Soldier No.3 Breastplate of Righteousness

This is number three in the series The Christian Soldier, entitled The Breastplate of Righteousness. This is followed by number four on side B of your cassette, entitled The Gospel Shoes. We open our Bibles at Ephesians in chapter six.

We come to this very often read passage of scripture, at least it's often been read in recent weeks from this pulpit. Let's join together from the 13th verse. Shall we write down to the to the 17th verse, inclusive.

Verse 13 to 17 of Ephesians 6. 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. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet with readiness. That comes from the gospel of peace.

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Well we come to, I've forgotten how many of our studies.

I was going to give you the number on the sixth chapter of Ephesians. And we're back with the concept of course of of the Christian as a soldier. And you will remember that there are many references in the old testament, but particularly in the new, that have the idea of the follower of God as being in an army.

And the object is to enter into territory in this world, which has been wrongly occupied by the devil. I say wrongly occupied, because the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. And any rights that the evil one seems to have on planet earth, are squatter's rights.

One day he shall be utterly eliminated in all his forces from this, from this world. The glory of God will cover the world as the, as the waters cover the sea. Of this there can be no doubt.

The message of the new testament, as regards the future of this world, is not a message of gloom and doom. It's one of great optimism. The idea is that the Lord Jesus Christ shall return, no longer as Jesus incognito, born in the obscurity of Bethlehem, but rather as Jesus Christ the Lord, to whom one day every intelligent being shall bow the knee.

Well, until that moment, we do find ourselves in a military situation, because the territory that is to be reoccupied by those who are on the Lord's side, is not easily taken. There is stiff resistance, stiff opposition. The powers of this dark world, says the apostle in the twelfth verse, and the spiritual forces in in heavenly realms, all these are arrayed against the Christian church, against you and me.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say this, my friend, that if you've never understood the Christian life in terms of a fight, and you've never thought of yourself as less than a soldier of Jesus Christ, I wonder whether you've ever really come to, to embrace New Testament Christianity. Now, when the apostle writes these particular injunctions to the church in Ephesus, he's a prisoner. Ephesians is one of the several epistles that are referred to as prison epistles.

They were written with the man who authored them being incarcerated in some Roman prison, here doubtless in the capital of the empire, Rome itself. Perhaps manacled to the, to the wrists, or to the legs of some Roman soldier, and the apostle Paul with spiritual impertinence, he dictates a letter, and he dares at the end of the letter to use the Roman soldier as a visual aid, to bring to his mind, and to the minds of all those who will receive the letter, what sort of people they ought to be as they engage in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are to be soldiers, and the idea is not unique.

If you were to go back to the prophecy of Isaiah in the 59th chapter and the 17th verse, you will discover the same imagery there in the first half of the Bible. Well then, we've been looking at this armor which the Lord Jesus has left for his church. When he went back to his father, he did not leave the church without resources.

In the Corinthian epistle, as well as in other letters, references made to the great arsenal that is ours as Christians. We are strong in the strength of our Lord Jesus, and it's in his strength that we go out into this world to, to live for him. And so the apostle signals out six pieces of the Roman soldier's armor, and he draws great spiritual lessons of practical consequence for Christian people as they think through the challenge.

Last time when we were looking into this chapter, we were thinking of the belt, the belt of truth. Verse 14, Stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist. Do you remember how I told you that this belt of truth refers to the whole counsel of God, the whole deposit of faith, all that's contained from Genesis through to, to Revelation in, in our Bible.

And we are, so to speak, to gird ourselves, to strengthen ourselves. As a man might gird up the, the loins of his dress in olden days, so we are to belt ourselves in with the truth. And as a result of that, well we have what is foundational in our Christian pilgrimage.

We have something to steady us, something to make us firm. We move into our world with the belt of truth in place. But the apostle continues, Buckled around your waist is the belt of truth, and you are to dump, you are to be equipped with the breastplate of righteousness.

The bless, breastplate of righteousness. What I want to talk to you about for a moment or two, is what this breastplate defends. Now let me give you a bit of lesson, a lesson in ancient military history.

Of course you don't wear a breastplate today, if you are in, in a modern military situation. The breastplate wouldn't be much good against a bomb, would it? But in ancient times when they didn't blow one another to bits, and when warfare was, I would argue, even more sophisticated than it is today, then it was good to don a breastplate. And the reason being, well I'll go into that in a moment or two, the breastplate itself was from the neck downwards to the upper thigh.

