🛡️ Continuing with Our Defensive Weapons

We continue with looking at our defensive weapons.

Last time, we began by looking at the Roman soldier’s armor, and we’re looking at each piece now and how it applies to our life.

  • We looked at truth—the belt of truth—and how truth is what holds everything together.

🇺🇸 Truth in Today’s Context

Wow, I tell you right now, in the United States, as I’m recording this class, we’re in a political time.

  • People don’t believe politicians.

  • They don’t believe used car salesmen.

  • They don’t trust people because they feel like they’ve got a characteristic of lying.

So, truth is important—important in the church, important for our ministry.

🛡️ The Breastplate of Righteousness

Today, we’re going to go on—we’re continuing that whole idea of the armor of God—and today we’re going to look at the breastplate of righteousness.

This is how Paul puts it:

📖 I will just read this section again:

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God—not just one piece, full armor of God—so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And after you’ve done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, and with the breastplate of righteousness in place.”

🦺 The Breastplate: A Vital Piece of Armor

Now, the breastplate was a rather important piece of your armor.

  • This is a very fancy kind of breastplate.

  • You’ll notice somebody has put a lot of work into designing this.

  • This would be something more for ceremonial purposes.

Generally speaking, the breastplate:

  • Would tie onto the belt.

  • Would go over the head, over the shoulders.

  • The straps would be put, tied into the belt and tied at the top.

It was made out of either bronze or iron:

  • Iron on the left there—you’ll notice that’s one that was just uncovered in a dig.

  • It would have leather because the metal would just chafe on your skin if you were in battle, so they put leather on the back so that you’d be able to withstand that.

  • On the right is one of bronze.

  • Some of the later in the Roman Empire would have chain mail also after that breastplate.

❤️ The Breastplate Covers the Heart

The breastplate was a very important place to cover.

  • What does the breastplate cover?

Well, it covers the heart.

  • There’s central to what you are as a person: the heart.

  • Jesus said, “For out of the heart comes evil thoughts.”

  • He was just saying that our major motivations come from the heart.

Even in our world today:

  • We still send heart pictures to people for Valentine’s, right?

  • The heart means “I love you.”

💓 Covering the Center of Emotions

This is the place where our emotions come from.
This is the place where our love is based.

And it also covers the bowels.

  • In that society, bowels were considered the seat of your emotion.

  • In fact, the word for compassion equals bowels—“bowels of mercy.”

You know, when Jesus had compassion on the crowds, because He saw they were like sheep without a shepherd—

  • Basically, that says He had bowels of mercy for the crowds, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

The idea of our emotions.

🛡️ Protection in the Battle

So, the breastplate is going to cover the center of our heart.

  • You can’t live without your heart, right?

  • If your heart gets injured, you’re done.

And your emotions are very, very important.

So, the breastplate of righteousness is what’s going to protect you in the battle with the evil one.

❓ What Is Righteousness?

Now, that brings up several questions.

The first one is simply this:

  • What is righteousness?

If we’re going to put on the breastplate of righteousness, what is it?

📏 Righteousness: Adherence to a Standard

Well, basically, it means adherence to a standard.

Now, I’ll show you this picture.

  • There’s in the United States Department of Commerce, a building that is the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

  • In this plain building, they have, you know, if you want to know how long a yard is, you can go there, because they have the exact measurement for a yard.

  • If you want to know how long a meter is, they have the exact measurement for a meter.

In fact, this is how they do it:

  • They have samples of weights and measurements that are called prototypes.

    • Pound weights,

    • Kilograms,

    • Measuring rods for feet, yards, metric things like meters.

For example, here’s the meter standard:

  • A reinforced bar of platinum alloyed with exactly 10% iridium.

  • When they want to know the exact measurement of a meter, they:

    • Cool this bar down to zero degrees Celsius.

    • At sea level of 45 degrees latitude.

  • Then they know they will have the exact tip-to-tip measurement of a meter.

📏 Adhering to the Standard

So there are these measurements.

  • And righteousness is adhering to a standard.

  • There’s the standard: a meter.

  • Now, if you’re going to make something so many meters long and wide, you’ve got to adhere to that standard.

  • If you’re going to create a yardstick, just use the yardstick.

The other day, in my house, as I was measuring an area for putting a new plug in my garage, I got a measure.

  • “Is this trustworthy? Is it really 36 inches?”

  • Anyway, adhering to a standard.

📖 The Standard of Righteousness in Scripture

Now, when we talk about the breastplate of righteousness, what is Paul referring to?

  • Adhering to a standard?

Well, the standard in Scripture, if we’re going to adhere to it for righteousness, is God Himself.

Peter writes:

“It is written,” he says. “You be holy,” God says, “because I am holy.”

Now again, I mentioned this last time—the word holy means:

  • To cut and to separate.

