Christ Memorial Lutheran Church - Houston TX
CMLC 2024-09-01 Sermon (Traditional)
That's a great hymn to use for our text this morning. It's the epistle lesson where Paul talks about the armor of God. I'll just read one verse from it to get us going. "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might." Brothers and sisters in Christ, I have a person that I wear my seatbelt in my car almost all the time. What word is significant there? What do you think that might mean? One time I did it and I could almost swear it was only what I'm sure it was. It was in college which was a long time ago. My friend was driving and we were just running off somewhere so I just got in and we just went in. Guess what happened? This is what happened. Yes. Yes, exactly. We were college students and he had a nice car and we were going and somebody and his light turned yellow and he was like, "What do you do when the light turns yellow?" You punch it and that's exactly what he did but they're the first to turn left in front of us and I hit my nose. So yeah, that one time, probably the only time, believe me, after that, guess how often I wear my seatbelt all the time, exactly, no doubt about it. Yes, seat belts don't do you any good if you don't use them. I mean they're right there, if you don't use them they don't do any good at all. They aren't like airbags. They didn't have airbags back in those days that just work whether you think about them or not. As a matter of fact, as I was writing this, I guess my car has airbags, I don't ever see them. They never popped out. As a matter of fact, I was involved in a wreck on the interstate in 2018 and the airbag didn't come out. They didn't, I guess, really need to but anyway, yeah, we just take for granted that they exist or maybe we don't even think about them or not. We like things to be like airbags. That is, we don't have to think about them, they're just there, doing their job whenever we need them, you know, and that's the way things work oftentimes with God. He provides for us his grace, his mercy, totally undeserved, you know, and I'm glad we have it because, kind of like me in the seatbelt, we oftentimes live our life and I'm guilty of this as much as anybody, just kind of live in the trolola and not thinking about anything of any importance as we go through life, just kind of taking things for granted. But other things in Christian life do take our involvement. They do take our participation, our effort. We may not think about that sometimes as Lutheran Christians. We talk about the grace and love of God, which is the most important thing, but we don't always think about what does that mean in my life. Now Martin Luther, he certainly thought if you remember your confirmation from how many years ago, there was always the, what does this mean? Whatever it is, what does this mean and it's what does it mean for our lives? Yes, there are some things that we have to be involved in. We have to show up and be active. Think things like our family life, our Christian growth and maturity, our Christian influence and witness to other people, and most importantly, our relationship with God. All of those require us to be present and aware and involved in that. The Christian, the armor that God provides that Paul talks about works the same way. It only protects if we wear it. I pray that we can learn the importance of what God provides in this armor and daily put them into practice. Now why do we need this armor that's being talked about? Are we soldiers? Well, actually the truth is, yes, we are, soldiers of the faith, and we may not think about it, but that's true. Why do we need this? A part that God says so in his word, I mean Paul through Paul here, and he says that a Christian can say, "Well, I never really heard about any of this." He was, "I missed that Sunday," or "I wasn't paying attention," or "Who knows what?" I don't know about all this. And my life is still fine. Now I'm not in jail. I have a job, a wife. If I have friends, yeah, life seems to be chugging along just fine, and I'm not aware of any of all this. I can tell you, as someone who has known about this for a long time, obviously you read the Bible and go to seminary, you should kind of know about these sort of things. But do you think I think about this every day? Not much better than the time that I forgot to wear my seat belt. I don't think about this every day all the time either. I have something to bring it back to my mind and then I go, "Wow, I haven't really thought about this in a while." But it is important because I can tell you the difference that it makes. I can see the difference it makes between when I do and when I don't. And, well, we'll never be perfect in our Christian life. That's just not the point. But I can tell because I get my family life and so forth, when I'm not thinking about it, when I'm not being kind of involved, sometimes things just kind of come out of my mouth that I kind of wish I wouldn't say, whether to my wife or to my kids or different things like that. We can be our own worst enemy sometimes. But really, the real enemy is not ourselves as much as we may be. There is a real enemy, the devil and his crew. Paul describes them in this passage in terms that really take them, that they need to be taken seriously. First of all, they're not flesh and blood. And this is incredibly important for us as human beings, is that other people are not the enemy. Sometimes they can seem that way when somebody's given us some grief, whether it's our own family or at work or neighbors or any other. There's people that really get up our good or whatever that seem to be here, but really people, not even when people are nasty, they're not the real enemy. They are being influenced by the person who is the real enemy. Yes. So that's why some blood they're described as rulers, authorities, cosmic powers, spiritual forces of evil. It's pretty serious. These are not somebody that we can mess with. It