Cover the whole of the front of the body, not the back. Incidentally the apostle Paul never makes any reference to covering the back on a Christian soldier. For one reason, as John Bunyan reckoned as he was in bed for jail, the Christian never turns his back.

He never runs away. His back is never exposed because he's always there standing firm, standing fast and fighting. Well here he is and he's got his breastplate on.

He's covered from his neck, though he has easy movement for his head, right down to the top of his thigh. Now what area of the body has the breastplate covered? Well you don't need a degree in theology to answer that. You might need to pass St. John's Ambulance Brigade's certificate in first aid, to know that you've got a heart somewhere around here, and you've got lungs, you've got kidneys, and well I'll not continue because whenever I start about the internals of the body I always feel something's going wrong in that area.

I'm neurotic. Now you can't do without them very conveniently can you? Not even with the miracle of modern surgery. These are vital areas of our bodies.

We must have a healthy heart, we must have healthy kidneys, and so on and so forth. Now this is really what the apostle has in mind. Here is the Roman soldier and he's at the front of a battle.

He's fighting the the war for Caesar, and he must have this breastplate on. Why? Well he could take a stab of a dagger in his arm and though that would be painful, it would not necessarily be fatal. He can take a wound in his leg and that would be uncomfortable, but not necessarily fatal.

But take a dagger in your heart and you're done for. So you've got to protect, as a Roman soldier, the vital, the vital areas of your body. You must have your breastplate on.

Now it's very interesting though the NIV has somewhat in a sophisticated fashion disguised it, that often in the Old Testament when reference is made to to the body, it's made in terms of a feeling and personality being in some way affected by what is within this breast. I mean no longer because of the sophistication of the NIV does the preacher have to preach in Jeremiah chapter 4 and verse 19, my bowels, my bowels, I'm concerned about my bowels. Now it's my anguish, my anguish, and so forth.

Well we're very grateful to the NIV for that. And your reins, you come across the expression reins in the Psalms, got nothing to do with the reins coming down or the reins on a horse, it's your kidneys. And when David has problems in his kidneys, he's not thinking physiologically of the problem, he's thinking of the great despair that he has.

And he's concerned that God somehow ministers to him, as you will discover if you were to read Psalm 26 and verse 2 and so forth. You see in the ancient world, and I'm not saying that they were necessarily wrong, they believed that somehow what was within the case of the chest affected the total personality. And it seems to me that the Apostle Paul has perhaps more than this in mind, as he tells us too, with the breastplate of righteousness.

Now let's spiritualize this, because obviously the Apostle was dealing neither as a military man nor as a medical practitioner, he was dealing as a physician of the soul. Then what is he referring to? Well he's referring, yes I said the word, he's referring to your soul and the health of your soul. You see you can't conceivably understand him, unless you appreciate this.

It is absurd I say when military chaplains address the troops on military tactics and strategies from Ephesians 6. It's an utter nonsense. The Apostle Paul is using the military as a visual aid for the spiritual. Then what is he saying? Well he's saying this, that if there is no protection for your soul, then you are as reckless as a Roman soldier who rushes to the Goths and the Visigoths and all those barbaric tribes that eventually catapulted their way down Italy and routed Rome.

You're as absurd as a soldier who goes unequipped into the battle. So he says put on put on the breastplate of righteousness. Why? Well for the very same reason as our blessed Lord said, what shall it profit a man? He gained the whole world, he loses his soul.

You know many a time hearing wording I've had to preach to congregations of people who by their obvious behavior and their inability to find one passage of scripture over against from the next, have indicated that their knowledge of church and of church life is is very very limited. Sometimes in memorial services with leaving dignitaries from the town present here in the tabernacle or up at the crematorium, as they have been paying their respects to a colleague who's died, they've come and they've listened. And often has been the occasion when I've had to say to these men and these women of ability and intellect, what about your soul? All right, you secure your business, you insure for your old age, but you men who are leading this town, you men who have influence here, what about your soul? What about the breastplate of righteousness? And I look sometimes bemused.

I try to explain it further. But here my friend is the Apostle Paul and he's addressing a captive congregation. They know what he's talking about, the breastplate of righteousness, the security of salvation.

Yes, this we must be donned with, otherwise we're doomed. We're as doomed as the Romans at the front of the empire fighting the battles of Caesar, because we're on the frontier post of Jesus Christ fighting against the battle of the world and Satan and hell itself. Well, the breastplate of righteousness, what is it defending? It's defending none other than the well-being of your soul.

You say, well I still haven't understood you. Well I didn't expect you to, that was only the first part. Hold on, there are a couple more to come.

