Michael Youssef - The Shoes, Belt, and Breastplate
I think we all know that when God our Father, who is the Father of all truth, how many of the truth? All truth. Is pushed out of any society or any group of people, the father of lies himself takes his place, and it is, Satan’s absolute dedication and mission is to impugn the truth, why? Because he knows full well that if he can impugn the truth, he can try to impugn the Lord, who is the truth. Think about it this way. If man’s greatest strength, if man’s greatest strength is to trust God, can I get an amen, then Satan’s mission is to make him distrust God.
Now, to bring this from generality to specifically to the Christian church, when Satan succeeds in making so-called Christian or a churchgoer to doubt God’s Word, to doubt God’s goodness, God’s love, God’s power, God’s mercy, and God’s sufficiency, then he has succeeded in having that person join him in impugning the truth. And when so-called a Christian or a churchgoer becomes so hopelessly anxious, depressed, despondent, and hopeless, he joins Satan in impugning the trustworthiness of God. Beloved, we seeing this with our own eyes. All you need to do, open your eyes, look what is happening all around us. We are seeing this. We seeing how Satan is attacking Christians through biblical confusion and through falsehoods.
We seeing it with our own eyes literally every day, and that is why the apostle Paul warns us in chapter 4, verse 14 that they are tossed here and there by waves and carried about every wind of doctrine. Every newfangled idea that comes in, well, we just follow it. Let me ask you this. How many times have you heard a popular preacher say something like this? «Well, the Bible is just too difficult to understand. The Bible is full of contradictions». Or hear this one, «You may believe the Bible, but your children and your grandchildren don’t believe the Bible, so get on with it and join them». Here’s another one, «So many parts of the Bible are difficult to explain, like Jonah and the whale and the flood,» and on and on and on.
Beloved, the one thing that Satan loves the most is when they preach specifically that Genesis is a myth and Revelation is a mystery. As soon as you hear that, you know Satan’s speaking through them. Do you know why? Because Satan hates Genesis and Revelation, because in Genesis his condemnation is announced and in Revelation it’s carried out, amen. We can see now the vital importance of why the Word of God gives us the full armor of God or the whole armor of God. We started, again, in the last message. Ephesians chapter 6, turn to it please, verses 14 to 17, he gives us seven, seven pieces of equipment, the pieces of the armor, equipment which God provides for his children.
This is God’s provision. Don’t underestimate it. Don’t undermine it. It is God’s provision for his children. Why did God give us those seven pieces of equipment? So that we withstand the onslaught of Satan and his demons, and that is why constantly we must remind ourselves, we must constantly affirm these seven pieces of equipment. We’re going to look at the first three today, and then the rest in the coming weeks. Please listen to me. There can be no true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ without these first three. It can’t be with any of them, but those three are permanent. And so the first one is the belt of truth, the second is the breastplate of righteousness, and the third is the footwear of the gospel.
And so, again, we’re going to go over these three and the rest in the next message. Look with me please at the first half of verse 14, Ephesians 6, first half. «Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with the belt of truth». That’s the old translation, and I love it. In the NIV puts it this way. «Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled,» or wrapped, «around your waist». The Christian life is a combat zone, and because of that combat zone, and back then combat was hand-to-hand. It wasn’t long distance and shooting, but it was literally hand-to-hand. And therefore this tunic will get in the way if you’re fighting hand-to-hand.
That is why this tunic actually, if it’s left alone, floating around in the breeze, if you leave it untucked before the battle, that tunic must be cinched up and tucked in that heavy leather belt known as the belt of truth in order be all around the waist and nothing floating around. Having your tunic tucked inside the belt is a sign of readiness, it is a sign of preparedness. And, my beloved friends, any serious-minded soldiers must always, always, always, always be in a state of readiness. And for us believers who love the Lord Jesus, our readiness for the spiritual battle, for the spiritual war always starts with the truth. Can I get an amen? Oh, listen. Being girded by biblical truth is a make-or-break for spiritual victory.
The reason we are seeing people, and I’ve seen some and I know them personally, who ten or twenty years ago they were on fire for God, and now they’ve surrendered to the enemy of their soul completely, that’s because they never took seriously the vital importance of fully and totally being girded by biblical truth. And the only way that you confront these deceptive spirits is by the truth of the Word of God, and that is why the belt of truth is a permanent fixture. It’s a permanent item. It’s a permanent equipment. You don’t take it on or off. Please grasp this. To be spiritually content with mediocrity, with lethargy, with indifference, with half-hearted commitment, that is to fail to gird your loins with the belt of truth, and truthfully, you leave yourself vulnerable to Satan’s schemes and attacks. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness.
Look at the second half of verse 14, Ephesians 6. Now, of course, in modern days many of our police officers, they wear a bulletproof vest. Now, in Rome the soldier would never go to battle without the breastplate. It’s unthinkable. It’s impossible. And it covers the vital organs. I want you to hear me out, because this is important. The heart, the lungs, the intestine. And they’re often, it’s made of hard leather, very hard leather, and then some metal on top of that hammered in it in order to conform to the body.