kind of stacks up like this. If we try to go up against them on our own, how often do we succeed? Not real often. Because I can relate to that in my own life, why did I say that, or why did I think, what's going on? Why did I do that? I wish I could have a rewind, and take it back. How does that work? If we stand up against them on our own, we oftentimes fail. If we are strong in the Lord and use what He has given us, we stand, not perfect all the time. Nobody's saying that, but we stand much better. There are times when I thought about saying something and did it, and I was glad that I did it because God helped me to hold my tongue. We are told no weapon formed against us will prosper as God's people if we are using His armor. So, just real quick, through them, because they all have value, the belt of truth. A belt holds everything together. Paul, when he's writing this, he's writing from a perspective of a Roman soldier. Paul was not a Roman soldier, but he knew them very well because at the time he is writing this, he has chained to one. He got arrested, I will read the book of Acts, you can find the story, he got arrested and taken to Rome. And he was in house arrest, kind of comfy, he was in a villa or whatever. But still it's arrest, and he was chained to a Roman soldier until he met with Caesar. And so, every day he could see, there's the sword, there's the boots, he could see the whole thing. So, belts hold everything together. Truth, that's what holds it all together. Truth is not a concept, a guy named Pilate famously asked, "What is Jesus? What is truth?" Of course, who is he talking to? Truth. Truth is not a concept, it's a person. Jesus is the truth. He says, "He is the way, the truth, and the life." How do we know what's true? That was kind of positive. How can you know? Well, we have an advantage. God and His Word are the truth. They are the measure, they are the straight edge that you line things up against. Jesus is the faithful and true. He always keeps His Word, always keeps His promises. He's dependable, straight, simple. Now, if that's simple, it means he impure, it doesn't mean he's like dung. Simple. Lies, on the other hand, are crooked, complicated, fabricated. One lie requires another. What is now the old saying, "What a tangled web we, when we first decided to see, that's not the exact quotation." But you get the idea. I can relate to that in my life also. If I had to kind of, I did something, because as a kid, or even as a young adult, sometimes I didn't always walk the straight and narrow, but I had to kind of tell a story or whatever, a story. It's okay to tell a story when you're writing a book. It's not okay to tell a story when you're dealing with something that actually happens in real life and you are lying. That's what telling a story means in that situation, it means lying, you're making something up that's not true. It gets more and more complicated because you got to remember your lies. It's not hard necessarily to remember what really happened, but what did I say actually happened? It was the story. It's lies get more and more complicated. Who is the father of lies? Not my dad. As much as I used to be a story teller, the devil is the father of lies. Jesus even said, he used the father of lies, and when he lies, he speaks his native language. That is kind of what he's all about. It's been said of some politicians, they couldn't tell the truth if they wanted to because they're so used to lying because it's an unfortunate thing about sometimes in politics, but that also happens in life. But yeah, with the level he couldn't probably tell the truth if he wanted to. Yes, they are his greatest and only weapon, but they seem to get the job done for him. It's important to know God's truth. That's why the word of God is so important in being in it. It's important to have integrity, integrity means all the pieces fit together. You are what you say you are. You do what you say you do. It's not easy to find in this world that the person that sometimes said of different people is like, wow, they really walk the talk, whatever they say they actually do it. There are people like Billy Graham or whatever, but people get to know them in person. It's like, wow, he really is what he says, that is the person that he is. I'm sure he's not a perfect person anymore than the rest of us, but it's important that the people in our lives can see that about us. Here we are in church, we make some sort of proclamation of being Christians. We're not perfect, never going to be perfect, but at least at some deep level people can see you're genuine. The big term now, especially with the kids, I have 18-year-old boys, is authentic. That means really you're genuine, you're not just a surfer, it's all the way down to the core. That's important and that our way we love our lives lines up with what we say. We show how important it is to be honest just a few minutes ago when we stood up here and confessed our sins, because that is part of being honest because again, we're not perfect is to say, hey, and I've had to tell that to my boys sometimes, hey, I messed up. I said something or I didn't say, whatever the case may be, and that helps people respect you more because they certainly after 18 years of living with me, they know I'm not perfect. I couldn't put that past them, but to try to act like I am and hide what I've made mistakes, that's not good. I didn't do that, it took me on the type of thing, that's kind of the old school where you can't be wrong, but rather to be genuine. The truth, that the truth is what holds everything together. And so lastly, if we know what is genuine, we will be less likely to be fooled by what say, knowing God's truth is who protects us from the light. It's kind of like the people that work for the treasury, when they got the counterfeit bills. How does that work? Do they spend all their time studying counterfeit bills? No, they spend their time studying the genuine