Hold On To Truth - Series: STAND AGAINST - Ephesians 6:14

I'm so glad that you're here with us today, worshiping, opening up God's word together.

I want to encourage you to make sure you're with us here next week for our Family Commitment Sunday.

Our elementary students will be in the service with us.

We have some special elements planned there.

And then the week after that, September 27th, we have a very special guest preacher coming in.

His name is Cam Huxford.

He's a retired preacher from Compassion Christian Church in Savannah, Georgia.

And so Cam is one of the very best men that I know.

He served for over three decades at Compassion Christian Church.

And it's going to be a blessing for us to have Cam share God's word with us.

So I encourage you.

I'm glad you're here today, but keep coming back.

Make sure you're with us next week and then the week after that as well, and you will be blessed by our time together.

Our study we're in Ephesians chapter 6.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

So if you have your Bible, open it up, open up the app or open up your print Bible.

We'll have a big one up behind me as well.

But that is our study that we are going through in Ephesians chapter 6, dealing with spiritual warfare.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

A lie can do a lot of damage in the moment, but it will not outlast the truth.

A lie can do a lot of damage right in the moment, but it will not outlast the truth.

How can I be so sure?

I'm glad you're asked.

I've got an easy answer to that one.

Sometimes your questions aren't easy, but the one that I made up for me to be able to answer very easily, it goes like this.

The Bible actually frames it this way in the book of Proverbs, chapter 12, verse 19.

Proverbs 12:19

It says, truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.

What fascinates me is that lies can feel incredibly powerful in the moment.

Sometimes even for a season.

But we all know that lies destroy trust.

A lie can shape the way that you see another person and the way that other people see us.

Oftentimes, a lie repeated enough, people start to believe it to be true because you've heard it enough, it becomes familiar, and you think, oh, I've heard that before.

That checks out.

But Proverb tells us that there is something that a lie cannot do.

A lie will never endure the test of time.

Eventually, lies come to light.

The darkness is driven out by the light of truth.

Lies can't endure.

Truth can and will.

And when Paul tells us how to stand against the schemes of our enemy, the evil forces that are all around us in this world, the first piece of armor that he names for us is truth.

Because truth exposes lies.

The truth of God exposes lies.

People, sometimes ourselves included, work so hard to build up this image of ourselves, and we string together untruths.

And we weave this web of lies, and it's exhausting to try to keep up with, but eventually you slip up, or somebody else slips up, or the truth comes out.

The simple thing about the truth is you don't have to remember it.

You don't have to remember which version of it you told because the truth is the truth.

Last week and really the last few weeks, Paul tells us to take up the whole armor of God so that we can be ready to stand in the evil day.

And having done everything at the end of the battle, at the end of the storm, at the end of the war, to still stand.

And the only way that we're able to do that is to stand firm in God's provision and what he has done for us.

And God gives us that before we even know we need it.

And Paul tells us that before he even breaks down the pieces of the armor.

Ephesians 6.14 says, Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth.

The belt of truth.

This first piece that Paul names is truth, and that shouldn't surprise us.

Because the plans, the schemes of our enemy, Satan, he works through deception.

And if he works through deception, how are we going to fight deception and falsehood?

Well, we have to know what is right, we have to know what is pure, we have to know what is true, we have to know what is unchanging.

So the first thing that we need to put on is this belt of truth.

And what that does is it protects us from being misled.

It protects us from hearing something that might sound kind of right, but you can kind of tell that there's something wrong there.

Jesus says something very directly about Satan in John chapter 8, verse 44.

John 8:44

He calls Satan a liar and the father of all lies.

He is a liar, he is a deceiver, it is in his nature, it is what he does well, it is his native language, the language of deception and lies.

And if we're going to fight off his native language with his favorite way to attack us, we have to know the truth.

Because the truth exposes lies.

Deception is at the very core of how Satan and our enemy works.

And we need to know that so that we can fight it.

One of the most or the most dangerous lies that you and I come across in this life are rarely ridiculous.

The ridiculous lies are obvious to spot, right?