If that's what it defends, let me put up another question, or rather another statement. What it defines, what am I referring to at the moment? Well, more the righteousness part of this phrase than the breastplate. What is this righteousness? How do you understand it? Now I'm very concerned about the meaning of words, so this morning earlier on, I got down the penguin dictionary, and I discovered that righteousness means self-conscious and intolerable virtue.

Well, that may be good for penguins as a definition, but whatever genius put that one together, could do well by going to the folks who put together the Oxford dictionary, which is often much more accurate than the penguin one. Probably saying that puts me in for a libel action. What is righteousness? Well, let me try and tell you.

Righteousness, according to me, is being thoroughly good. Not according to me, according to the scripture. It means goodness through and through.

In other words, it's pointing us to the character of God, Jesus in John chapter 17 addresses the Father, and he says, righteous Father, I come to you. Now you see, it's not just being intolerably righteous in the pharisaical sense. That's what the definer, the definition is within that dictionary that I quoted.

In one sense, I can understand the editor and the reason why he's gone that way, but he's still giving us an inaccurate definition of righteousness. He's thinking in terms of self-righteousness and smugness. I'm thinking of righteousness, pure, essential, simple righteousness.

What is it? It's goodness through and through. The Apostle Paul says, here is what you need to cover your soul with, goodness through and through. Now listen, and listen very carefully and you'll understand something that seems at first complex, but is really quite simple.

You see, there are those people who feel that when the Apostle Paul was making a reference here to righteousness, they were thinking, he was thinking in terms of integrity. You know, here is the good Christian, what does he do? Well, sixth form college, on a Monday he goes with integrity and he can, he confronts the students there. He's a good fellow, she's a good girl, must be either in track one, track two, or even in the 20s in the tabernacle.

What heights can you scale? Or here is a fellow in his office, or the man, the wife at home, they are to confront the situations from Monday through to Saturday as a good person and that's what he's meant by the best place of righteousness, your goodness, your essential goodness. And if that is so, then I'm alarmed. Why? Well, because I know something about my goodness.

My goodness I do. All my righteousness is as filthy rice. The greatest saint whose writings I've ever written, whose writings I've ever read, when speaking about himself will disclose his utter dislike about certain areas of his personality.

That goes for George Whitefield, it goes for John Wesley, it goes for Madame Guillaume, and all these great spiritual people of yesteryear, don't you find that in your own souls? I have great problems with the doctrine of progressive sanctification because I think I'm in reverse gear, and I'm not just saying that. Smugly, I really get terribly alarmed about the fact that I should be much more like the Lord Jesus Christ than I am. So you see this best place of righteousness, my dear friend, cannot just be living a good life, being decent to people.

Obviously it embraces that in no sense from this pulpit would you ever get someone denouncing those aspirations. But when the Apostle makes reference to putting on the breastplate of righteousness, he's way beyond that, he's miles in front of you. And indeed he has to be.

Why? Well you see he's had problems himself. Here is the Apostle, let's take the next letter after Ephesians, which is Philippians, conveniently there. And he gives us a bit of autobiography.

Let's go to him in the third chapter. He's telling us a little bit about his life. Not much that Paul does disclose about himself, you almost have to be a Sherlock Holmes in piecing the bits and pieces together and getting some idea of what made the man tick, what was the type of life from which he came.

Well here he lifts the curtain a little bit and he tells us from the fourth verse onwards something of himself, his Jewish background, he was of the tribe of Benjamin, he was a Pharisee, one of the religious elite. As for zeal, well he got it, it was coming out of his ears. Persecuting the church, well he did that.

Legalistic, as for legalistic righteousness, hopeless he said. You couldn't really in any way condemn my way of life at the level of just being good, in a religious, clinical, pharisaical, smug sense, self-righteous. But look at him, the seventh verse.

Whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

How Paul, why do you want to be discovered in the Lord Jesus? What's a matter with your past life? Not having a righteousness of my own that comes through the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. You see you can be the best person in the world and you're still defective. Men at best, or the best of men are still men at best.

And that level of righteousness, that level of goodness, it is still inadequate, it is still inferior. It is what, not what one requires to go out against the hellish forces of the devil and confront him. There's something else, woe betide me, if all that I have is my own basic goodness, because I know how treacherous I am myself.

So what are we looking for? Well we're looking for something that's not worked up, no new leaf that's turned as a result of our own ingenuity and initiative. We're looking for something that's sent down, something that can be brought to us, that we can inherit, that we can put on. And the Apostle has of course in mind the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ, the righteousness of Christ.

