Sermon Notes

January 12, 2025

Belt of Truth

Ephesians 6:13-14

Jesus had just returned to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. It would be His last meal here on earth. It was at this meal that Jesus proclaimed to His disciples, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me”. It would be just a few hours before the Truth would be on trial. Satan hates the Truth and will do anything to destroy it. Satan had been trying to stop the truth since the beginning when he tried to kill the Truth by making Herod jealous at the news the wise men had brought about a child king being born. He tried to destroy the Truth by tempting Jesus with all the things this world had to offer. Now through 6 farcical trials, Satan was trying to stop the Truth once again by seeing that Jesus was put to death on a criminal's cross. As Jesus was speaking to a crowd in John 8:44, He tells us why Satan hates the Truth when He says “he (Satan) has always hated truth because the truth is not in him. When he lies it’s consistent with his character because he is a liar and the father of lies.” Satan hates truth because it’s the antithesis of who he is. He has done everything he can to stop and pervert the truth and will continue to do so until he can’t anymore. Since followers of Jesus are the ones who have been trusted with the Gospel message to tell the world the truth of Jesus Christ, we are going to see attacks on truth in our lives, time and time again. Because of this reality, the first piece of the Armor of God that we are told about in Ephesians addresses Satan’s hatred of truth. So this morning we are going to look at the Belt of Truth. We will see its purpose when Satan attacks the Truth in our lives, and how it protects us as we see victory over the enemy in our lives.

How Satan attacks Truth - Ephesians 6:13

Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm.

Paul starts off verse 13 with the word “therefore”. We know that any time we see the word “therefore” in the Bible we need to understand what it is “there for”. Therefore is a transitional word in Scripture and Paul is using it to refer to what we spoke about in last week's sermon. Last week we saw that, if we are a Christian, then we are going to be involved in Spiritual Warfare or a war against supernatural beings in some way, shape, form, or fashion. We saw that our enemy wants nothing more than to destroy the things of God and as a follower of Jesus, we are children of God, so we are right in his crosshairs. We also saw that when we are fully committed to following Jesus and walking in faith outside of our comfort zones in all parts of our lives, we will find ourselves attacked by the enemy more often. No matter where we find ourselves in our walk with Christ, whether it is strong, or we are struggling at the moment we are going to have to prepare ourselves for battle. Paul tells us to prepare for this battle in the strength and might of God and with the gear that God supplies to us. We saw that we must never fight in our own strength because our enemy is supernatural. We only operate in the natural realm. However God has taken care of that by giving us everything that we need to find victory over our enemy. That’s what the therefore is there for.

Paul then goes on to tell us something that he mentioned in the previous few verses. We must individually put on each piece of the Armor of God, but this time there is another word that he uses in the Greek to give this command. The word that Paul uses in verse 13 now contains a sense of urgency that wasn’t there before when he commanded it a few verses ago. It seems he does so because of the timing of these attacks from the enemy. Paul speaks of the timing of these attacks when he uses the phrase “the time of evil.” The time of evil started at the fall recorded in the book of Genesis when sin entered the world, it’s Satan's first attack on truth that we are told about. He attacked the truth by twisting God’s own words. He asked Eve if God really said they couldn’t eat anything in the garden. Then he told them they wouldn't die (even though God said that they would), but rather they would become just like God. Satan attacked truth with a twisted truth and that lie won — sin entered the world. Satan always likes to work with just enough truth to make his lies sound plausible. We saw that he did it with Eve, but he also did it with Jesus. In Matthew 4:5 Satan told Jesus that He should jump off the top of the temple. He quoted Psalms saying that God would send angels to protect him. He was trying to justify his lies and temptations with the twisting of God’s words again. If he used this method of twisting the truth to make people think what he is saying might be a possibility for Jesus. Himself there is no doubt that Satan will use the same to attack truth in your life as well. Honestly, he probably already has and is doing so right at this moment. When Satan attacks, he seldom does it openly. His strategies are unseen, shrewd, and perfectly tailored to the weakness of his targets. He also likes to gaslight believers to believe what is evil is good and what is good is evil (Isaiah 5:20), turning the world upside down from reality. He will even take the truth and try to blow it out of proportion to turn it into a heresy via legalism. He did this with the church in Galatians. That's one of the reasons that Paul wrote the letter to them. They had taken the Gospel of Jesus and its truth and added to it. They added just a little part of the law back into that truth and Paul called those who embraced and taught this distortion of the truth objects of the wrath of God. One of the most powerful ways that Satan attacks truth in our lives is to make us doubt the truth. Specifically concerning the goodness of God and more specifically God’s goodness to me. We see this in the life of John the Baptist when he started doubting because of the circumstances in his life. He sent his students to ask Jesus if He was really the One or if there would be another. We also see this in the lives of many of the heroes of the faith outside of Scriptures. Countless biographies of these mighty men and women of God from as early as the first century all address a time when they doubted God’s goodness in their own lives because of circumstances they found themselves in. The time of evil started a long time ago. It can look a lot of different ways. For a follower of Jesus, the time of evil personally starts the moment a person puts their faith in Jesus Christ. From that moment the fighting starts and it’s just going to get worse and worse. It’s this time of evil that Jesus talked about in the book of Matthew. It's something that Paul warned Timothy about as well. Both accounts are warnings that Satan’s attacks would get worse and worse because we are getting closer and closer to the day that suddenly it will all suddenly be stopped forever.