Like I could say, I am confident that the Falcons are going to win the Super Bowl, even though they're starting a fifth-string quarterback maybe today.

I haven't checked recently.

I could say that with confidence, but that is a lie.

That is not true.

They will be lucky to win a game this year.

God is holding, sometimes we believe these lies, but there's enough truth to entertain them.

The lies that entrap us the most are the ones that sound believable.

Like maybe God's holding something back from me.

Or perhaps this sin isn't that serious.

Nobody will ever find out.

Maybe I really do need this fix in order for me to be happy.

Perhaps God has given up on me.

Maybe I'm too far gone.

You see, a lie doesn't have to sound outrageous.

The only thing it has to do is it has to sound convincing.

It has to seem like there's an element of what is true in there.

Let me tell you a story.

Back in the 1900s, I was in high school, right?

My wife hates it when I say that, so I say it as often as I can.

I don't say we, I say me.

We're the same age, but still, right?

Back in the 1900s, I was in high school.

Maybe you can relate to that.

I can clearly remember one of my friends telling me with a straight face and absolute seriousness, he says, Joel, I drive better when I'm stoned.

Are you kidding me?

This wasn't one of my school friends, this wasn't one of my neighbor friends, this was my one of my church friends.

He said, I drive better when I'm high.

Like, I are you high right now?

I don't understand what's happening.

I don't understand what's going on.

And he believed that to be true.

The truth exposes lies.

One of the reasons lies work is they often connect with something inside of us or something that is already happening with us: a desire, a fear, an insecurity, a wound.

Something that we maybe desperately want to be true.

And the enemy doesn't always have to create something out of nothing.

He takes things that he can observe and things that we say that's maybe already present, and what he wants to do is to build on that, to build on those things we struggle with, to build on the insecurities that we all have.

One thought becomes another, one compromise becomes another, one assumption about God and how he works becomes another, and eventually we start living in this structure of lies that we're living in, and that is why the truth matters.

The truth doesn't merely tell us that a lie exists.

What the truth does is it brings that lie to light.

The truth exposes lies.

What Paul does is that he uses this image of a belt, kind of hold things together.

One of the favorite gifts that I've ever gotten from my wife, Jessie, is very simple.

And when I found it after we were moving, I put it up in our house and I just felt like, hey, we're home again.

It's a Joseph A.

Bank belt holder that I put up in my closet.

You know, two screws, it only took me three and a half hours to put it up.

Um, that one was pretty easy.

Um very simple.

But that thoughtful gift, when I look at it, I'm reminded of a gift that I got from my wife, and something very simple that organizes the belts that I have.

Now I wear one belt 98% of the time, and I'm wearing it today, but yes, there are eight belts on my belt rack, but that's another sermon for another day.

Paul uses this image of a belt for many reasons.

Primarily, the first of which could be is the first crack to show in your armor happens when you forget the belt.

That word belt, we hear it and we think of something that holds our pants up, but that wouldn't be the picture that Paul was thinking about as well.

They wore different clothes than we did.

Long flowing robes.

Or before anybody worked or got up or ran or went off into battle, they would have to gather the loose materials of their clothes that were all around them and they tuck them in their belts so you don't trip over with your legs, the clothes and the garments that were hanging down.

What Paul wants for us to do is to make sure that we understand that we are ready to move when the gospel tells us to move and to take action.

When we're going to expose the truth and the lies of the enemy, God wants for us to move, not just to stay still.

So when we gather things, when we secure them, when we get ready to move and to do what God wants for us to do, that belt of truth gets us ready.

It keeps us grounded in what is right.

I brought a bag, you can't see this really well.

Recently we've been doing some work in our garage, and all my extension cords got thrown in a tote.

And you know what happens when I try to pull those extension cords out when I need that?

And yes, I know the right way I'm supposed to roll them up, and I do that sometimes, but not all the time.

This bag, I think we even forgot that we had it.

I was looking for something else and I found it.

You probably have a bag like this at your house.

There's this cords and a watch band and a plug for something we probably threw away 10 years ago, and a couple connections to our AirPods, and then I have these.

