The Breastplate of Righteousness

Given at the Tacoma Men's Weekend. As an element of the armor of God, the breastplate of righteousness is about God's righteousness. You can't leave the armor in the trunk of the car because the battle never stops. We wear it twenty-four hours a day, and as we wear it God changes who we are.

Transcript

This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors. It is provided to assist those who may not be able to listen to the message.

In 1976, I remember reading about this, a motorcycle policeman in Los Angeles, it was a suburb, he saw a red pickup that ran a stop sign. And he didn't think much about it. He, you know, pulled in behind him, pulled him over, sort of just leisurely got out of his patrol car, walked up to the window. The guy had a gun, the slug hit him right square in the chest, knocked him 7 feet through the air. There was just silence. The man who shot him didn't do anything. He just shot him, he hit the ground. And then, in this weird, surreal way, he sort of staggered up, pulled out his service revolver, the shooter just froze, and he killed him. A couple months later, in Inglewood, California, a 27-year-old policeman was standing outside a door. They were going to serve an arrest warrant to a drug dealer. And he was standing there with some other policemen, and I don't know whether someone pounded on the door, but they let him know there were police out there. Four slugs came through, one hit him square in the chest. The coroner said he died within 60 seconds. Now, the difference between those two events that just happened months apart was one had his Kevlar on and one did not. So you can believe in body armor. You can be trained in body armor. But if you're not wearing it, when the combat comes, it's rather useless, because that young man, he was only 27, his was out in the trunk of the car. We've been talking about the armor of God, and I want to talk about putting it on. And what that means, we're in this analogy, and Paul uses all these analogies, but as we've talked, even already today, we keep breaking down those analogies into spiritual reality, how it applies, what it means, and I want to continue to do that. If you look at your diagram of the righteousness of God that we went through, and I think this is actually going to be shown for those who are watching online. In this diagram, I forgot mine, and this one's not up here. Hold on a second, let me give a book.

Are they able to see this online? Okay, good, thank you. We talked about how this breastplate of righteousness really is about God's righteousness, and God puts something on us, and that was the point Paul was making, that protects us, and specifically protects the vital organs, of course, of the lungs, but the heart. And this really, Paul's message is about protecting the heart in a spiritual sense. A heart is our deepest thoughts, our emotions, our motivations. And we looked at God's righteousness, and I just want to cover it a little bit so that those who are watching online can pick up where we're taking off here, because we covered this earlier this morning. God's righteousness, righteousness just means right. God is right. And the reason God is right is because He's perfect goodness, perfect justice, and perfect love, which from a human standpoint, can't be connected together. It's so complex. I mean, how can you have perfect goodness, but then you have perfect justice, which means that you have to condemn everyone to death, because they don't have perfect goodness. Well, you saved them through perfect love. Yeah. Does that mean you just give up your goodness and say, I forgive you? And so we went through and showed how it is through God's righteousness, and Paul specifically says it's His righteousness, which is displayed in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for us so that we can be justified or declared righteous. We get to go before Him. And as we go before Him, He allows this relationship to form. And as time goes on, He begins to develop His righteousness in us. And that's what we're going to talk about now, is putting on righteousness. It's more than just putting on this heavy, you know, chest plate to protect us. There's something more here. Paul uses the analogies, but we've got to break it down. Let's go to Ephesians 4. Not every verse, but most verses we're going to look at are still back with Paul, since it's his analogy. I think when you use a lot of analogies in the Bible, it's good to find what that writer meant by the analogy. What did that person that wrote it, what did they mean? And of course, Paul uses sermon analogies over and over and over again. Let's look at Ephesians 4. Let's go to verse 20.

He says, and it's breaking in the middle of a thought, but we sort of got to start here to catch what he's going to say next. But you have not so learned Christ. He was telling them, don't walk like everybody else in your society.

The church at Ephesus was predominantly Gentiles. They had come out of paganism, and they were going through massive changes in their life. There were some Jewish people in the church there in Ephesus, but it was predominantly Gentiles, as many of these churches were, that Paul writes to. And he tells them, now you can't be like everybody else, all the nations around you, what you've been used to, as you become Christian.

So he says, but you have not so learned Christ. Indeed, if you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus, this goes back to we can know about God, but we also have to know about Christ. It is the problem with Judaism. It's why Judaism doesn't ever break through into a deeper relationship with God. They know about God. They don't know about Christ. So there's a limitation to where Judaism can go.

