The Belt of Truth (Part 2 of 2)

In the middle of the ongoing spiritual battle we face, we have to constantly be on guard. There is a deceitful enemy who wants to see us fall. So how do we stand up for truth in a world that is filled with lies?

Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg encourages us to tighten up our belts and to engage in the battle. We'll continue in Ephesians chapter 6, but today we begin in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah 59 17. He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head, and he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and he wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. When you read the Old Testament, you say, Well, who is this? Well, the Bible is pointing forward to the fulfillment in the Lord Jesus. Now, the reason I mention this is because it seems to me that the basic elements of the armor of God come, if you like, from Paul's pen, not simply in light of the picture of the Roman soldier but in light of his knowledge of the Lord as the divine warrior.

Now, why would this matter, and how would it help? Let me tell you. Do you remember when we studied in the fruit of the Spirit? And when we studied the fruit of the Spirit, we were at pains to make sure we understood that this is actually fruit. And we said, when we read concerning the fruit of the Spirit, this is not things, characteristics, design, or labels that we attach to ourselves spiritually, but it is rather that which is produced by the Holy Spirit within us.

Now, you need to understand that. It's not about trying to become more like Jesus so that I might be victorious in the battle. It is about standing confidently in Christ's triumph, which has already taken place over Satan in the cross—that Jesus Christ is the valiant warrior who is to come. He has gone toe to toe with the Evil One in the wilderness, in the temptations. He has answered him in the same way that we are to answer him, as we will see later on, by taking the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God—that's how Jesus handled it there—and in going face to face with him in the cross, he has triumphed over the Evil One, over death, over sin, over the grave.

He has accomplished all of it. That's why the hymn that we just sang read, Put on the Gospel Armor. Put on the gospel armor. What does it mean, the gospel armor? Simply what it says—that our armor is ultimately the gospel.

It is to put on the gospel. In other words, when the Evil One comes to insinuate, to attack, to say, I can't believe that you think those thoughts, I can't believe that you left that undone, I can't believe that you are as you are, and so on—the answer does not lie in our saying, Oh, but wait a minute. I had a very good week two weeks ago. Did you count that? Or I'm doing this or I'm doing that. No. The answer is to confront our accuser and tell him Jesus died. Because what are you saying? You're saying, You took your best shot, Evil One, and Jesus died, bore our sins, triumphed over them, and we are now in him.

We are united in him. Some of you will have those dolls at home. I think they call them Russian dolls.

I have some with Gorbachev on it and Yeltsin and some others. And they're fun to play with. You know how they are. You take them apart, and then you go further and further down, and then eventually you've got a tiny little fellow in here who doesn't come apart anymore. And then, when you've done that, then you put them all back together again.

That's about the fun of it for an afternoon. But there is something of a picture in that, isn't there, that I am the tiny little person enclosed in Christ? You see, when the Evil One comes to me, he says, No, I'm very strong. I'm making great progress.

I'm feeling amazing, you know. The Evil One knows, this fellow's going down, for sure. No, you see, there's only one place. And the place is safe in the arms of Jesus. It's hidden in the gospel. That's why, you see, the issue is always the gospel. That's why the issue is, do I know Christ in this way? Have I come to entrust myself to him? Have I admitted who he is and who I am and why I need him and so on? Or am I just a religious person seeking somehow or another to do my best as I make my journey?

There's all the difference in the world. Paul, remember, in chapter 1, is writing to those who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation. Now, the picture, then, is pretty straightforward, isn't it? The question is, is Paul then, when he talks about the belt of truth, talking about truth—as in, truth in the inner man, or sincerity, or our own personal truthfulness—or is he speaking about truth in an objective sense, that is, in the sense of that which is outside of us and in Christ and in the gospel? Well, without delaying on it, it's possible to marshal the Bible evidence in support of both positions. Paul already has talked about speaking truth with our neighbors in chapter 4, and he does that throughout his letters. He also, though, is concerned to make sure that people understand the nature of the truth and so on.