I have these cords.

I don't know how many are in here.

Hey, here's this set of headphones.

My wife probably thought that we didn't have any more, they're hers.

Um, I found them.

Um hey, look, that cord just fell.

But when you want to access one of these, when you don't know how it comes apart, um, it becomes a mess.

We've all dealt with things that were jumbled up, that were tangled before, and that's what lies do to us.

They interweave with one another, and the longer that we spend time with them and among them, the harder it becomes for us to discern what is true and what is lie.

What is the reality, what is from God, and what is coming from our enemy.

We get tangled up in these things.

We get trapped in these things.

The lies build upon one another.

Things like God's disappointed in me.

Then, well, if God's disappointed in me, he probably doesn't want to hear from me.

And if he doesn't want to hear from me, then I shouldn't even talk to him.

And if he's not going to pick up the phone when I call or respond to my text, then I shouldn't even talk to him anyway.

So there's no point in me praying, and then I might as well stay away.

And before long, you're not just dealing with one lie, you're dealing with a whole thought of lies that come together, and you're living inside this tangle of them.

Other series of lies that get us tangled up together sound like this hey, that sin is not that serious, or I can handle it this time, or I can stop whenever I want, and nobody has to know.

Nobody will find out.

Then one day you look up and you wonder how you got this far, this deep.

That is what deception does to us, it entangles us.

There's a resource I think that could be helpful right now.

One of the audio books that I'm listening to is by a pastor.

His name's Craig Groschel.

Um, and he his church produced the UVersion Bible app.

So if you use the U-Version Bible app, you've been blessed by the ministry of Life Church in Oklahoma.

Craig's a fantastic leader and preacher, and I find his books to be extremely helpful.

And one of the books that he has written, it's in a series of books, uh, and he wrote it, and it's called Heal Your Hurting Mind.

And Craig wrote that with his psychologist, and he gave his psychologist permission to share the things that he personally had to work with to replay the conversations that happen in his head and to believe what was true and not to believe the lies.

So if you have trouble believing what is true, if you have trouble ordering your thoughts, Craig's book could be very helpful for you.

I know I have found it fascinating and helpful and grounded in the truth of Scripture.

What the truth does is the truth starts pulling knots apart.

God is not done with you.

There is truth.

Sin does matter.

There is truth.

You can't hide from God.

That is a truth.

Grace is still available.

And what God calls good is good.

And what God calls destructive is destructive and evil, and it will wreck your life.

And God doesn't ever want that to happen.

The truth doesn't simply stand across the room and point at the mess.

What it does is that it brings what is false into light.

It points out what is good because truth exposes lies.

But that means if we're going to know what the lies are, we have to know what the truth is so that it can expose the lies.

That might sound obvious, but it matters.

Because if you don't know what is right, if you don't know what is good, if you don't know what is of God, or if you don't know what you believe in, you'll fall for anything else.

The Bible, scripture teaches us what God is like, and scripture tells us what happens in this battle of spiritual warfare that we're all in in this life.

And the Bible is not just information that we collect, but it is truths of God that become transformative in our lives.

That is the objective that we're to have.

The Bible teaches us what God is like, it teaches us what we are like.

Scripture teaches us what sin has done in our lives and what the consequences of that are.

It also teaches us why grace exists and how God extends that to us.

The Bible teaches us what God has accomplished through Jesus, and then through that, what God wants to accomplish in our lives, with Jesus driving our mission.

It gives us a standard outside of ourselves because sometimes our standard and our perspective is messed up.

Sometimes what we think to be true, sometimes what our feelings are, aren't reliable.

But even if our feelings are accurate in the moment, what we have to recognize is that our feelings are not permanent.

Feelings come and they go and they shift.

Our instincts are not always reliable.

The culture around us is not reliable.

Our feed online is not reliable.

Something can be repeated a million times and still be false.

Something can be popular and trending and be of the devil.

Something can be difficult to hear, but also still be completely true.

That is why Paul doesn't say, fasten on the belt of whatever makes sense to you.

Right?

Just fasten on, put on the belt of whatever you feel like that day, and that's how you should go out and you should live your life.

The truth comes from God.

And one of Jesus' longest prayers that we have in John chapter 17, he says this: He says, Sanctify them in truth, and your word is truth.

John 17 · chapter mention

The sin that exposes lies comes from God.

And if we want to expose the lies of the enemy, if we want to believe what is right and good and true, I have to know what God has said.

We have to know what He has taught.

Not just what I remember somebody else saying about God, but we need that primary source, that direct revelation from God to you, and we get that from his word, the Bible.

God has spoken and he wants us to hear from him.

He wants us to understand what he has said, and I still believe God does still continue to speak to us.

He communicates to us.

He wants us to follow after him and to follow his leading.

We just don't want to refer to a verse or a graphic you saw online or something you heard years ago.

We need to know the truth, the word of God.

And that means we need to prepare before the lies start pouring in.

This daily connects, or this connects with directly with last week.

We don't want to prepare for the battle at the beginning of the battle.

We will be under-prepared and behind.

The same thing is true when it comes to the truth.

If the first time you go looking for God is after the temptation hits, you're already going to feel like you are behind.

If the first time you feel like you need scripture is after the fear has already overwhelmed you, you're going to feel like you can't catch up.

If the first time you ask God about your identity is and who you are in Him in the eyes of the Creator, is only done after you've spent six months or a year or your whole life only listening to what other people say about you and who you are and why you have value.

Then when you hear it coming from God, it's going to sound different.

We know that the lies will come and we need to know the truth, and we need to know the truth now.

Read it now, learn it now, understand it now, wrestle with it now.

Store it up now.

Let it shape the way you live now.

And when it does, you're going to want that truth fastened around you to make sure it holds everything in place so you don't find yourself embarrassed somewhere because you weren't wearing the belt of truth.

Proverbs 14, 15 says it this way: it says, the simple believes everything.

But the prudent gives thought to his steps.

How often do you sit back and do you evaluate your life?

Sure, maybe we evaluate our finances or we evaluate our behavior or we evaluate our discipline, but how often do you evaluate your thought life?

How often do you evaluate the thoughts that you tell yourself in your head that you ultimately believe to be true, whether they are or not?

And how often do you take an audit of that and you go, what lies am I telling myself that if I said out loud, everybody around me that loves me and that follows Jesus and that believes in me and believes in Jesus would say, Joel, that is just patently false.

That is not true.

Yeah, we tell these lies to ourselves, and we do that often enough, we start to believe them.

That's why one of many reasons in scriptures that we could pull out, but the Bible tells us to take every thought that we have captive for the truth of Jesus.

Take every thought and captivate that towards Jesus and for Jesus and because of Jesus and allow him to redeem that.

We need Jesus in our minds just as much as we need Jesus anywhere else.

We need to know what is right because if not, we will be guilty of the bad side of Proverbs 14, 15, where we believe anything.

But the prudent, the wise gives thoughts to our steps and the things that we are going to do.

Not everything that sounds convincing should convince us.

Not everything that sounds believable should be believed.

Not every voice in this world gets the same amount of authority.

Not every thought that enters your mind deserves the right to stay it there, to stay there.

Sometimes what you need to do is that thought that you have in your head is just say it out loud and say, I know this isn't true.

God help me to get rid of this.

Wisdom slows down long enough for us to ask, is this true?

Is this true?

Is this from God or is this coming from somewhere else?

And if it's coming from somewhere else, we can ask God to help us discard it and to get rid of it and to put it in the place where it belongs, which is the garbage.

And to know that it is not true and it is not right.

And that question matters for us spiritually.

What did God actually say?

What does the truth of God teach us?

Not what do I feel, not what would be easiest, not what does the poll, not what is everybody else doing, but what has God said?

Because the truth exposes lies.

And lies are the native language of the spiritual warfare that is just raging around us that Satan wants us to believe.

The belt of truth, when it comes to understanding God, it can't just be correct information.

What it needs to do is it needs to make us prepared to move and prepared to take action.