Even though they are worshiping the true God, there's a limitation. And so he's telling them, I taught you Christ, which is revealing to you who God is. So the truth is in this message about God sending Christ and what He's doing in Him. And then he goes on, that you put off concerning your former conduct the old man, which goes corrupt according to the seatful lust.

To put on the armor of God, you have to first put off something. This putting off is more than just, okay, I've got to take off some clothes to put on the armor. I'm going to stretch his analogies a little bit. God strips you down naked, and then says, now let's put some armor on you. He takes everything off of us. He strips us down naked so there's nothing left but standing there in embarrassment and then says, okay, now let's clothe you.

But He's going to be talking here about putting on something to become a new person. And we're going to see how these things tie together as we go through some of these verses. That you put off concerning your former conduct the old man, which goes corrupt according to the deceitful lust, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. This battle takes place, as Mr. Corbett was saying in the sermonette, it's inside who we are.

And it's so difficult because our nature is being changed. And we sort of like our nature. It's who we are. I mean, we're taking on a bit of a new identity, right? The old man? That's who we are. We're losing some of our identity in the spirit. And of course, this takes God's spirit interacting with us.

So we're taking off all these filthy, dirty clothes that we have, our unrighteousness, where God's stripping them off of us until we're stripped down naked. And then He puts some undergarments on us and sticks this armor on us. But the reality is, all this armor is an analogy for what's actually happening inside our hearts and minds. It's happening inside of us. Because look what He says.

It's renewing your mind, right? And then He says that you put on the new man, which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. And holiness and righteousness are connected. Righteousness is God being right. Holiness is Him declaring, this is for me. This is special. This is for me. He sets aside things. He sets aside time. This is holy time. He sets aside places.

Jerusalem is a holy place for Him to come to. It's not exactly holy right now, but He's coming to it to make it holy. He makes people holy. And you and I have been set aside for Him. That's a hard thing to think about. The God Almighty set us aside and said, you're holy for me. We are set aside. His righteousness, and to do His righteousness, means that we're set aside now specifically for Him. We have a purpose that He wants us to do. He wants in our lives. And in that purpose, we're learning righteousness by the renewing of the mind, and we literally have to be stripped down.

And you know, some of the things that were comments that we made this morning about how hard certain things are, why can't I move forward quicker, and this and that, why I don't feel worthy. That's because He's stripping off. But I've worn that shirt for years. Yeah, for 40 years. It's time to rip it off.

It's got holes in it. It's dirty. It's useless. So God takes it off. But I know this shirt. I've worn it for 40 years. No, we've got to take everything off. And then we start re-clothing it. But the reality is, no, we take an old person and we rebuild them into a new person. God is not...let me put it this way. When God comes into our minds, remember I mentioned this morning, He actually says, I will abide in you.

Because His Spirit is with us and then it's in us. Jesus said, I will abide in you. You will abide in me. He comes into this house to live. He doesn't come in here to remodel us. He comes in to strip us down and make us into a new house. You keep your personality. We keep who we are.

I mean, not God doesn't want to destroy who we are because we're each unique children. But He really wants to take away everything that's in us that can be evil. He wants to take it out of us. So He's not remodeling you. He's tearing you down from the inside out to rebuild you.

And that's why this is tough. That's why sometimes that doesn't even make sense to us what He's doing. Because He's literally rebuilding us. The new man has to be the new man. Because God's Spirit is in us. So the first thing He says here, and we're going to tie this together, is, okay, you've got to take off this guy. You're going to put on somebody. You're going to take this one off. So there's the battle. There's the war we'll fight to the day we die.

You know what's good about this? When you're resurrected, the old man doesn't go. All those things we fight disappear when we're changed. You know why? Because God's Spirit is in us forever. I mean, it's not like God puts His Spirit in us, and at the resurrection He takes it back. We are in a relationship with God forever, in which He is in us, and we are in Him. And we give up something. You actually give up a little bit of your will in this transaction.

You give up the will that causes you to sin. And it's so hard to give that up, because it's a piece of us. Yeah, free will is nice. God wants to say have free will, but not the free will to do evil, because He will not abide with evil forever. He just won't. And you and I are giving up. I can't imagine being changed and being in the kingdom, and then one day telling Christ, well, He's reigned on the earth for a thousand years.