In my own simplicity of mind, I have concluded that it needn't be either-or, and it's probably safe to say it's both-and. That surely to take up the belt of truth is to ensure that since Jesus is the truth and since the gospel has come to us as the truth, one of the evidences that we are truth trusters is that we are truth tellers, so that the subjective dimension of the work of grace is in evidence in our lives. My inclination, though, is to view what he's saying here in terms of this belt more in the objective way. In other words, what Paul says elsewhere about the importance of the faith or about the gospel or about the good deposit, it just seems to me in keeping with the emphasis on the truth itself. And certainly when we realize that it is only the truth of the gospel that can dispel the lies of the evil one and set us free. That's why I think Paul is constantly emphasizing this in all of his writings as he gets to the end of his life, as he is now in jail for the last time, as he writes his letter to Timothy. What is his great concern for Timothy? It is that Timothy will remain committed to the truth, that he will make sure that the truth of the gospel that has come to him first through his grandmother and then through his mother and that has now become his very own, that he will not deviate from course in relationship to it, that he will hold fast to the truth, that he will keep as a pattern of sound words that which has been conveyed to him. And in that very same letter, he reminds Timothy that he has in his congregation those who are always learning but never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. In Ephesians, in the previous chapter, where he has described the provision that God has made for his church in the ministry of the apostles and in the inscripturated truth that the apostles then penned, he says, And the reason God has given this to us is in order that we may no longer be as children, tossed to and fro, carried about by every wave and by every wind of doctrine.

What's the key? The belt of truth. That we have come to a conviction about the truth. Somebody said to us one day, Have you ever read the New Testament?

We said, No, I never read it. And we read it. And we discovered that it introduced us to Jesus. And we discovered Jesus not just as a figure of history but as a Savior and as a friend. And we entrusted our lives to him. And we declared that Jesus is Lord. And then it was Jesus that gave to us our doctrine of Scripture. We realized that Jesus believed the Bible, that Jesus taught the Bible, that Jesus spoke the very words that the Father had given him to speak. And so we came to convictions about the truth of the Bible, because we came to convictions about the truth concerning Jesus.

That's how it actually happens. And it stands out in distinct confrontation with the vagueness and the accommodation that is increasingly part of our culture. Our culture is confused about many things, but it certainly confused about truth and whether there is such a thing as objective truth. And the pressure is so hard—I don't know how you find it—but it is very hard when you're in company with a group of people who all believe completely differently from yourself. There's a huge temptation to become a little vague, to become a little accommodating, to suddenly say, Well, you know, perhaps tolerance and acceptance will, you know, win the war a little more than truth statements. But that's one of the schemes of the devil. That's exactly what has happened in churches all across the Western world, ever since particularly the end of the nineteenth century and the thought forms of German scholarship that invaded the minds of many, who wanted to be thought very, very wise and effective. And so they thought, Well, if we just demythologize some of this, if we just dismantle some of these pieces, if we just become more afraid on the edges and a little more accommodating, then what we'll find, I'm sure, is that people will just flock to us, and they will be delighted to realize that we really don't know what we're talking about at all. And it will make them feel very comfortable in what has happened. The churches are empty, the lights are off, the doors are closed.

And they deserve to be. John Stott some years ago makes the amazing statement where he says, Just as the world is becoming more aware of its need, the church is becoming less assured of its mission. And the major reason for the diminishing Christian mission is the diminishing confidence in the Christian message.

Don't you find the pressure? I had a letter this week from somebody who wrote to me. He said, I know you teach the Bible, but you need to realize, Alistair, that the Bible was written a long time ago, and we have all moved on. And therefore, the things that you're saying from that Bible are just completely irrelevant.

She said, Well, there are nice elements to them, but the complexity of modern life is such that the Bible is just obviously inadequate. Now, what are we going to do with this? What's the response? You might want to give that belt an extra tug.

Turbulence. When our friends say these things, when they say to us, Well, you're not very Christian. Don't they say that? How can you be so Christian if you were to define things? If you were Christian, you wouldn't define things. If you were a really good Christian, you would be far nicer, and you wouldn't be so authoritative, so dogmatic, so jolly annoying. Well… And what they're really saying is, you know, it doesn't really matter what you believe, just as long as you lead a good life and you do your best.

Sounds so cozy, doesn't it? And you kinda don't want to go, Oh, I don't know about that. But if you're gonna be a Christian soldier, you're gonna have to go, Oh, I don't know about that. Jesus says to the woman at the well, Why don't you go call your husband? He said, Well, I don't have a husband. He said, No, you're right. You've had five husbands, and you've got a live-in lover. Put his finger on her life so that he might give to her the live-in water.