Here's another thing that's a little complicated, but stay with me and you'll understand it. Michael Jenkins ought to have preached this sermon. He gave a synopsis in his prayer in the vestry a little while ago.

And in Michael's prayer he made reference to the righteousness of Christ which is imputed and imparted. Those words, imputed and imparted, I want to speak about. What does it mean to impute something? Well to hand it over.

Now what do you want to get rid of more than anything? Well if you're a Christian you can answer that question. You want to get rid of your sin. And in Isaiah chapter 53 and verses 5 and 6 you discover how the Lord Jesus prophetically, anticipated by the prophet, deals with the basic problem that confronts you and me.

Isaiah 53 verses 5 and 6. The latter part of verse 5, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed. We are all like sheep have gone astray. Each one has turned to, to his own way.

And the Lord has laid on him, the Lord Jesus, the iniquity of us all. You see that's what happened at the cross. The sin that you had, the sin that I had, all the aggregate sins of the world was taken in one big lump and placed on the shoulders of Christ.

That's imputation, transferring my sin to him. Now that's what happened when I became a Christian. You can never understand Paul unless you're a Christian.

Here you see, he's talking about, by implication, the righteousness of Christ. What he has been delivered from his sin, but also not what's been imputed, what's been imparted. And what has been imparted to you and to me? Well, the righteousness of our Lord Jesus.

Let's sum it up in one scripture which makes it quite plain. Let's turn to 2nd Corinthians, shall we? And chapter 5, just for a moment. 2nd Corinthians and chapter 5. And right at the end of the chapter, the Apostle is here speaking of the work of our Lord Jesus on the cross.

And what does he have to say? Well, I take it from the latter part of verse 20. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. God made him.

Shall we say that together? Verse 21, both of you with the NIV. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Let's take another run at that.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. What does that mean? That imputed to the Lord Jesus is my sin, but I'm not then left in a vacuum. Placed to my account is his righteousness.

In other words, the freedom that I have from the consequences of my sins, that I bask in. I'm no longer what I appear to be. I'm no longer what I was.

Credited to my account is the holy life of Jesus. Ephesians 1 tells us that Jesus Christ has died for a holy people, and the only holiness that you and I will ever know that can possibly stand the scrutiny and inspection of God is the holiness that we take from the Lord Jesus. And what I need to know more and more is the practical outworking of that in my life on planet earth at this moment as a Christian.

And so you see, my friend, when we sing that hymn, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. We're singing something that is bound up in Paul's great statement in the, to the Ephesians, when he speaks about putting on the breastplate of righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest prayer.

No, sometimes I'm a sweet person. Sometimes I'm easy to get on with. Sometimes I do things that may merit congratulations, the sweetest prayer.

Ah, but how sour those prayers often become. Sometimes I'm tempestuous. Sometimes I'm foolish.

Sometimes I know what it is to do the very things that rationally I ought never to have done. Dare I suggest that that spotted righteousness of mine, that less than good quality commodity can be taken and can pass the scrutiny of Almighty God? Is the devil afraid of me when I stand clothed in my own righteousness? Of course he's not. My heart is exposed.

My inner affections are exposed. He has me. I'm like a puppy on a string.

But when the righteousness of Christ is put on me, then I become a new man. I'm like Saul or rather like David. I go down the valley and I confront Goliath.

You come to me with all your hellish forces, with all the subtlety and the conniving of the demonic world. But I come to you in the name of the Lord God of hosts. I come to you with the power of Christ resting upon me.

I come to you in him, strong in his strength, safe in his keeping tender. This is what the Apostle has in mind you see. And so he speaks about this breastplate of righteousness.

Not something you can try, but something that's bestowed upon you. Well then, let's hasten on, and I mean hasten on, to what it deflects. We've looked at what it defends, what it defines, and what it deflects.

I don't watch much boxing. Now the gentleman I used to assist in London, Reverend Macbeth Patterson, had, she's now in heaven, an aged mother in her nineties. And she always used to watch the wrestling on a Saturday night.

And sometimes it used to cause my older colleague, Ray Merriman, that his mother knew something of muscular Christianity. But one illustration that I've got, something that's at the back of my mind, that shot forward earlier today, was that of Muhammad Ali. Do you remember him, that shy man? On one occasion he got his opponent really in the corner.

And the fellow was going under. And Ali just put his hands behind his back, and he exposed his chest, and he tightened up the muscles. And the man who was losing was going, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump.

And you know it was like flinging pebbles at granite rock. It was having absolutely no effect at all on Muhammad Ali. Now I see that, ideally, as a picture of the assaults of the devil on the Christian that has upon him the breastplate of righteousness.

He's able to resist the assaults. It doesn't matter how many pieces of rocks were thrown. It doesn't matter what fiery darts are leveled against him.

He's there with a breastplate on. He's impregnable. You can't drag the Christian away from his salvation.

You can't drag him away from the victory. Why? Because he's on the Lord's side, and the victory is already guaranteed in Christ. You know you need this breastplate.

There is no more practical address than I could ever bring at the tabernacle than this one this morning. I say that unblushing. You need your breastplate of righteousness when the devil accuses you.

Doesn't he do that? He accuses you, and he says that you can never be a Christian. Why not? Well because you've done this, and you've done that, and so on and so forth. And then you take him to the Scriptures.

You take him to Romans, for example, chapter 8 and verse 1, and you say, ah, I know that what you're saying has truth within it, but listen to this. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, those who have on the breastplate of his righteousness. You're accusing me on the wrong ground.

You're accusing me on my own righteousness. I've jettisoned that. I've counted that as valueless, as rubbish, as the Apostle did.

But now I'm clothed in a far superior righteousness, and there's no condemnation that you can direct towards the Son of God. And then he comes at you again. You call yourself a Christian? You've been going to that there tabernacle for ten years, twenty years, forty.

But I know what you're like. I know how often you're twisted in your personality. How often you say what you shouldn't, and your attitudes are wrong, and even when you come to church they're sometimes askew.

He starts to point you to yourself, and you begin to see it, and you know that there's truth in what he's saying. What does that mean, that he's got you? No. You go to 1 John chapter 1. You go to the verse that has more reference to people in pastoral situations than almost any other verse in the Scripture, if we confess our sins.

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to keep on cleansing us from all unrighteousness. Satan, I'm still wearing his breastplate, and he pronounces me free from the guilt of sin, because of what he's done for me. You can't go into the presence of God, you know.

All those people in the tabernacle, they can sometimes get a little bit excited about their worship, but not you, because I know what you're like. You have no rights there at all. This is a holy God, and the devil can preach on the holiness of God, the most eloquent of sermons that will tyrannize you, because you'll realize from him that God is a holy God.

He's a consuming fire, and well you might be afraid of him. So what do you do? Well you've done your breastplate of righteousness, and you take the devil to Hebrews, and where are we? The end of chapter 4 is it? Yes, the 16th verse. In fact we'll take it from the earlier verse, from the 14th.

Therefore since we have a great high priest, who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted every way, just as we are yet was without sin. Let us then come, let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy, and find grace to help us in our time of need.

We have a hope that is sure and certain. We have a priest who has gone through the curtain. We have one who grants to us his righteousness, and it becomes our very passport into the holiest place of all, and clothed in that, we can have an audience with our God and Father.

The final thing, the devil comes, and I speak with tenderness to my older friends. I've seen it so often. He comes at the hour of death.

You know it's the weakest point for many a person. There, their cancer-ridden, emaciated body, an apology for what it was is on the bed. Or there, their arthritic condition has made them so, so low, so much pain.

And they say to you, Pastor, can it really be that I'm a Christian? All that I could have done, that I didn't do. For many years, when I should have engaged in a better quality of service, but I didn't. The opportunities that I missed, and immediately they start to talk to me like this.

I know what's happened. The accuser of the brethren, you see. He's come along, he's trying to rob them.

The final assault on their faith, in that tremendous hour of death. And what do you do? Well, you take them to a scripture like this one, and I'm reading from the Living Bible, at the end of Romans 8. No, for the scripture tells us that for his sake, we must be ready to face death at every moment. But despite all this overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us enough to die for us.

For I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can't, and life can't, the angels won't, and all the powers of hell itself cannot keep God's love away. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, or where we are, high above the sky, or in the deepest ocean, nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God, demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ, when he died for us.

That's it, my friend. This is why you need the breastplate, to repulse the evil one. And when he comes, show him the scripture.

Admit what you have been, but tell him the battle is not at that level. The battle is with the Christ, who called you to be one of his soldiers, and clothed in his armor, with the arsenal of scripture fired back. That the one who would rob you of the joy of your salvation, and know the assurance that comes of wearing that breastplate, that covers from the neck right to the top of the thighs, all those spiritual affections, your total personality, and guarantees that having placed your soul in the care of the good captain of our salvation, even Jesus Christ the Lord, having done all, on the day of battle, you'll stand.

Amen.