No, I don't want to do that. You want to live in hell. Be a spirit being and become evil. That's hell. That is a, I mean, in the Protestant sense, not the Biblical sense. That would be torture forever. So when we're changed, we give something up.

And you're giving up now. I'm giving it up now. We're having the old person, the person that's part of our nature that's against God, being systematically destroyed by God. And it's unpleasant at times, and it's painful at times. And God's rebuilding a new person in us. And each one of us is going to be unique. Each one of us is going to have our own personality. Each one of us is going to have our own consciousness.

But we're going to reach the potential that God wants us to be. So the old person has to be stripped down naked in this analogy, and a new person has to be put on. Okay? If you don't do that, you will still feel a need to put on something.

Now, everybody has a spiritual need. If you take a group of people, isolate them for 500 years in the wilderness, they will come up with some kind of religion. We're designed to need God. We're designed to absolutely desire God. And if we don't know God, we'll make up a God. We'll do something because it's designed in us. Well, if you come into the knowledge of God, and you come to the knowledge of the Scriptures, and we don't put on the breastplate of righteousness but His righteousness, here's what we do.

Luke 18.

I like Luke's account here because Luke wasn't there. So Luke tends to add comments from what people have told him. So sometimes his stories have a little commentary to it because he wasn't there, and people are telling him the stories. Luke 18 verse 9. Now, this could just say that Jesus told a parable, which I think is how Matthew does it. But look what Luke does. And he, Jesus, spoke this parable to some, and here was their problem. They trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. They trusted in their rightness. They trusted in their righteousness. They had a breastplate on of righteousness, but it wasn't God's. It was a breastplate of their own self-righteousness, and this is one of those great dangers we face. It's so easy to go here where we put on a breastplate. It seems righteous. In fact, we can talk about all the righteous things we do. I do this. I do that. Look, I'm righteous, and they are righteous things we're doing. But this righteousness is a whole lot more than doing a few right—doing some things. It's about becoming righteous. The righteousness of God is being developed in us. And this is a great danger we have because we know so much. We know so much because God's blessed us. God has blessed us. And I know I get this all the time, especially from younger people in the church. How do we know we're right? I said, you've got to prove it. You've got to prove it in the Scripture, and you try to give them some things to do, work with them a little bit. And most of the time it's like, the options really aren't that good. The options, they don't make sense after a while. Okay? Then you're right. But see, what happens is they're told in this woke society, you can never be—everybody's right. It's not that you can't be right. Everybody's right. So we believe in everything and nothing at the same time, which is absolute confusion. No, if we believe we're right, it's because God gave us something. So it goes on. You know this, but I'm going to read it anyways. I mean, this is one of the most common sections of the Scripture. Two men, Jesus said, went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. Now, I would say this about Pharisees. If I would have lived in first century Judaism, I'd have been a Pharisee.

I want everything right, and I'm going to do it right, and if you don't do it right, I'm here to condemn you. And God's going to be proud of me, I would have probably been a Pharisee.

The Pharisee stood and prayed with himself, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even this tax collector. And you know what? He probably wasn't an extortioner. He probably was unjust, but he didn't know what it meant. He probably wasn't an adulterer. He probably wasn't. Somebody looked at himself and he said, Look, I don't, I don't, I keep the commandment. I do a righteous thing. I do not cheat on my wife. I do a righteous thing. I've never worshipped idols. I do a righteous thing. I've never stole. I do a righteous thing. I've kept the Sabbath my whole life. And you know what? He probably had. And even look at this tax collector over here. The scum of the earth. A Jew that works for the Romans. A Jew that works for the beast power. How could that be? He said, So thank you, I'm not like him. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess. And he did. He probably fasted twice a week. He probably tithed meticulously.

And the tax collector, standing afar off, will not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God be merciful to me. I am a sinner. We don't know much about the tax collector, except that he was a practicing Jew. Because he's in the temple. So he's a practicing Jew that's in the temple. And he looks at himself and says, I don't have a right to come to you because of who I am. I tell you, Jesus said, this man went down to his house justified. This man, the tax collector, now it doesn't say he was saved. It says, God said, I pronounce you righteous to come talk to me. Come talk to me. I don't know what God did with his life later, but God interacts with all kinds of people just because he does.

We say, well, God can't interact with people that aren't in a church. Then how did you get into the church? He interacted with you before you came in. Of course he interacts with people. I think God does all kinds of things because of that goodness aspect of him. He just does it. There's people to cry out to him, and he maybe helps them or saves them. And then they never go any farther, and they never end up in a truly justified relationship with God. But there's this point where he says, and he says it here, this man was allowed to talk to God. And the man who did it all right wasn't. Because for all his deeds, he wore his armor with self-righteousness. It was a self-righteous armor. He says he went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. I've always found that story so interesting because, once again, God didn't say—or Jesus didn't say he offered salvation to them. He offered him a relationship. He could come to God. He could talk to God. And God interacted in his life in however way God wanted to. Sometimes we limit God. You know, God can do whatever he wants because he's good, and whatever he does is going to be right. So he does whatever he wants.

But the Pharisee did seem to do everything right.

But it wasn't the righteousness of God. It was his self-righteousness. And that's the great danger we face when we take off the old man. What are we putting on? We could put on certain aspects of the truth, but if it's not the righteousness of God, it's only bits and pieces of elements of the truth. Remember the truth and righteousness are connected. We've already showed that. So you get bits and pieces of the truth and bits and pieces of righteousness. But you know, who wants to walk into battle with armor with giant holes in it? And I'll get weaknesses in it.

Let's go to Romans 13. So now we've got to talk about the new man a little bit. So let's go back to the Paul.

We're almost 13, and let's go to verse 11.

And he's talking about something, a different subject, but he's going to lead into a point here. So I want to read all of it so we get the context, and he's going to lead into a point. And do this, he's telling them how they should love your neighbors yourself. You know, loving your neighbors first is before this, the context leads into this. And do this, knowing the time that now is high, or time, to wake out of sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand, therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let's put on the armor of light. All of a sudden he's talking about armor again. He would mix these metaphors, which Paul tended to do. Light and darkness, John talks about all the time. John uses light and darkness constantly. God is light, darkness is Satan. God or evil or righteousness is light, unrighteousness is darkness. He uses this all the time. Light and dark, light and dark. And so Paul uses this, and he says that we should put on the armor of light so we come out of the darkness. Let us walk properly, as in the day, so let us live properly. That's why the early Christians were known as the Way. It was a way of life. Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy, not in all this unrighteousness. See, we can start to classify all kinds of things in the Bible. That's righteous, that's unrighteous, that's good, that's evil, right? So this is unrighteousness. Then he says, okay, we just read, we said, take off all the old clothes so that the old man's naked. Now let's put on the clothing of God. But here he explains what he really means. And put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lust.

I said the armor of righteousness, this breastplate, is literally the righteousness of God, right? It can't be our righteousness. Now, we are made righteous from it, and now Paul is very specific. How do you become righteous? Well, you start to live like Jesus Christ, that's how.

When Jesus Christ said, if you don't love me—and we know we're supposed to love God the Father. He says, if you don't love me more than your mother, father, sister, brother, own life also, you can't be my disciple. He meant that. He has to be that important so that we literally become more and more like our older brother. He became a brother for us. He didn't have to do that. He left what he was in heaven to become a brother to us, to go back. He became our brother so that we can have a brother to emulate. I didn't have an older brother. I always wanted—I had a brother that died as a child, and I wanted to be his older brother. I had the older brother to two sisters as just like, that's not fun, you know. But a brother to another brother, and I was, man, that was something. I was going to be a brother, but it didn't work out. It wasn't God's plan. He came as an older brother, and he says, now, put me on. He says that we have to put off the part of us that God will not accept, and put on the part of us that becomes like Jesus Christ.

The Pharisee would not have understood that. Now, some Pharisees did, but in the parable, the point of the Pharisee is, I am righteous because I do all these things God tells me to do. But inside, he wasn't a child of God.

Now, some Pharisees did become children of God. They're in the church. You see them in the Bible in the church. Some did not. In fact, Judaism as a whole rejected Jesus Christ. As a whole, they rejected Jesus Christ. They rejected their brother. They just couldn't accept this Galilean, uneducated, probably out of fornication, they couldn't accept him as being the Messiah. Even with the miracles and everything else. So when we look at, we talked about Ephesians 6, we look at how we're to put on Jesus Christ what we have and what we're going to continue to get today and tomorrow. Our instructions in how do you put on Jesus Christ? Truth. In fact, we just read, the truth is in Jesus Christ. We put on righteousness, not ours, but God's, which is revealed to us through the work of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Peace, which is how God is reconciling Himself, this lost humanity back to Him. Faith, having absolute trust in the goodness and justice and the love of God. Salvation. That is God's desire and will to save us from the mess we're in. And from the death we can't escape. We can't escape death. It's out there waiting for us, all of us, whenever God says so. And the older I get, the more I think, it's closer than it used to be.

And so He has salvation for us. And then the Word of God. How this gives us what we need in learning how to live life every day. That's what we're covering. And as we do this, we begin to put on the armor. But in reality, you're beginning to become more and more like your older brother. That's the reality. So we put off the man, the old man. We put on the armor of light, which means now we're putting on Jesus Christ. These are the foundational cores of being the new man. The foundational core of being the new man. Ok, Colossians 3.

Paul, once again, in typical Pauline fashion, he's always putting something on and putting something off, because he's making a point over and over again. He says in verse 8, But now you yourselves are to put off... Ok, this is the old clothes you've got to rip off of you and throw away. They're not even worth keeping. Just burn them up. Put off all these anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Now, Paul has all kinds of sin lists. Oh, he just makes list after list after list all through his writings. And what's the point he's making? He's always making a point. These are the things that have to be eradicated from our character. This is what righteousness can't live with. This is unrighteousness. And God will be removing these things from us.

Sometimes we don't even know we have some of these things. I remember... I've had this a couple of times where a person has come to me six months after baptism and said, I didn't receive God's Spirit. And I know what's going to... At least every time that I've dealt with this, I knew what was going to happen next. I said, tell me why. I had no idea I had so many sins. I said, you couldn't know you had so many sins until God got in there. God started living in you, now the light's on, and oh, you see sins you didn't know yet. But I didn't repent of them. I said, well, you didn't know you had them. You're supposed to repent of them now. I said, God's just working with you. That's all. Welcome to Christianity. A constant joy, and at the same time an uneasiness in, okay, what are you going to work on next? What are you going to work on next?

He says, do not lie to one another. Scent you have what? Put off the old man with his deeds. And so this thing of putting on and putting off sort of breaks down now, doesn't it? His analogy sort of breaks out, because we're not just putting up, we're becoming something, which is the point he's making. The old person is dying. The old person is dying day by day and keeps trying to fight back. And the new man is growing day by day and keeps trying to struggle, with God's help, to kill the old man. This is the warfare that was talked about in the sermon. It's internal. It's inside. And so when we look at these, whether it's salvation or the word or the faith, those aren't right. Those aren't...that's not an analogy anymore. Righteousness. Those aren't analogies anymore. That's the reality. That's the reality Paul is teaching through his analogy.

And we have to take these things, and we have to love them. We have to live them. The love of the truth, the love of faith, the loving God. This is where we're really going to struggle as time goes on. Because we're not careful. The world's going to wear us out.

It's just going to wear us out. And we can't let it wear us out. And the only way we won't is with God Almighty helping us. That's how. God will let that happen if we hold on to God. He won't let it wear us out.

He goes on and has put on a new man who is renewed in knowledge. So we have to have the knowledge. We have to know the truth. We have to know our beliefs, where they come from, which was talked about already today. They're in here. And we don't know everything that's in here. I'm amazed more and more what I don't know. I'm amazed what I don't know. What we do know is enough for God to do the work He promised in us. He promises, according to what Paul wrote in Philippians, to complete the work He started in us. You can go ask Him to complete that promise. When you feel like, no, I can't go on anymore. No, this won't work. I give up. You go to Him and say, I can't do this. You promised. You promised. And He'll do the work. He says He would. He says, I'll do this in you. And the righteousness of God, the way He is, His character, His being, He guarantees it. When He promises something, He's going to do it. And He's going to make sure He finishes that work in every one of us. We just have to sometimes go ask Him to remind us, to help us, to see that clearly. To throw ourselves down and say, I'm a little kid here and I don't know how to do this. And you let Him do it. You let Him do it. Then He goes on, having put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge, according to the image of Him who created Him. That's a very packed statement. According to the image of who created Him, who created us? Jesus Christ. God the Father through Jesus Christ. In other words, in the very image of God. Well, what is the image of God? Well, let's look at Jesus Christ. So we have an image, in a way. We have something we can understand. I don't mean to make Him into an image, but do you know what I mean? We have something we can understand. We have something we can understand. Look at your brother who created you, and that is the image that I'm making you into. And He has the power to do that, as long as we submit. He won't take away our free will. He won't make us... He can possess us and make us do whatever we want. And God won't do that. That's because of His goodness. He gave it to us, and He won't come, just force us. He won't. He has the power to do so.