Define the issues, so that she might then be confronted with the truth. If we do not do what Scripture does, then we have no basis upon which to be able to make application of the truth. For example, we all know John 3.16, and we quote it from time to time, and helpfully so, For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish—because we're all going to perish, we're perishing as a result of our sin—would not perish, but would instead have eternal life.

Whoa! For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world. Well, that's good, so we don't want to have a spirit of condemnation about us. But an order that the world might be saved through him. Good. So we want to tell people about the immensity of his love in Jesus. Now here we go. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

That's pretty defined, isn't it? When our friends tell us that their intelligence will see them through in the end. When they tell us that modern knowledge is able to sit in Judication over the revelation of God in Scripture. Where do we turn? We turn to the truth.

And with this I will finish. You remember when Paul writes to the Corinthians? And the Corinthians had an interest in things that was fairly rarified, and they enjoyed high talk. And he says to them, When I came to you, I didn't play any of those games.

I didn't use any of those cards. And the reason I didn't do it—that I didn't try and impress you with words of human wisdom—was in case the cross of Christ would be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

As our friend David Wells puts it in one of his little booklets, we do not… God is beyond the realm of our intuitive radar. That there is no intellectual road to God. That the only way we ever know God is by means of his revelation. And he has revealed himself ultimately in he who is the way, the truth, and the life. And no one ever comes to the Father except through him. And Paul says, I want to make sure that you understand that my speech, my message, they weren't implausible words of wisdom, but in a demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

Why? So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. So every time you find yourself saying, Oh, but you can't possibly believe that. Or, Don't you realize that science has disproved that? Don't you realize that that was just a perspective from the first century about gender and about marriage? Don't you realize that we've superseded all of that?

Surely you're not saying this, you're not saying that. To the extent that you find yourself sucked into that vortex, I say to you, hide yourself away in the finished work of Christ and tighten the belt and engage in the battle. This morning, serendipitously, I went into one of the rooms upstairs, and I realized that somebody had left me a copy of Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners by Bunyan—seventeenth century work by Bunyan. Bunyan, he writes of how, as he surveys his life, it's amazing to him, he says, that given how bad and horrible and useless I am, that God's grace would abound to me.

And as it happens, I just turned to the conclusion—not purposefully, but I opened it there—and here's what it said. Of all the temptations, writes Bunyan, that I ever met with in my life, to question the being of God and truth of his gospel is the worst, and the worst to be born when this temptation comes. It takes away my girdle from me and removeth the foundation from under me. Oh, I have often thought of that word, Have your lions girt about with truth. Of all the temptations that have come to me, he says, the worst, that I would doubt God and doubt his word. Oh, how we need to fasten on the belt of truth. An important reminder from Alistair Begg to stand firm in God's truth.

This is Truth for Life. Alistair will close today's program with prayer in just a minute, so please keep listening. If you've ever requested any of our featured books, you know that the books we select offer exceptional Bible teaching from a wide variety of authors. We choose both new releases and classic books, every one of them designed to help you grow in your faith. When you become a truth partner, both of the books we offer every month are yours simply upon request, with no additional donation necessary. We offer these books as a benefit to truth partners as a way of saying thank you for helping make Truth for Life possible. Additionally, truth partners can subscribe to a special message from Alistair that's mailed each month, or it's available for you to listen to or download online. It's called The Message of the Month, and it's an exclusive truth partner benefit. All of this is yours for a monthly donation of just $20 or more. And most importantly, your financial giving is what brings Alistair's teaching to people everywhere, through radio, on our app, through social media, in almost any way you can imagine.

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Ohio is OH, and our zip code is 44139. Now here's Alistair to close in prayer. Father, even as we study these things, the evil one attacks us. We thank you for the fact that although the message of the cross is foolishness, to us by nature, that a Galilean carpenter hanging upon a Roman gibbet would have anything to say to us all these years later.

And certainly, the idea that there, outside the city walls of Jerusalem, took place the pivotal event of human history is absolute folly to the world. But to those who believe, it's everything. Lord, forgive our unbelief. Help us to believe, to buckle up. For Jesus' sake. Amen.

I'm Bob Lapine. Every warrior wants to know that his heart is shielded from the attacks of the enemy. But the protection Christians need is not something we can earn. So how can we make sure we're covered? We'll hear the answer tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.