Eph 6: 13 – 15
13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
An Illustration:
There was a bully who would demand lunch money. But because the victim was small, he would succumb to it. But eventually he thought that he needs to fight back, so he joined Karate lessons. But the master demanded him 5 dollars. He decided that the bully was much cheaper, and continued to pay him.
Many Christians believe that it’s easier to be defeated by the enemy than defend the enemy. Instead of yielding and bowing down to him, is better to stand against him. Girded with the truth. Putting on the full armour of God, rather than bowing down to circumstances. We move into cycle of victory instead of defeat.
Second piece: Breastplate of righteousness. It’s two pieces of metal plates over their chest area. To protect the soldier’s vital area like a bullet proof jacket, especially the heart. A soldier’s heart can fail. Discouragement, morale is down, once we lose heart we are defeated. Above everything else guard your heart. Matthew 15: 18 18 But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. out of heart issues of heart. Isaiah 59:17 – He put on righteousness as his breastplate,
and the helmet of salvation on his head;
he put on the garments of vengeance
and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak. righteousness put on as bp. Not of our works Philippians 3:9 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in[a] Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.. If work then
- Attack of Guilt and Condemnation – inward attack
- Bitterness and unforgiveness towards others.
Breast Plate of Christ’s righteousness takes care of this 1 Thessalonians 5: 8 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. Breast Plate elaborated by apostle Paul. Put on faith and love as a Breast Plate. Breast Plate of righteousness is rooted in Breast Plate of faith and love. It helps to overcome guilt and condemnation. Have total faith to Accept that Jesus has overcome it on the cross. How do we overcome bitterness and unforgiveness? Accept we have the love of God inside of us. Faith overcomes guilt and condemnation; and Love overcomes bitterness and unforgiveness. Breast Plate protects our heart.
Galatians 5: 5-6 5 For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Faith expressing itself through love. Righteousness based on Faith in Christ and love of God towards us. We have a righteousness that comes from God. Breast Plate of Christ’s righteousness is placed firmly across our hearts, we will be able to stand and overcome Satan’s attacks of guilt and condemnation. How many people struggle with guilt, secret sins, past. They feel bad about their past failures, etc. Phantom pain – leg or arm is amputated but yet they feel the pain is still there. Because of the memory of that pain remains, and they feel it physically. It’s locked inside the memory. Christian’s are obsessed about past failures and are still in pain. Even though Christ died for all of their past mistakes, it still cripples them. It robs them of their devotion, ministry, their relationship with others, rob them of peace and joy. Just like phantom pain. It need not be there, but they are still feeling it. Satan accuses us of all these sins. He shouts out that God will not accept you. You are not good enough. He tells us that we can never change, you are not forgiven, you are not doing enough, etc. The next thing we do is we give up. We are so crippled by all these things. Put on the Breast Plate of righteousness that comes from the Lord Jesus, so that you can rise up and say to the devil, I am who I am by the grace of God. By the grace of God I am made clean, holy, righteous, perfect and I come boldly to the throne not by the works that I have done but by the blood of the lamb. I love because He first loved me, by His love I can forgive. By His Love I can do this, and we learn to rise up and take a stand against guilt and condemnation. Turn to your neighbour and say I am free from guilt and condemnation; Satan is a liar but I am on fire. I can run to the Lord.
Satan knows that once he has plunged us in guilt, condemnation and unforgiveness, he has literally crippled us. It makes us totally ineffective. We are never sure, if we are worthy to stand before this holy God. We are not sure, if God really responds to our prayer. Put on the righteousness of Christ and you’ll be able to stand and claim that no weapon formed against me shall prosper. The blood of Jesus is sufficient for all of our sin and we can bring it to him. We need not walk around with guilt and condemnation. God is for you and not against you. Not to pretend that we have no sin, or deny the fact that we are failures, it is learning to look to Christ.