But that goodness in Him says, I gave you something, and it's for you, and I'm not going to just come, strip that away, make you into an animal. He's not going to make us a dog. He's not going to do that. And then He says something interesting, then, because of this, in the context of the Church. Once again, in Colossians, He's dealing with how do all these pagans come into the Church, and how does that work? Because they're coming from all different backgrounds. He says, where there is neither. Where is He talking about? He's talking about this new man who is putting on Jesus Christ, who's made in the image of Jesus Christ. There's neither Greeks nor Jews. They're circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, and slavery-free. But Christ is all in all.

And there's another place that it talks about God being all in all. Remember I said earlier, when we're changed, God will still be in us. The whole purpose is for God to be all in all. We are really a family. We're really going to be part of the God family. And for that to happen, God will be living not just separate from us, but in us, in a way that just now, as we just understand it in a small way, because God's in us. But He's going to be living in us forever, in this connection. Once again, He's not possessing you. In this connection between us and Him forever. And this connection between us and Christ forever that can never be broken. He will be all in all.

I still haven't wrapped my mind around that one. He doesn't say, yeah, I'll see you once in a while, you know? He'll show up once in a while and I'll see you. Now, just like God doesn't show up in your life right now once in a while, God is there every day of your life, every moment of your life. God is here. Not, I want to say that because people stand, well, you're God. No. God the Father puts His Spirit in us. And in doing so, we are connected to Him. We are just connected to God. It doesn't come and go. So we have a relationship with God all the time. We just don't know it. He knows it. We drift away. We do different things, right? But we're in relation with God all the time. This is the breastplate of righteousness, is this. It's putting on Jesus Christ. That righteousness of God, we've looked at that as, okay, then I must become righteous. Yes, how does that happen? Because God has Christ come live in us and God through His Spirit guides us. He molds us. He shapes us. He turns us into His sons. And for us here, it's very personal. It's a son. I'll tell you something about God. This is my opinion. I try to say, what's my opinion? I look at women, and I think, and as a dad, I think He has a soft spot for them. I think He'll be harder on us sometimes, because I am on my son, my daughters. I love them all the same. I expect something a little different out of Him at times. And that's why He says, in the script where Peter says, if you don't treat them according to knowledge, it will hinder your prayers. And I've had times when I know God's really not listening to me, and it's because I'm not treating my wife right. He said, son, don't come talk to me. You haven't been treating my daughter very nice. You go deal with that, and then we'll talk. Oh, okay. Oh, but I think she's wrong. Does that matter? Well, not according to Christ, but... Okay. Like a little kid sometimes. But it's like, don't you go deal with her, because you can't treat my daughter like that. Yeah, that's what I'd be. You know? I'd go to my son-in-law and say, come on, man, you can't treat her that way. Right? I think he has a soft spot for them. I really do. And that's okay. That's okay, because I... As a male, I understand that. That's who he is.

Let's go to 2 Corinthians 3.

You say, I don't understand. I've had two conversations since I've been here, where someone has said something like, man, I look in the mirror in the morning and I think, man, what's God going to do with me? I have a long ways to go, but it's been twice, different people have talked about looking in the mirror. Once again, I'll do it shorthand here, because this is a long passage in which Paul is going through a lot of stuff. And...

He's talking about the bride of Christ being written in our hearts. He's talking about the New Covenant and the Old Covenant and why the New Covenant is better, and the New Covenant is better because God sends His Spirit into us. So this is the whole context of this. And then in verse 17, he says, Now the Lord is the Spirit. Christ is the Spirit. Now the Father is the Spirit, too. That's why the Spirit isn't a third person. It's the mind, the power, the glory of God.

