👋 Welcome back to this course on Spiritual Warfare.

We're learning how to do battle—well, to do battle victoriously—from the position that Jesus Christ won the overall victory on the cross. But we recognize that there is still a powerful force of evil out there, and he deploys demons against you and against me as Christians.

So, we've been looking at that incredible enemy, but now we're looking at how we can do battle effectively. In particular, we've started looking at the armor of God.

🔍 Paul's Analogy: The Roman Soldier

Paul looks at that soldier and sees how the Roman soldier was ready for battle because of the armor he or she would have. In other words, what would put you ready for battle?

We're going to look at each of these in the future, but first, let's notice a few things.

🚣‍♂️ A Marine’s Perspective on Battle

This comes from a Marine who was reflecting in a speech. He said:

  • If a soldier is going to live, he must be completely aware of three things:
    1️⃣ Who his enemy is—and we've been looking at that.
    2️⃣ He must be well acquainted with his equipment—that's what we're going to be looking at in this session and beyond.
    3️⃣ He must be clear about his own area of responsibility.

⚙️ Paul’s Instruction: Stand Firm

Paul says:

Stand firm. Then, in other words, be set—with the belt of truth buckled around your waist.

When we think of a belt, we think of something like this, right? When I got up this morning and got ready to come here to the studio to record, I put on clothes. The last thing I put on was my belt—after I got my pants and shirt on—so I buckled it.

Now, that's the image that comes to mind.
But the Roman soldier's belt was not just to hold up pants or a skirt.

📖 Scripture Versions

  • NIV: Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist.

  • NASB: Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, etc.

"Girding your loins"—that’s not language we're familiar with today, right? But in that time, it was a vital activity.

🏹 The Function of the Belt

The belt’s first function was to hold everything together.

  • The offensive weapon of the sword was buckled to the belt.

  • The breastplate (which we'll discuss later) was buckled to the belt.

  • The armor protecting sensitive areas hung from the belt.

  • The clothing below—the flowing robe—was held up by the belt.

Paul is saying the belt is essential. And what is the belt?

The belt, he says, is truth—truth at the root of who we are and what we do.

But the belt wasn’t just for holding everything together. It also helped in girding up the loins.

🧵 How to Gird Up Your Loins

In case you ever need to do this while wearing a long, flowing robe:
1️⃣ Hoist up the tunic so all the fabric is above your knees—this gives mobility.
2️⃣ Gather the extra material in front so the back of the tunic is snug against your backside.
3️⃣ Pull the excess fabric underneath between your legs to your rear—this feels much like a diaper.
4️⃣ Gather half of the material in each hand, bring it back around to the front, and tie your two handfuls together.

Now you’re set for battle and hard labor!

Go forth, be men, and gird up your loins! 💪

(I found that description on the internet.)

⚠️ The Danger of Loose Material

If you didn’t gird your loins, you couldn’t run—you might trip. Loose, flowing material was dangerous in battle.

It still is today. I read about a man wearing a very loose T-shirt while working with power tools. He was using a grinder when the T-shirt got caught in it. The grinder wound it up and pulled it into his face. He needed many doctor's visits and considered reconstructive surgery.

🔑 The idea is: loose material becomes a danger.

🛡️ Girding Up Loins with Truth

Paul is saying:

The essence of who you are, the thing that gets you ready for battle, the thing that holds together your defensive and offensive weapons—is truth.

🏛️ Truth’s Role in the Church and in Your Life

Let’s look at the role of truth in the life of the church and in your life as an individual.

1️⃣ Truth Is Vital for Unity in the Church

📖 So Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and teachers to equip His people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

📖 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceit.

In other words, there were people around—false teachers at that time—and Paul is warning them. This is from the same chapter, or at least the same letter, to the Ephesian church as the direction that comes two chapters later in the armor of God.

He’s saying: There are people whose job is to teach you the truth. And that truth will give us unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, and make us mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

2️⃣ Truth Is Vital for Worship

In John 4, Jesus is talking to the Samaritan woman. She’s trying to avoid the subject of living water and Jesus.

She says:

“There’s a time coming when the prophets say that we’re not going to worship in Jerusalem or here on this mountain.”

