righteous. That's incredible.

And while like we talked about last week, we're still living in this reality and the limitations of this physical world and sin and death and brokenness. When we have put on the breastplate of righteousness, then in the spiritual realm, in this spiritual war, when Satan sees us coming, here's what he sees. He sees the blinding, powerful light of King Jesus, his righteousness. And all Satan can do is flee. He has no other options because we are more than conquerors.

And if God is for us, then he has no chance to be against us. But if this breastplate of righteousness protects our most vital parts, here's the brutal reality then unrighteousness and self righteousness, they leave our most vulnerable parts open unprotected. When we walk in unrighteousness and self righteousness, it's a wide open invitation to the enemy. When we're not dressed in righteousness, the enemy has no difficulty attacking our most vulnerable parts. In the book of Proverbs we read this instruction from King Solomon, this wisdom he says, above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.

I don't like this verse because it says that my heart is the problem. I would much rather it be your fault. I would much rather it be the situation's fault. I would much rather it be what I don't have's fault, right? He says guard your heart because everything you're living out right now came from there.

The evidence that you have not guarded your heart is that what you're living out is not righteousness. We guard our hearts by clothing ourselves in King Jesus righteousness. To put on the breastplate of righteousness is to protect our most vulnerable parts. You know I told you about what my dad said about the Navy, the uniform inspections. He said the savviest sailors would have one extra uniform that they kept in the closet that they only pulled out for inspections.

It was their best uniform, right? It was their best uniform. And some of us are here today or listening online and we're thinking that we're working the system because we have shown up with our best costume for righteousness. And it's really, really good. It's a really good counterfeit.

And we may have fooled the people around us, but make no mistake, we have not fooled the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. And we have certainly not fooled the great inspector God himself.

And if this is true of you today, whether you've been a Christian for a long time or today you want to join this side of the battle for the first time, Jesus says come. He says, come as you are broken, needy, naked, come lay all that down. Lay down all the work, all the striving, all the makeup, all the trying, all the attempts to prove yourself, even your best righteousness costume, lay it down. Just come and be clothed in his righteousness. He says this is a free gift.

You can stop all the sweating and trying. All you have to do is lay down your cheap, fake breastplate of self righteousness and put on his free, powerful, perfect and eternal righteousness. I love this quote from a guy named B.B. warfield. He said, there is nothing in us or done by us at any stage of our earthly development because of which we are acceptable to God.

We must always be accepted for Christ's sake or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us. Only when we believe it is just as true. After we have believed, it will continue to be just as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing, nor does the nature of our relation to him or to God through Him ever alter.

No matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be, it is always on his blood and righteousness alone that we can rest. So I want to invite you. I want to invite you to come now, to come now. We're going to sing a few songs. We're going to celebrate what Christ has done.

And as we do, we're going to have some people over here on the ramp. They're going to be praying, they're going to be available. They can pray with you, talk with you, encourage you, answer some questions that you have. Just sit and be quiet with you. Listen, if you want to give your life to Jesus or you need some help getting that stubborn, clunky, useless breastplate of self righteousness off we want to help.

So you can feel free over these next few songs, all through the rest of the service. Come over. They'll be waiting. They'll be available. And let me tell you, if you are unsure or insecure today, if you feel like getting up in this room and walking across the room is just going to show everybody how naked you are, guess what?

Me too. Me, too. You are in a room full of people who have either already walked the naked walk across the room or wish they had the strength to do it. Okay? So don't be ashamed today.

Come, come.