article so they know it so well that any time they see a fake, it's obvious. And that's the thing with the word of God. We don't sit there and spend all our time studying the devil and what he does, or whatever. We spend our time knowing God in his ways. And then when something's out of line with that, it becomes more and it's almost like a smell test. No, this is something not right about this. So the truth. Second, the breastplate of righteousness, the righteousness that God gives us in Christ protects our hearts. That's what the breastplate was for. It covered your chest, your heart, all those vital organs. One constant area that the devil likes to attack is our sins and failures because we got me and we admitted it. He particularly loves to tempt us to do something. And then when he succeeds and we do it, then he takes that thing, rolls it up and just smacks us with it over and over again. He tempts us to do something and then he then needles us with it over and over again. Boy, what a person you are. You think you're so good, look what you just did, you know, that kind of thing. And as long as he can keep the focus on us, because there's plenty to find there, he can keep us down because we know we're not as good as we would like to be and we never will be in this world before. But since this is about God and not us, that's the focus when Paul talks about the focus on God, not us, the righteousness that protects us is not our own righteousness. If you saw a little movie of my life, it definitely is not all highlights, you know. There's a lot of things in there, but it's Christ's righteousness that protects us. If we will always be imperfect, then Jesus will always be perfect. And that is what God sees in us. When God looks at our life, he doesn't see our imperfections, you know, the time back in 1973 or '83 or 2003, whatever it pick up, pick up three or whatever it is, 2023. And isn't look at that, he sees the unblemished holiness of Jesus, that's what we're covered. That's why pastors wear robes, it's kind of supposed to be a kind of, a lot of things we do have a reason, but we don't remember why they do them, but that's why we're covered because I'm an imperfect person. I have no right to stand up here and talk to people. But God has covered me in Christ's righteousness and called me to do this. And that's true with anybody that is a preacher, that's true of anybody who is a Christian. That's the important thing. We can live with humble confidence that we are secure in God's love and forgiveness. Never have to worry about it. That security is a strong place for us to show grace and love to others in their failings. And that's so important that when we deal with other people in their failings, like my sons, my, you know, different friends, whatever, when I deal with them that I show young, because that's like, because I know I'm bad, not a great person. So when somebody else goes, finally got somebody I can get, you know, and give some business about it. But that's not right, because I know I live each day in God's love and forgiveness. I show that to other people. It doesn't mean it's easy. Nobody said it's easy. It wasn't easy for Christ. That's why he held on the cross and died, but it's worth it. Next one, this, my appeal to some people, shoes, I associate that with ladies, my wife has a lot of shoes, but I guess those guys like them too, especially, we like boots. And that's really what this is about. Boots help a soldier to be, because again, this is all about the armor of God. We're all soldiers, you know, in this life, not just some of us, you know, they'll be steady on their feet, you know, able to react to anything and go almost anywhere they need to be. The peace that we have with God, and what are these, these are the shoes of the readiness of the gospel of peace, that's what Paul says. The peace we have with God is a solid foundation, a solid footing, you know, to handle anything that the life, life, or enemy holds at us. We know that no matter what, this is important, no matter what we are God's children. He will never leave us or forsake us. Like a cat, we can always land on our feet. And I guess there's a story for my childhood. We actually tested that out when I was a kid. I won't go into the details, but they did work, they did work. Cat that definitely landed on our feet. So yes, we always move, we land on our feet because we know that God has this, God's got it. That peace gives us an opportunity to share with others, you know, as we show, as we, again, we're not blowing it with like horrible, I've got peace, look at me, you know, but just basically living our life, you know, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the peace and stability like with barrel, like with other different things that happen, you know, that how we can be so calm in difficult situations. You mean, I even had somebody, I've been, I, I work in the financial industry and I've been laid off twice. And who knows? I'm probably, I'll probably hit number three before it's all done. Who knows? Third time's a charm, you know, they say or something like that. But anyway, and somebody, you know, just like, okay, you know, and somebody, as we were kind of all standing around talking, all of us, it was called the Memorial Day Massacre. And it's like I was working for American General, it's a good old Houston company up in Springfield, Illinois, and they decided they'd need a lot of us. And so it's like, how can you be so calm through all this? You're just not bothered by this at all. Because, and it was just a chance for me to say, God has always taken care of me. I don't know how this is all going to play out. This was like two months before I was getting married. So that was a really convenient time for this sort of thing to happen. Things are oftentimes like that. But you know, so that was an opportunity witness. I didn't think about that. It was just me living my life in God's grace and an opportunity