Eg: You have a cell member, the concept of accountability. You ask if they have done their QT. The member says, I haven’t but I’ll do it next week. We show grace. However, next week also he has failed. This happens n number of time and finally, he quits. He draws a conclusion that it doesn’t work with me. We have very subtly introduced law. Because we are telling them go and try harder. This is based on self effort. Based on our own ability. We strive on our own resolution, our own will power. We should let them know that they have failed. You should let them know that they have sinned, we cannot shift sin under the carpet. You cannot let people know that you have failed but actually, you have not failed. Tell them the truth, that we need to spend time with Lord Jesus. Rather than pointing out at their sin constantly, we should have directed them towards Christ Jesus. We should have said that we all struggle but we need to look to Jesus for help and not our self-effort. Key is Galatians 2: 20 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. The life I live now is not by myself, trying harder but trusting in Lord Jesus. I live by faith in the son of God who calls me and gives himself for me. Subtly we do not allow ourselves to not be gripped by guilt, but we need to look to Lord Jesus. Watchman Lee was preaching, by the end of the sermon, a lady walked upto him and asked him to pray that she would be more patient with her children. Watchman lee said, he’ll not pray that she’ll strive from her own strength to be patient towards her children but she would allow Jesus to be patient to her children through her. It’s a world of difference, one says, I’ll try harder, the other one says, I cannot do it but I’ll need the Lord Jesus. Then we are not self centred people but Christ centred. We need to put on the breast plate of righteousness, so that Christ’s righteousness may come in. This BP is Faith and love that protects my heart. From bitterness, unforgiveness, it protects me.
The third piece is the sandals of the gospel of peace. Put on the sandals of the gospel of peace. A soldier cannot go anywhere without his boots. When your boots are on, it means you are ready to go at the command of the king or at the command of the captain. Ronald Docks quotes “in readiness to publish the gospel”. Vs 15 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ‘with your feet ’. If your shoes of the gospel of peace are firmly in your feet, you are ready and available with a message of reconciliation. You are an ambassador of the gospel. At the slightest prompting of the spirit you are ready and available to go anywhere and to anyone with the gospel of reconciliation. We are an ambassador of Christ, making an appeal for people to be reconciled to God. This Gospel of peace is not appealing only appealing to pre – believers to be reconciled to God but also, it is an appeal to Christians. To be reconciled again to the ways of God. We are appealing to all kinds of Christians, backslided Christians, stagnant Christians, to get right with God again. Come back to the path of sanctification. The gospel of peace is a message of reconciliation. Isaiah 52:7 How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”. If you have the gospel of peace, it means your feet are really lovely. That is because we bring a message of peace wherever we go. We proclaim good tidings, we proclaim salvation. It is all rooted in one thing that your God reigns. It is rooted in the fact that God is reigning. He is sovereign, he is in control. It always comes back to the sovereignty of God. When Paul says in Ephesians 6, put on the shoes of the gospel, he is actually looking at the Roman soldier. He is referring to the strong heavy sandals that is used for long marches. Leather bonds, all the ways up. In the sole there are spikes. Fought physically. The shoes dig in and they can stand their ground. The shoes of the gospel of peace anchors us firmly on the ground. No matter what happens, dig in to this gospel of peace, we appeal to them, get right with God. Dig into the gospel, our message to you is peace. Our message is reconciliation. The only way to true peace is surrender to the will of God. You can’t dig into the gospel of God unless you surrender to the Prince of Peace. Let your will become his will. So when people offend you, cheat you and humiliate you, we still chose to respond in love. We do not retaliate, we chose to stand firm in peace. This is the only way to stand strong in the storm.
Illustration: A pastor was going out for a walk with his friend. He saw a scorpion stuck beneath the rocks. The pastor went out to rescue this scorpion. His friend advised him not to do so, as it will sting him back. The pastor went ahead and removed the rocks to release the scorpion, and the scorpion turned to sting the pastor. The pastor screamed in pain. His friend said, “see I told you”. It is in the nature of the scorpion to sting. The pastor said it is in my nature to save, and how can I allow his nature to change my nature. Many times we get into a situation like this. When people put us in situations, instead of standing strong in our nature, actually allow other people’s nature to dictate how we respond. We are not reacting, every time they step on our toes, we punch their nose. We retaliate instead of responding in peace. And let’s be challenged today that we learn to do this. The sinful nature inside is to fight and have its own way but Christ’s nature is to love, and we should never allow the sinful nature to dominate Christ’s nature. We must allow the nature of Christ within us to rise up. Romans 12: 17 -21 heaping burning coals on his head. We purposely be kind to that person and kill him softly with our kindness. Do the enemy a favour, to bless them. Not a reverse psychology. Overcome evil with good. When we repay evil with evil, we are no longer standing, we are beginning to yield to evil.