So this means:

  • Being holy means I’m separate. I’m different from. I’m not like everybody else who is an unbeliever.

God says:

“Be holy, be separate, be different. And the standard is because I am holy,” God says.

🛡️ Called to Be Righteous People

So we are called to be righteous people, and that will protect us from the enemy.

🧠 Three Different Kinds of Righteousness

Now, there are many ways to think about this.

When we say, “What did Paul mean there?”—
Here’s three different kinds of righteousness that probably, maybe all of them are bound up in this statement of the breastplate.

But what’s going to:

  • Protect our life?

  • Protect our emotions?

Well:
1️⃣ One kind of righteousness is personal righteousness—it’s individual righteousness, and we’ll talk about that more in just a moment.
2️⃣ The second kind is positional righteousness, or imputed righteousness.

🛡️ Exploring Righteousness Further

We’ll talk about that.

  • I’m going to define that.

And then finally, there’s practical righteousness.

📖 Zechariah’s Passage Captures All Three Kinds

There’s a passage in the Old Testament that captures all three of these kinds of righteousness.

  • It’s found in the Book of Zechariah, an Old Testament prophet.

  • God is speaking to the high priest there.

Here’s the passage:

📖 Zechariah says God, or an angel, showed me Joshua, the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord.

  • In the Old Testament, when you read that phrase “Angel of the Lord,” it is likely a pre-incarnation appearance of Jesus Christ.

  • And so the high priest is standing before Jesus—the second person of the Trinity.

And Satan is standing at his right side to accuse him.

📖 And the Lord, the angel of the Lord, said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?”

(Meaning the high priest.)

👕 The Symbol of Filthy Clothes

📖 Now, Joshua the high priest was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel.

And the angel said to those standing there:

“Take off his filthy clothes.”

The whole idea here of filthy clothes describes our own righteousness, apart from Jesus Christ.

🧍 Reflecting on Personal Righteousness

Let me come back to that in just a moment.

When we look at righteousness, we tend to look at our own:

  • Our own ability to do what’s right.

And if we try to put ourselves in that kind of category—that we do what’s right, that we’re righteous people—when we are honest, we have to say:

  • “I’m not a righteous person. I’m not perfect.”

🧾 Paul’s Reflection on His Own Righteousness

Remember Paul, when he was talking about all of his accomplishments?

  • All the things that would have made him a righteous or set-apart person.

  • “I was of the tribe of Benjamin, I’m a Pharisee, I was trained by such-and-such.”

  • He says:

“I consider all those as filthy rags in order to attain Christ.”

😔 Personal Righteousness Isn’t Enough

So personal righteousness won’t get us there.

And we’ll come back to this verse in just a moment.

Here’s Isaiah:
📖 “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all of our righteous acts are like filthy rags. We all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind, our sins sweep us away.”

That’s personal righteousness.

  • It’s not good enough to protect us.

In the New Testament:
📖 “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

We cannot stand on our own righteousness.

  • That won’t protect our emotions.

  • It won’t protect our lives.


🛡️ The Second Kind of Righteousness: Positional Righteousness

So let’s go to the second kind:

  • The positional righteousness, or the righteousness we have because we are in Christ, or because God has taken an action.

📖 Back to Zechariah’s Passage

Here’s that next section:

The angel said to those who were standing before him, “Take off his filthy clothes.”

This is Joshua.

Then the angel says to Joshua:

“See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.”

🌿 A Metaphor for Our Life in Christ

Now, this is a metaphor—a way of saying what happens to us when we have received Jesus Christ into our lives.

  • When God looks at us, we are justified.

  • And, you know, if you didn’t learn it as a kid, you’ll hear it now:

Justified means: “Just as if I’d never sinned.”

✝️ The Imputed Righteousness of Christ

  • Jesus takes His righteousness—

  • God takes the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who lived a sinless life, and imputes it to, or assigns it to us.

So that when God looks at us:

  • He doesn’t see our sinfulness;

  • He sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

  • And His love can pour out on Him.

👑 “Put a Clean Turban on His Head”

So Jesus says:

“Put a clean turban on his head.”

  • So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him, while the angel of the Lord stood by.

That’s a very important one.

  • The breastplate of righteousness means certainly that we take up the righteousness of Christ.

  • And that’s going to protect our lives, and it’s going to protect our emotions.

🗣️ The Accuser and the Righteousness of Christ

Because we’ve seen that the enemy is the accuser of the brothers and sisters.

  • He’ll come and accuse.

  • He’ll come and try to get us down.

I’ve shared stories about my mother.
I’ve shared stories about other people—back in earlier lectures—about people who got near to death, and all of a sudden, the sins from way past come back because the accuser comes.

🛡️ What Protects Us?

What’s going to protect us in this battle?

  • The righteousness of Christ is ours.