somebody asked. And I had another opportunity, a different situation, you know, back in the days where you actually go to the office and see people all the time, where I was in the break room and this younger girl, I'd say, girl, she'd probably been 25, 26. So it happens when you get older and everybody's kids. I haven't even, they're 40. But anyway, she kind of said, this is me and her. I'll just get coffee or whatever, and she said, you're always so happy all the time. Why is that? And because I'm prepared for these sort of things, I just said that this is why, you know, because I know, and you know, I would never walk up to somebody at work and start telling them about Jesus. I know that that's not appropriate to do. But goodness gravy, if somebody's going to sit there in a break room and ask me, I'm going to tell them, and that's what I did. And unfortunately, I, you know, I don't get to see this person, they were again, people don't come into work. So I haven't seen her again. But I used to, I would kind of go, and after that, I was just kind of, hey, how's it going, you know, and talk with her a little bit, and so there's an opportunity to share with her. Again, I didn't try to create that situation, but the peace of God that we have can provide those opportunities. And so, and part of it also is, is when I go to work or different places, I pray for the opportunity to show others the gospel of peace. I pray for that. When I go, I have a lunch crew that were old guys, so we all still go into work at, you know, at least one or two days a week. And I eat lunch with them. I've been eating lunch with them over 10 years. And I pray for an opportunity to share the gospel because none of them are Christian. Anyway, so that's, that's the shoes of the, of peace, the shield, the shield. The devil likes to throw fiery darts that give heartburn and worry. Is that real? Do people get heartburned? Do people have worry? My dear blessed mother, who's, he's got Parkinson's, who's an assisted living. She's been a warrior a lot of her life, although maybe she doesn't tell me about it anymore because I've been always, I've been taken get on her, but oh, mom, you know, and, you know, so she doesn't maybe do it quite as much. But yes, that is, that is real. There are some people that live on ant assets, tranquilizers, whatever the case may be, Xanax, I can't even remember the name of, they change all the time. If I pay attention to the commercials on TV, I'd probably give you all the names of them, but I don't. Anyway, so that's common, that's a, you know, how, how it goes, you know, life has a lot of stress, a lot of uncertainties, you know, the enemy likes to place doubts. Will God really take care of me? Will God really provide for me? Have I lived a good enough life? What's the answer to that? Have I lived a good enough life? No. If it, if the focus is on me, no, is Jesus good enough? Is God's grace sufficient? Yes. That's it. If the focus is on me, on certainty, because I know I'm not perfect and I know God's standard is absolutely perfection, not like 95% is absolutely perfection. But so, yes, that's, that's important, you know, because if people, you know, this, continue God, does God exist, does God really care about me? We don't see God. Yeah. So it takes faith. It's trust in that, you know, faith in the many promises of God fulfilled in Jesus Christ extinguishes those doubts and, and fears, knowing, believing and trusting in the promises of God, faith, trusting God protects us from those, from those attacks and lets us sleep at night. God has always taken care of me and my family. And now he takes care of me, even with high prices, even with teenage drivers. Boy, talk about something. If I ever got anxious, that's a, my boys are driving up to college station, driving, you know, here every day. And of course, when they started out, they didn't do so great. So the insurance rates are a little bit better than any of the little dings early on. So yeah, that's, if, if there's anything in the world I do worry about and it's kind of sad. Am I worried about them? No. I'm worried about the car. And the insurance rates, I may not care about them too, but, but that's, that's just honest. You know, you know, it's like, hang on, I don't need those rates to go up any higher. I don't need another car, you know, another bill, you know, I have a lot of things that could cause anxiety, you know, and it can give me a bit tight time with all the expenses. But I know that God's got it. And that's, that's the important thing. That's the shield that I have. Number one, two more to go, salvation, the helmet of salvation. This is about our eternal security with Christ. That's very important. Do you think that most people live thinking how I live today determines where I go after I die? Do you think most people have that thought in their mind as they live each day? How I live today determines where I go after I die. I'm going to say, no, it would, it would probably be better if they had some idea like that. They thought about that a little bit. But I don't think most people do. Yeah, I don't even. So is it true what I've just said that how I live today determines where I go when I die. Is that true? Is that, should I say, race his hand, race that hand? No, it's not true. That's not the truth of the gospel right there. No. What determines, what determines that? Christ's sacrifice received through faith, you know, so when did, when did we get that security? We got that in our baptism when we came to faith in Jesus Christ. Yeah. Now, a better thing to think about, a better thing to think about is how does knowing where I go after, how does that internal security I with Christ, how does knowing that affect how I live today? That's a different kind of question. I had that security in Christ. I know where I'm going to go after I die. How does that affect how I live today? You know, the eternal life has already begun for us and so when faced with