And Jesus says:

A time is coming and has now come, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

What did Jesus mean by that? We’re not completely sure—they didn’t have the New Testament at that time, so it could have meant that. But it also meant worshiping in Spirit and also worshiping in truth—the one who said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

3️⃣ Truth Is Basic and Vital for Relationships

This is from Ephesians:

📖 Therefore each of you must put off falsehood.

Paul is talking about the change that happens when someone comes to faith.

He says:

Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

Now, I don’t know what the practice was at that time and place—who was telling lies to whom in Ephesus—but there was something about falsehood. Paul says, no, we put that off.

He’s using the imagery of putting clothes on and taking clothes off. He says:

You’ve got to take off this falsehood—this stretching of the truth, this lying—and put it off.

Because it’s hard to have a relationship with someone you can’t trust.

👨‍👩‍👦 Truth in Parenting

You know, one of our jobs as parents…

I remember when my son lied to me about where he had been. He was just 16 years old. He had saved a lot of money and had bought a car. He was gone, and we didn’t know where he was. This was before cell phones, so we couldn’t just call him.

Later, when he came home, he told us where he had been. He was past his curfew, but then he lied—he said he had some problems with the car, when in fact, he was parked somewhere with his girlfriend.

It took time to rebuild trust between us. If you can’t trust what somebody says to you, it’s hard to have a relationship with them.

💔 Marriages break up over this. Relationships between people are ended because, “I can’t trust you.”

So, truth is vital for relationships. That’s one of the reasons it’s our belt—it’s the thing that holds everything together.

🌍 Truth as the Basis for Outreach

Jesus says:

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

In other words, there has to be some truth, some basic truth that we agree to, and then we share that—that this is truth.

🌍 Mission Work and Dreams

I have the privilege—I'm leaving in a couple of days to go to Spain to visit a friend of ours who’s working among refugees there and sharing Jesus Christ with Muslim refugees coming into that area, trying to reestablish their lives.

She says, for people to understand the truth—these Muslim refugees are often hearing about Jesus, but they’re also seeing Him in dreams and realizing that what they have been taught, everything they grew up with, is no longer the truth.

So, they begin to believe when they start having these dreams.

One woman in the story said:

“My god will never appear to me. God will never appear to me. I want Jesus to appear to me.”

And very soon after that, she had a dream of Jesus coming to her.

This is part of the reality of truth in Jesus Christ.

✨ Truth for Sanctification

Truth is also represented in Scripture as a means for our sanctification—in other words, our growing in faith and experience with Jesus Christ.

📖 Here’s how Jesus put it in the High Priestly Prayer of John 17: “Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth.”

We don’t use the word sanctify very often in the church anymore, but it means to set apart.

I remember in seminary, we had been given an assignment to define “holy.” I didn’t do the assignment. Sure enough, the professor walks in and says, “Bruce, what does it mean when something is holy?” I just sat there and mumbled something about the Holy Bible. Thankfully, he called on someone else right away.

The word holy means to cut and to separate—something set apart.

So, sanctify means to make holy, to make separate, to make us different from the people around us who are not believers.

How does that happen?

Your word is truth.

🛡️ The Belt of Truth: Essential for Who We Are

The belt of truth is vitally important for who we are, for what we’re trying to be.

Look at your life:

  • Is it surrounded by truth?

  • Characterized by truth?

  • Flowing from truth?

Do you stretch the truth? Do you lie occasionally?

When things get a little tough, there are so many ways to deceive. I know this personally—it can be very damaging in relationships, in work, and especially in our testimony of Jesus Christ.

🙏 Closing Prayer

Let’s close this session with prayer:

🙏 Oh Lord God, we thank You that You are the WAY and the TRUTH and the LIFE. We pray that You will open our minds and hearts to truth—that we might see it, understand it when we hear it, and apply it to our lives, so that we might be people whose armor is held together by truth.

Lord, keep us from crossing over into the enemy’s territory of lies. As Jesus said of the enemy, he is the father of lies. When we lie, we are just doing what our father does. That was Jesus’ statement to the Pharisees.

So, Lord, we need help. It’s a big temptation to try to get out of a sticky situation by lying. Help us, Lord, be people of truth—speakers of truth, livers of truth.

We pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

👋 Okay, we’ll see you next time!


آخر تعديل: السبت، 31 مايو 2025، 7:15 ص