Illustration:
An old lady was waiting at the parking lot for space to park her car. As soon as she saw someone move their car, she tried to park in but no sooner a young man swept his car into the parking space. This old lady was furious and shouted at him. She said, I was already putting my car into the parking lot, how could you come in before and park first. He very arrogantly replied, that’s because, I am young and fast. After he left the parking lot, he heard a loud noise of his car being banged. He saw that the old lady was banging it several times. He furiously came and questioned the lady. She said I am old and rich. That’s retaliation. If we live in the philosophy Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, there will be many blind and toothless people quoted by Mahatma Gandhi. If our feet is dug firmly in the Gospel of peace, where there is evil, we chose to love, where there is resentment, we chose to forgive, where there is pain, we chose comfort, where there is offence we chose to overlook, where there is insult we chose to reconcile. In short, we go in the opposite spirit, on the contrary, we attack evil, we attack the opposite spirit. That is very powerful.
Matthew 5: 43 – 45 3 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[a] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. We ask, why should I love my enemy, why should I go through this struggle? Philip Yancy calls it the scandal of forgiveness. Forgiveness is very scandalous. The guy offends me like crazy and then he turns around and says sorry. This very scandalous. I am supposed to forgive, what about all the pain that I went through. After all the stabbing, he says sorry and I must forgive. Forgiveness is scandalous. It doesn’t make sense. It is illogical because grace is illogical. Tell me why should Jesus die on a cross and then forgive us? Why should he do that? It’s actually scandalous. That’s the point, it is about grace, not logic. Then people say, why should I forgive? I will not forgive the person unless he changes. Until he changes, I will not forgive him. Actually that also doesn’t make sense. Forgive: means Before you give, that is forgive. Give before. That means before the person even changes, I can forgive him. We need to differentiate between forgiving an offence and forgiving a sin. Can a forgive a person before they have actually repented for their sin? A husband who has committed adultery, a wife forgives. She has forgiven the offence, the pain that he has caused by committing adultery but can she forgive his sin? To forgive a person’s sin is in God’s domain. He has to sort that out with God. But can I forgive the husband even though he has not repented yet? I forgive him, I let him off for the wrong that he has done against me, but he’s got to sort it out with God as far as his sin is concerned. Because that’s not my domain. But when I forgive him for the wrong that he has done against me, I have set myself free. Forgiveness set us free. But in the end, that man has to sort out his sin with God. Until he repents before God, his sin is not forgiven. Therefore we differentiate clearly between forgiving an offence and forgiving sin. We got no right to forgive a sin. We only got the right to forgive an offence. We should ask ourselves from Matthew 5: 43 – 45 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[a] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven., why should I do that? Because if we forgive, then we resemble most like our father in heaven. Then you may be sons of God, when you are a peacemaker. You are never more like God, than when you are a peace maker. There is no victory for us until we forgive the offences that are done against me. In the movie ‘Forrest Gump’, Forrest Gump and Jenny throw stones at Jenny’s childhood house, which has treated her miserably. Jenny collapses eventually, and Forrest Gump makes an innocent statement, “there aren’t enough stones”. There must come a point when we say enough is enough, we just let the rocks fall from our hands. We let the injustice, the hurt and the pain, the anger and frustration, the wrongs, let it go. Forgive the person and let God take over. That will be the moment when we’ll put on the shoes of the gospel of peace and we move on. We got to come to that point. The challenge is that we want to be free from people. Let’s not be caught in this, but let us be free. There may be people who have wronged you, hurt you and caused you pain but can you let them go free? Yes you can let them go free and set yourself free. Don’t imprison yourself with anger, bitterness and resentment. The biggest irony in this prison is that the key is in your own hands. You could have just unlocked it and walked out. And the key to unlock it is to put on the shoe of the gospel of peace and forgive, let it go. Let the rocks fall of from your hands. That day would be freedom.
Courtesy Benny Ho
Sandra wife of Virjil . The New Hope Community is situated in the heart of the city between Old and New Panvel. We can confidently share that New Hope Community is a Church in Kamothe, Church in Khandeshwar, Church in Khanda Colony, Church in Panvel, Church in New Panvel because we are centrally located and these places surround our church Venue.
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