So we put on the breastplate of righteousness.

📖 A Couple of New Testament Passages

📖 “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

📖 Romans 3:

“Now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile.”

🙌 This Is Very, Very Important

We are the righteousness of Christ.


🧍 A Personal Story from California

When I think of this, I think of a man in a church I served in California.

When we first met him, I—you know, I thought that I wouldn’t give him two bits for a chance of him being converted.

  • He was just a rough, rough character.

  • He had his own construction company.

  • He had played minor league baseball.

So, we gave him an invitation to play on our church softball team—one of our church softball teams.

  • And so he did.

  • He was going to play right field the first time.

  • You know, coach didn’t know him all that well.

A pop fly ball comes out to him, and he flubs it—drops it on the ground.

  • He threw his glove on the ground.

This was a church softball league, by the way—all the other churches were involved there.

He threw his glove on the ground and started a line of curses like you’ve never known.

  • I was playing second base, right in front of right field.

  • One of the other pastors in the church walked back to him, introduced himself:

“Yeah, I’m Pastor Don, and I’m one of the pastors.”

It turns out this guy had really lived a rough life.

  • His wife began attending our church, and so he began to be interested.

  • But as he confessed Jesus Christ, the way the enemy got to him was bringing back his former life.

So we had to remind him all the time:

  • “No, that’s gone in God’s economy. You have the righteousness of Christ.”

🛡️ Fighting the Enemy’s Accusations

How do we fight the enemy with his accusations?

  • We put on the breastplate of righteousness.

🛡️ The Third Kind: Practical Righteousness

Now, the third kind: the practical and part of righteousness.

That’s not the end of the story—that we have the righteousness of Christ.

Here’s the rest of the story:

📖 The angel of the Lord gave this charge to Joshua:

“This is what the Lord Almighty says: If you will walk in obedience to Me and keep My requirements, then you will govern My house and have charge of My courts, and I’ll give you a place among those standing here.”

🧍 Living Righteously Within Our Power

In other words:

  • It’s not enough that you have the righteousness of Christ.

  • But now, within our power, as we are able, we live a righteous life.

  • We make our choices.

I’m not going to do that perfectly, but we live our choices to be righteous living people.

🕊️ Rejoicing in Freedom

Now, sometimes there are those who come to Jesus Christ, and they rejoice in the freedom that they’ve been given:

  • The forgiveness that they’ve been given.

  • The righteousness of Christ that now characterizes how God looks at us, and how we get to look at ourselves.

That we no longer have that image of ourselves.

There’s an old book entitled by one of my professors:

  • “A Christian Looks at Himself.”

  • We don’t look at ourselves as those horrible sinners anymore.

  • We look at ourselves as loved by God and righteous.

But we are now called to, within our power, to walk in a way that reflects our commitment to Jesus Christ.

✈️ A Story About Billy Graham

You know, there’s an old story about Billy Graham—you know, greatest evangelist ever in the history of the world (aside from the Apostle Paul, people have said).

One time, he’s on a plane, and there was a guy sitting in the row ahead of him, who was obviously inebriated.

  • He was drunk and making a real pain of himself—to the flight attendants and the other passengers.

  • He was loud and boisterous.

At one point, Billy Graham kind of half stood up and reached over and said, you know, encouraging him to cooperate with the people around him.

And the guy slurred and said:

“You’re Billy Graham.”

And Billy Graham said:

“Yeah, I am.”

The guy said:

“I was at that crusade,” and he named the crusade he was at.
“You saved me.”

And Billy Graham’s response was:

“Yeah, you look like one of mine.”

In other words, it wasn’t Jesus—because with Jesus comes a changed life.

  • We’re a new creation.

  • The old has passed away, and the new has come.

🔄 Sanctification: Becoming More Like Jesus

And so we’re not going to do this perfectly.
But as we are empowered by the God who lives within us—

“He who is within us is greater than he who is in the world”—

We seek to become more like Jesus in a process called sanctification.

❓ A Question for You

So now the question is to you:

  • How are you doing with the breastplate of righteousness?

  • How are you doing with truth, the belt of truth, but also the breastplate of righteousness?

Do you recognize that all of your attempts to gain salvation by your own holiness or righteousness are just worth nothing?

  • They are but filthy rags.

Have you recognized that in Jesus Christ, we are given this gift of being righteous before God?

  • That’s the way He sees us.

And are you living not in order to please your own self or to earn your salvation, but are you living as you are empowered—a righteous life?

  • And when you fail, are you repenting and coming back to try again?

📖 Paul’s Words in the New Testament

Yeah, this is the way it’s put in the New Testament. Paul writes:

“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose.”

🙏 A Closing Blessing

May it be so for you.

👋 We’ll see you next time as we continue this.

最后修改: 2025年05月31日 星期六 07:16