If you ever have a chance to visit the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C I highly recommend it. It’s free and it’s a museum where you will see some of the most amazing pieces of air and space history in the world. You can see the Spirit of St. Louis (the first plane to make a solo transatlantic flight). You can see one of the few Concorde Airplanes. The space shuttle Discovery is there as well, but in one corner of the museum hangs a very small plane (if you could even call it that) — The Glamorous Glennis. This plane is probably better known as the Bell x-1 or the plane that Chuck Yeager used to break the speed barrier for the first time. When there, you can hear a recording of Chuck describing what that record breaking flight was like. He says that the closer he got to the speed of sound the rougher the ride got. The plane was shaking all around him and he was sure that it might fall apart at any moment. But instead of retreating like so many had done before him, he pressed the stick forward, trusting in the ones who had built that plane. The moment he hit the sound barrier, it was all over, and the flight was perfectly smooth. That’s what happens in this battle. It’s going to get rough and it’s going to get so bad at times we will want to retreat. But when we stand firm, trusting in the One who this armor belongs to, suddenly it will all be over and we will have victory. Either Jesus returns or He calls us home. Either way, we are in very good shape. So, what’s holding all of this together? Even as things get tough and start to rattle all around us? It’s the Belt of Truth.

The First Piece of Gear - Ephesians 6:14a

Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth…

Believe it or not, the belt for a Roman soldier was arguably the most important piece of gear in their armor. The belt was important because it served two purposes. The first purpose was to tie up their longer clothes so it would not trip them up as they moved into battle. The second purpose was to be the base for all their other gear, both offensive and defensive, to keep all of it where it needed to be. There is no doubt this is what Paul was thinking when he listed the Belt of Truth as the first piece of gear in the Armor of God.

Truth keeps us from stumbling.

When it comes to truth and its importance in keeping us from stumbling as we walk with Jesus, we need to understand what truth is. To do that we need to first understand what truth isn’t. Remember when we said that Satan hated the truth because it was the exact opposite of who he is? That means when it comes to truth there are a lot of counterfeits out there that we are going to be very familiar with because Satan has tried to use them in our lives. It’s these counterfeits (usually not just outright lies) that cause us to stumble in the battle and cause us to lose our effectiveness for Christ. Let’s look at these counterfeits by looking at what Truth is NOT.

Truth is NOT merely what works, that’s pragmatism. The end does not always justify how it was obtained. This would be like lying on a resume to get a job or cheating on a test to get a good grade. Just because you get what you want in the end doesn’t mean that you are dealing in truths. Truth is NOT just what is understandable or makes sense. Remember in Matthew 28 when the guards and Chief Priest came up with the story that the disciples stole the body of Jesus from the tomb that was now empty? Just because a group came up with that story and it made sense, it didn’t mean that the story was true. Remember Satan loves to work in plausibility and will attack us with those more than anything else. Truth is NOT what makes you feel good. The fact that the Bible tells us that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God proves that. Bad news can be true. Truth is NOT what the majority says because the majority can believe and tell lies. Take for example, abortion. No matter what the law says, no matter what the legislation says, no matter what most people say, abortion for convenience's sake is the murder of an unborn baby. You can even change what you call it to try to change the truth. We see this when it’s called “family planning”. The truth remains, abortion is the extermination of a human life and that is always called murder. Truth is NOT defined by intentions. You can still have good intentions and be wrong. Truth is NOT determined by the sincerity of your beliefs. We all know that Peanuts’ Linus was sincere about his belief in the great pumpkin and all it got him was a night without candy and a cold night in a pumpkin patch. This list could go on and on, but with these few examples I think we can all personally see how Satan has used these very counterfeits in our lives in the past. So what is the truth? Truth is reality — not what we think reality is because it can be lies that Satan uses. Truth is actual reality and since Satan loves to distort this idea, we must look to the One who John says in his Gospel was full of grace and truth. We must look to Jesus because He said, “I am the Truth”. Not “A” truth but he said He is “THE” truth and it’s what He came to testify about. In our walk with God, when we walk in obedience to the truth of God’s Word and in Jesus we will not stumble. We are not saying it will not be a difficult walk, but we will not stumble because we have on the belt of Truth. We can be assured that when we substitute the Truth of God’s Word with a lie from the devil (remember these will look plausible to us) we will struggle in those parts of our lives. We will continually stumble in our walk, all the while wondering what’s going wrong. We don’t even realize that we have left the truth of God’s Word behind for another “truth” that suits us. That is the substitution that has caused all these issues that we have in life. The only way to figure out if that’s happening in our lives right now is to diligently be committed to the Word of God. Compare the so-called “truths” that we are living out in our lives and replace them with the truths of God’s Word, so we don’t continue to stumble over ourselves all the time blaming God for our problems.

Truth keeps everything else in place.

For a Roman soldier their belt was a base in which most of the other pieces of their armor would rest and be held fast with. When their belt was out of sorts the rest of the armor would not work as intended. Again this is the same for us as Christians. Truth is the basis for which all the other armor rests. If we have truth in its right place and we live out those same truths in our lives, the rest of the armor of God will work just as intended. We will see spiritual victory in our lives over the enemy.

The belt was important when a soldier was heading into battle. When the soldier would tighten his belt, it meant He was ready for battle. The invitation today is to tighten your belt and show the enemy that you are ready for the battle. Commit yourself to the truth of God’s Word — the truth who is the person of Jesus, and to living out those truths with all integrity.

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Sermon Notes

Belt of Truth

Ephesians 6:13-14

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