If you really want to think about this, think about the pillar of fire in the wilderness, leading the Israelites. That's called the glory of God. The temple was filled with Solomon's temple, with the glory of God. The Holy Spirit in us is called the glory of God. That's a little hard, too. Think about that one a little bit. God says, now I'm coming to be with you, to do what you cannot do, if you'll just follow, if you'll just submit. He says, but the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, because he's talking about how Moses had to have a veiled face when he came down from seeing God in Mount Sinai, well, where have the glory of God in us? We don't have a veiled face. And he said that veil is on the Jews today when they look at the Scripture. They don't see the New Testament as having value, because they don't accept Jesus Christ. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into that same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. When we look in the spiritual mirror, we see ourselves, and it's a little discouraging. And then you look a little bit, and it's like, whoa, that's not me. No, it is me. We're watching in that spiritual image, God transforming us into His sons. That's what we're watching. We're watching Him transform us into His spiritual sons, and every once in a while we'll look and say, I'm a little bit like Christ, just a little bit, but it's there. This is the work God is doing. That's a remarkable statement, isn't it? We, He says, the Church, those with God's Spirit, look into our mirror, because we're part of the New Covenant, we have God's Spirit in us, and we're supposed to see Christ. It's a very hazy image there, because mainly we see ourselves. But we're slowly being transformed. That's another one of those big concepts. When He says, you are my sons and daughters, He means it. And we will look like the rest of the family. We'll look like our brother, spiritually speaking. We'll look different, because God made us different. He wants us to be different. In a spiritual sense, we're going to look more and more like Jesus Christ as we go on. And He promises to complete that work. Only we can keep Him from keeping that work by just saying no. He promises. And we're allowed to go say, you promised. Help me.

I want you to look at the diagram. Once again, I gave you a lot more stuff than you could ever use in this sermon. But it's on page 2 of the Put on the Whole Armor of God section.

I mean, it's very simple. I'd simply take what Paul says about the armor of God and about putting it off the only hand. I put it into just a simple chart. And this is what God is doing. It's under the Sabbath tab on page 2. Put off the old man. That's how we start. You've got to be stripped down naked first. God says, I've got to strip you down naked first. And then you put on the armor of God, which we're studying. But actually we're putting on the new man, Jesus Christ. We're becoming someone new. We're becoming the children of God. And then it says, we read, Christ becomes all in all. That's the goal. That's the goal. Billions of children in a family. What we look at at the end of the Bible is billions of children in the family of God. And Christ is all in all. And God says, good. Now we can start. Now we can start. I have no idea what happens after that. I have no idea. I mean, I've heard all kinds of ideas. I have no idea. But this is what God... Now we can start. We finally have the family. And Christ is all in all. There's never going to be another Satan again. That's never going to happen. There's got to be no evil, because God's righteousness is going to live in those who accepted God's righteousness, living in us.

Big concepts, but we've got to go back and review them from time to time. The armor of God isn't an intellectual exercise. It's a study in an analogy of what God is doing in you so that you can be His children. So you can be His sons.

You know, I had a good dad, so I appreciate the father-son relationship. I know a lot of men that didn't. And they still long for some kind of father relationship sometimes. Well, you have a father. You have a father. I have a father that's not like any physical father. We have a brother that's not like any physical brother. And then He says, okay, guys, you all become brothers. We all have to become brothers. And then He has a family. Whether you want to participate in this battle or not, you're already in it. Sorry, you can't say, I don't want to live in this battle. You're in it. You either lose and let Satan take you over, or you let God win. That's the only choices we have.

Fighting with this armor on, fighting with the internal changes that's happening, so God wins. Or we give up and Satan wins. But the battle's already begun. You've been involved in it probably your whole lives. Just did not. Before you even came to God, you were involved in it.

What an incredible opportunity. What an incredible truth. And no matter how great this struggled, you can't leave the armor in the trunk of the car. Because the battle never stops. We wear it 24 hours a day, and as we wear it, it changes who we are, as God changes us. And when we are clothed in this, it's not an external force. But actually, internally, we will begin to live and understand, and part of our inner being will be truth and righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, and His word. Everything that we're talking about in this week.

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Gary Petty is a 1978 graduate of Ambassador College with a BS in mass communications. He worked for six years in radio in Pennsylvania and Texas. He was ordained a minister in 1984 and has served congregations in Longview and Houston Texas; Rockford, Illinois; Janesville and Beloit, Wisconsin; and San Antonio, Austin and Waco, Texas. He presently pastors United Church of God congregations in Nashville, Murfreesboro and Jackson, Tennessee.

Gary says he's "excited to be a part of preaching the good news of God's Kingdom over the airwaves," and "trusts the material presented will make a helpful difference in people's lives, bringing them closer to a relationship with their heavenly Father."