uncertainty in this world, does this world have plenty of uncertainty? I don't even, are the answers going to win the world series this year? I'm a carnival fan. There's, there's dead certainty there. Notice I use it with dead certainty. They are not going to. Again, I could put a bet on that. You know, they don't, they don't even make it a place. But anyway, you know, there is, you know, we do have certain, there's a lot of things that are uncertain in this world, but we have certainty, you know. We know that in the end, God wins, you know, without getting into politics and elections or whatever, you know, when faced with, you know, we choose our leaders, but sometimes we're not always thrilled about the choices that we have. I've even heard people say things and I can definitely understand. I would like to have Jesus for president, you know, we want, and that's, I mean, Jesus is not running for president, but we know that no matter what, Jesus will be king. And you know what? He already is king of the universe. The one who rules the universe has nail scars in his hands. He's running it for our, on our behalf. Our future is secure. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow to me or to anybody else, but I know that my future is secure in him and our present, our president is also secured him because we have been told and given the promise that God makes all things work for the good of those who love him. Last is an offensive weapon, the sword of the spirit, the word of God, and it's a spoken word, the word in there is specific, there's three different words for word in the Bible and this one means spoken out loud word. God spoke in the universe came into existence. In his temptation in the wilderness, Jesus spoke the word of God is recorded in the book of Deuteronomy, written by Moses, he used that to defeat Satan's lies. He didn't just tell Satan to be that he quoted the word of truth and used that as his weapon. The word is our weapon, our arsenal in Christian life. Do Christians generally, the Christians know enough of the word to use it? I don't personally know any of you so I cannot answer that question. I would just do it say generality, not maybe so great. It's not having a lot of bullets in your gun so to speak, your sword's kind of rusty. Can Christians learn to use the word? That's an easy one, yes, and that's yes, and that's obviously I should be a person doing that and I don't do it enough, I'll just tell you that, but I do use it. Just as I could, maybe a lot of people in this room can relate to me. As I've gotten older, I'm almost 60, I'm at an age where I don't care, people know what age I am, you know. I don't really care. As a matter of fact, I try to add 10 years to it. I said, "Wow, you look really good for 70, I'm not even 60, but hey, what the heck?" Anyway, as I get it, this happened a couple years, this doesn't happen recently, but a couple years ago, I would occasionally get a night anxiety where I have this anxiety of what if I get paralyzed and can't speak and I'm yet up still, my brain's still active and I can't communicate with anything, but why would I think of that? Why would I, at three in the morning, would I think of something like that? But it would cause me a certain amount of anxiety and it was just like, ew, you know, and so I just had to say, you know, I know that in Christ we were, you know, I spoke this out loud. You know, I know in Christ that we are born in the Christ, I spoke the Word of God, whatever I could think of at the time. Romans chapter eight, looking up when you go home to them, write it down right now, is a very good chapter for good words to speak, you know, like I said earlier, I know all things work for the good of Christ, you know, who strengthens us. Also, there is no condemnation for us in Christ Jesus, there's just a ton of good words just in that one chapter, though my Bible is full of them, and this chapter with Paul is full of them too, you know, it's also good to have the Word of God on our side, to use to comfort other people. It's not, oh, they're there, that's, you know, but to actually speak God's Word into somebody's situation. It doesn't have to be super profound, but that's a great thing as well. So the armor of God, in medieval times when a squire was about to become a knight, that was like the first, that was the last step before becoming a knight, they would offer something, they were going to become a knight the next day, they would often stay up the knight the knight before in the chapel, the castle chapel in prayer, pouring out their heart to God because of the important thing that they were about to go through to become a knight. That squire would pray over each piece of his armor, placing his hand upon it as he depended on God for his courage and his survival. And so also we, as those who are equipped with the armor of God, prayerfully consider each one and get to know it, so you can use each aid, that belt of truth, know in the truth, you know, salvation, you know, that's on the head, that's wrong, salvation, you know, our security, all these things that we'd use it and in the morning, put them on one by one by thinking about each one and praying that you would remember it at the time of need. And, you know, I, this is something, whenever I preach a sermon, I've already heard this sermon like five or six times, you know, as I'm going through it and that's something I'm preaching to myself that I would, every morning, would remember that and do that. And so, you know, so I would remember it. Thank God that he does protect us when we're not thinking, when we're just being absent minded, when we forget our armor, in his grace he still protects us. But my prayer is that more and more we would make use of all the things that he has given us for our good and for those in our care because I think of not just myself but my family as well and other people too. 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, amen.