It's not just information transfer, but it's to become transformative in the way that we think and the way that we live.

There's a difference between knowing what is true and living truthfully.

If I say I believe in Scripture, but I build my life around deception and deceiving people, what do I really believe?

What is my highest value?

If I'm doing that, if we're living in a web of lies, then we're loosening the very thing that Paul tells us that we're supposed to tighten.

First, this belt of truth, put it on and make sure it is secure so that it can hold you together, so that you are ready to defend yourself and to take action when the enemy swarms all around you.

If you lie to protect yourself or hide what you're doing, or manipulate people, or live two different versions of your life, then you're creating openings for the enemy to trip you up.

The truth just isn't something that we defend, but the truth needs to be something that we live in.

Standing firm, and that means honesty matters.

That means being vulnerable with other people that we can trust matters.

That means confession and integrity matters.

That means bringing hidden things to light matter.

That means because lies grow in darkness.

But when the light comes, it eradicates the darkness.

The truth exposes them.

Perhaps that's where some of us need to apply that today, not by identifying some dramatic satanic attack, but those can and do happen.

I am in no way discrediting those.

But perhaps the lie that you're believing is much quieter.

Maybe you believe something about God that's just not true.

That's not of him and that's not in his word.

Maybe you believe something about yourself that God thinks that he has never said.

Perhaps you've been justifying something that Scripture calls destructive and sinful.

Maybe you've been hiding something because the enemy has convinced you that secrecy is much safer than confession.

Or maybe you've allowed so many voices in your life that you no longer know which is the voice that is shaping you the most.

And when that's true, let's go back to the truth that comes from God and ask, what has God said?

What has he taken, what has he revealed to me, and what has he revealed to us in his word?

Because the enemy's evil schemes, they depend on deception.

He relies on us not knowing God's word better than him.

He relies on being able to twist the truth so that it sounds somewhat believable.

Because, as I said, it's those audacious lies that are easy to spot, like the Falcons having any chance of sniffing the playoffs.

A lie can do a lot of damage in the moment.

Oftentimes, lies do a lot of damage in the moment.

And then we have to do damage control to go over that.

But what a lie cannot do and will never do is a lie cannot outlast the truth.

It doesn't have the power, it doesn't have the bandwidth, it doesn't have the capacity or the ability.

And that is why living a life that is filled with truth is much less exhausting than living one that is filled with lies.

And this is where we started.

That's where Proverbs 12, 19 takes us again.

Truthfulness endure forever.

But a lying tongue is butt for the moment.

The enemy lies, the enemy schemes, the enemy deceives.

But God, He's given us a way to combat that, He's given us a way to fight it, He has given us the truth.

So fasten it around you.

Put on that belt of truth, know the truth, hold on to the truth, seek out the truth, talk about the truth, live the truth, test the truth, and when something else sounds convincing, bring it to the light of God that He has given to us and say, which one of these things is right?

What has God said?

And let's allow the truth of God to expose the schemes, the lies, the deception of the enemy, those falsehoods that we believe about ourselves and that we believe about other people that God desperately wants for us to shake.

Because they're wrecking our lives and they're wrecking your relationship.

The truth of God exposes lies.

Let us stand firm in what God has done for us.

And the only way that we can do that is with a belt of truth holding us together so that we are ready to take action, to go on the advance, and to defend when the enemy is all around us.

Let's pray.

Father God, thank you for your word and what you have done for us.

Thank you for your word, the truth.

God, I am grateful for what you have done for us.

Help us to recognize and to know your voice.

So that when we know your voice, we'll know when we're hearing the voice that is not yours.

God, may we not be deceived by the enemy who is all around us, yelling and whispering and working to get into our life.

Father, may we be people of your word.

God, thank you for the truth.

Thank you for what is good and right and noble and trustworthy and excellent and praiseworthy.

God, help us to focus on those things.

God, drive out the darkness from our lives, from this place, from this east side of Indianapolis, so we can transform the world for you.

Everything that we do is for Jesus and because of Jesus.

And in his name I pray.

Amen.