It Starts Small

Paul’s first piece of armor is a belt of truth. I believe we fist have to understand what truth is. The Greek Word used is aletheia. Paul uses the word several times int he book of Ephesians. The basic, simple understanding is a manifestation of a hidden reality. When you go to court to be a witness they say something along the lines of:

Raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?

You say, “I do” and sit down int he witness chair. What are you saying by using the term “truth”?

They are asking you to manifest something that is hidden to the rest of the courtroom that only you know and you bear evidence of it. You manifest a hidden reality.

The book of Ephesians explains this. There are many things that could be said as truth. If a nurse goes to nursing school, what they have learned is true. When a nurse is administering medication or assisting a doctor, I am not concerned whether or not they know what is true or not. What I am focused on is healing and the future.

A lot of things can be said to be true, but in the book of Ephesians, Paul is inspired to write what the essence of all truth is: The Truth. We are to be affected by what truth really is and Ephesians tells us.

 In him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed.

Ephesians 1:13
(Bold added for emphasis)

The word “truth” here is associated with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is this truth? It is not only what He has said but what He has done. The gospel is the good news of what Jesus Christ did for you and me. What did Jesus do? He manifested the very essence of the love of God, a hidden reality that has now been brought forth and manifested by the Lord Jesus Christ. What we know as the gospel is the essence of what truth is all about.

It is what God has done. It is what God has said.

That is the source of all truth.

Do you want to know what real truth, eternal truth is?
Go back to its source. Its source is God Himself.

Paul writes, we are to have our loins girded about with the belt of truth. Paul is refering to the gospel of the Lord Jesus CHrist, what God has done and what God has said.

assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus,

Ephesians 4:21

We see the source of it very clearly. God is truth.

John spoke that God is truth, but truth was also in Him. If you want the source of truth, it is God Himself. God manifested who He is. The hidden reality is that God is truth and truth is God.

and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

Ephesians 4:24
(bold for emphasis)

This is one of the main armored threads of the garment of the new man!

The very essence, the very “thread” that I have to have is this truth. I’ve got to be influenced by it. It is a part of the new man. It is Christ being who He is in my life.

Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another.

Ephesians 4:25

This truth that we are talking about is made manifest by the way we speak and by the way that we live.

for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth—

Ephesians 5:9

Through truth is the fruit of light. Truth is everything God is. It is what God has done. It is what God has said. It is everything related to God. If you want to find the source of all truth, go back to God.

By girding our loins with the belt of truth, we see that truth is then pure. There is no deception in it. It is something that manifests a hidden reality. To be clothed with truth, which is what we are talking about in our scripture today, means to be sincerely committed to the truth. Another way to put it, you are completely sold out to God. You are completely sold out to who He is.

Clothed with truth is sincerely committed to Truth.
Clothed with truth is to be completely sold out to who God is.
Clothed with truth is sold to what God has done.
Clothed with truth is sold to what God has said.

Paul says, having girded your loins with truth.

This means YOU put on the belt. I can not do it for you and no one else can. A lot of people go to church expecting everyone to just love Jesus and accept God’s Word as truth…

But the reality is you can not force or make other see the truth. You can preach it and teach it, but at the end of the day, an individual has to make up their own mind as to whether they believe it or not. No one can make it happen for another person.

It is a choice we have to choose to make consistently every day.

To be girded with truth means that I am sincerely, totally, wholly committed to truth.

We live in a very very dark world! God’s Word says the devil decieves the whole world.

So the great dragon was thrown out—the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world. He was thrown to earth, and his angels with him.

Revelation 12:9
(Bold for emphasis)

Did you see the tense John used? “Who deceives.” It is not written who deceived… it is written that he deceives right now. This entire world is under the deception of darkness and now we have been made light in the midst of the darkness.

If we are going to stand and wear a garment of truth, we need to then be committed to the truth, who God is, what God has done, and what God has said!

He is constantly deceiving the whole world. This whole world is under the deception of darkness. Now we have been made light in the midst of that darkness. That is what Ephesians has taught us. If we are going to stand firm and wear the garment, part of that garment has a thread and it is armored. That armored thread is that we are totally committed to truth, who God is, what God has said and what God has done.

Loins int he Greek is osphus. It refers to the lower back. Paul’s analogy is beautiful! Your lower back is what helps you stand. Those of you who are still baby chicks or spring chickens have not quite figure out that your back is an important part of the standing process. If you have trouble in your lower back, you start bending and bowing and falling. This Greek word refers to the five lower vertebrae in the spine. If you have every moved wrong or picked up something too heavy, you will easily identify this area.

Now keep this in mind, as Paul is describing a Roman soldier. They wore big wide belts. Similar to what weight lifters wear while lifting weights. They carried their heavy weapons on their belt but not only was this belt useful to carry, it also protected their lower back and abdomen. When they were in hand to hand combat they were constantly digging into the ground with their feet and also strength in their back to fight back. Something had to gird their back to maintain the strength in their lower back to fight.

I hope you can see the picture of the belt and what Paul is saying about truth. He is saying, Listen, you are in a dark world. You are in a deceived world. When you get up on Monday morning and walk out you face it.”

People who are not surrendered to Jesus Christ and to His Word don’t understand how sincerely wrong they can be because the mind is the key. If you don’t have the belt of truth on, forget the rest of the armor. It protects me because the one thing the devil wants to do is to deceive my life.

If we are not putting the Word of God into our minds, balancing out the error and deception, we are going to be pounded everyday and we are already misled without even knowing it. IF we are not going to be surrendered, do stupid things, fill our minds with the world, then this is our own making. The way you are thinking right now is determined by some standard in your life. If it is not the standard of truth, you have already lost your garment, you are already led astray and you don’t even know it. That is what Paul is saying. It is urgent. The Word has to be in your life.

Jesus said the devil is a liar and there is no ounce of truth in him. If I can’t do anything else in this series to convince you of anything, let me convince you of one thing. It is not a power struggle. If you put Satan up next to Jesus, I am telling you folks, he doesn’t even show up on the scale. But where his power comes in is his power to deceive and what he is doing is deceiving us if we are not living according to the Word of God. It scares me how much deception is already in my mind because I have not examined everything by the counsel of the Word of God.

Examine your moods.

Examine what you are going through.

Examine your critical spirit.

Examine your sarcastic attitude.

Where is it coming from?

Something is a standard that is promoting the behavior in your life.

I heard from a sermon:

The Pastor was told you had better behave.

” They said, “Hey, everybody behaves. But how you behave depends on the standard you adhere to.”

And the apostle Paul said if you want to stand against the wiles of the devil, you had better adhere to God’s Word and nothing else.