In the Old Testament, and you will understand this, they often refer to the heart as the mind. The bowels refer to in the Old Testament as the seat of emotions and feelings. Hello. Everybody is feeling these days. But guess what? Guess what? The mind and the emotions are exactly the two areas where Satan unleashes his most vicious attack. Satan creates a sinful environment designed to tempt us. Well, tempt us to do what? To think the wrong thoughts, to feel the wrong emotions, to cloud our minds with false doctrine and false teaching and false principles and false information, why? To mislead us and to confuse us. Listen, he loves to confuse our emotions and pervert our affections and pervert our loyalties.
Beloved, listen to me. Satan specializes in trying to snatch the Word of God out of our minds and replaces them with his own perverted ideas. Satan loves to confuse the importance of the centrality of Christ in our lives by saying, «But all that God wants for me is to be happy». How many times have you heard that? Happy? No. All that God wants for you and for me is to be holy. You see, Satan wants us to joke and laugh about sin instead of mourning over it. He wants us to rationalize sin instead of confessing it, repenting of it, and asking the Lord to forgive us. He seduces to get used to sin as inevitable. «Well, you can’t help it. This is just the way you are,» rather than let it burn in our conscience until we confess it.
Oh, beloved, our God and Father wants us to be protected. He wants us to be protected from all that junk that’s floating around, how? By the breastplate of righteousness. Another question. What is it that you put on as a spiritual armor constantly, always, every moment of every day? It is the practice of daily obedience to the Word of God. It’s that practical righteousness, which I call it obedience, basically. The righteousness of obedience. In fact, rigorous obedience is the evidence that you have an imputed righteousness of Christ in you. The righteousness of obedience is the practical workings of that imputed righteousness of Jesus.
Please don’t miss what I’m going to tell you. Don’t miss what I’m going to tell you. That imputed righteousness that God places in us when we first come to Christ and receive him as the only Savior and Lord of our lives makes it possible for us to practice this type of practical righteousness or obedience. Putting on the breastplate of righteousness means that I am daily, several times a day even, moment by moment leaning on the strength of Jesus for my obedience. God supplies its source, and I offer my total dependence on him for this practical righteousness. God puts on me Christ-imputed righteousness, but I must rely on him for practical righteousness of obedience. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness.
Verse 15, the footwear, the footwear. The soldier’s feet need to be protected from the rough road, from the hot roads, and from the rocky roads. Soldiers cannot fight well if they’re not able to stand strong in the battle. In addition to the durability of a soldier’s shoes, they should have good tractions. Some said, the old days they used to have spikes so that they can really stand strong. Now, the spiritual footwear that the apostle Paul is talking about here are of equal importance to the military as it is to the spiritual soldiers.
Listen to me. If the Christian soldier is carefully girding his loins with the truth, and if he regularly moment by moment depends on God for practical righteousness, but not feet properly fitted with the preparation of the gospel of peace, then stumbling, falling, defeat is inevitable. A good pair of boots will help the soldiers march, climb, jump, and fight no matter what he faces, whatever he needs to do to win. Here the apostle Paul probably quotings part of Isaiah 52:7, «How beautiful are the feet of him who brings good news».
A number of theologians have applied this particular piece of equipment, the footwear, spiritual footwear, to the preaching of the gospel, to preachers, to evangelists, and even witnessing, but it’s not about preaching and teaching here. This is about fighting the spiritual battle. See, before we were saved, we were dead, dead, dead, dead, and mired in sin. Before we were saved, we’re at enmity with God. Before we were saved, we were at war with everybody, but certainly we were at war with God. But once Christ saves us eternally, we have become reconciled with God, and we only do not have the peace of God, but we have peace with God. We’re friends now.
The gospel of peace is the truth of Christ. The gospel of peace is the gift of Christ. The gospel of peace is the truth that I am purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ alone. Therefore, my feet are protected from the fire of hell. We stand confidently in God’s love. We stand confidently in God’s promises that he will fight for us when we come to him. Any believer who stands in the power of Jesus Christ on their own, they need with… not on their own. I meant they need not fear Satan. Some Christians fear Satan. I don’t. You should never fear Satan. He’s a defeated foe, and God is giving us all this equipment in order that we too defeat him and have the victory.
Whenever Satan attacks us, and I’m talking from experience. Trust me, I’m speak, I know what I’m talking about. Whenever Satan attacks us, as long as we are standing solid in our spiritual combat boots of the gospel, God will never, will never, will never fail to fight for us again and again and again, how? Because the gospel changed us from being enemies of God to becoming the children of God. We changed from being enemies of God to being defended by God. We were once at enmity with God. Now we are his children. We were once lost and confused.
Now we have all of the resources at our command. Listen to me. If God be for us, who can be against us? «But in all these things, we are overwhelmingly conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power or height or depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus».