Find out not only what the Armor of God is, but how to receive it and the true meaning behind it.

<p>Find out not only what the Armor of God is, but how to receive it and the true meaning behind it.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Berwick SDA Church

Andrew Foulds

Putting On the Armor of God

As we know, as a direct parable to this world as we're living now, it's dark and dreary.

But we know, Lord, that You are risen and You are alive.

And that not only do You have plans for us in the future, You have plans for us right now.

And not only are you working for us in the future, you're working for us and through us right now.

And we can have a hope, not only for the future, but also for the present, that we can complete your will, Lord.

I pray now that you can bless us and give me utterance for this message that I can glorify Your name and not mine own.

Romans 13, 11-14 It says, And that knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.

For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

The night is far spent, the day is at hand.

Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.

Let us walk honestly as in the day, and not rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." Now, let's turn to a very familiar passage, and you'll see how this will tie in in a second.

And we know this is the third angel's message.

And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast in his image, and receive his mark on his forehead or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation.

And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

And the smoke of the torment ascendeth up forever and ever, and they have no rest nor day nor night, who worship the beast in his image and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.

Here is the patience of the saints, here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." Now you may be wondering why I tied those 2 verses together and also how these verses have to do with the armor of God.

So how do we not receive the mark of the beast, let alone teach others not to?

So often we thought about telling people that Sunday is the mark of the beast, which it is, that we do not realize what the mark truly represents.

You with the Mark of the Beast and the Seal of God, we don't follow Jesus and all his teachings so that we can be Christians.

We do it because we are Christians, because we also know that the carnal mind is enmity against God.

So in the same way, when it comes to the Sabbath vs.

Sunday question with the mark of the beast and the seal of God, Those that are faithful to Jesus will not keep the Sabbath so that they can be saved.

They will keep it because they are saved.

They will keep it because they have the character of God and that is why it's not just about a day.

The day is the seal and it's the mark, a showing of the authority of God.

So essentially, those that will have the seal of God will have the character of God, and those that have the mark of the beast will have the character of Satan.

Now you may have thought, how does the armour of God fit into this?

Well, as I will show more throughout, the armour of God is the character of God.

And we are going to start at verse 11, our scripture verse.

And putting on the armor of God, It's likened to putting on the character of God, or as we read in the first verse we started with, putting on Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 6, 11, put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand." Now I'd like to stop there to comment.

The first thing that we realize here is It uses terms that are attributed to, and throughout this whole passage, that are attributed to a soldier.

Because truly, as Christians, we are soldiers.

Now do you think that we can get this armor that it's talking about here by ourselves?

I used to be a martial artist and I thought after being bullied and such that if I learned martial arts and became tougher than people, all my problems would be gone.

Well, I found out very quickly in life that's not the case.

Yeah, you might be able to beat up everybody in sight, but all the sin of this world will still bring you down to your knees.

And if we look in verse 12, it says, for we wrestle not against flesh.

I was a wrestler for, I believe it was 2 years or 1 and a half, and I understand completely why they use the word wrestle.

You see, when You wrestle, you train for hours and hours and hours on end every day for 1 6 minute bout.

It's not like a football game or soccer or any of those things.

One's 2 minutes, another one's 2 minutes, another one's 2 minutes.

And most people would think, oh, you go into that little bout and it's nothing.

Well, when you're put in this bout, your opponent has equally trained for hours and hours and hours on end.

He's your equal skill or more and intellect.

And see, the reason that it uses wrestle here is because when you're in that bout, for every single second in that bout, you are struggling to stay off of your back.

You're constantly, your mind's working to try and think of how to take him out, and it's constantly on the defense of what he could do.

That's the reason why it uses wrestle, because as Christians, we have to wrestle against sin.

We have to wrestle against our own carnal, sinful nature.

But you see, we're soldiers, and have you ever seen a sleeping soldier?

I've heard that if a soldier, and I believe it, it's true, if a soldier is blinded for a second, they're dead.

But we have to wake up out of our slumber.

We need to see what's going on and realize so that we can go to God and say, we need help.

Now, in verse 14, it starts through this list of this armour.

You see, the first verses say that we have to put on the whole armour of God so that we can stand.

And it says that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood.

So this is saying that we have to put on this armor from God, but we cannot get this armor ourselves.

This is for our Christian walk, this armor.

In verse 14 it says, Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth.

Now, girt about with truth, that's talking about a belt, essentially.

We're supposed to have a belt of truth around us.

And that means that we are supposed to have our whole core, Everything that we're based off of, the whole core, everything that we're based off of, is supposed to be truth.

As a matter of fact, this belt holds the entire armor together.

So therefore, everything that we know, it's all by truth.

And on top of that, this belt has a sheath on it, and that sheath has in the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, which we will get to later on.

It has to be held fast because we know also that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.

If we look at the end of that verse, it says, having the breastplate of righteousness.

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Putting On the Armor of God

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