In this powerful New Year’s message, Pastor Jack Hibbs encourages us to equip ourselves for the year ahead with the spiritual armor of God. As we step into 2025, learn how to embrace a life filled with hope and expectancy, guided by biblical truth and righteousness. Discover the importance of staying vigilant against spiritual attacks, understanding that the enemy has a method to target our weaknesses. Reflect on the scriptural insights from Ephesians and the wisdom of Paul the Apostle as he draws parallels between the Christian life and a Roman soldier’s armor.
The way that the enemy works against us and the way that our flesh works against us is that we somehow gravitate to those things that wound us. And we need to be very careful to put on Christ and to put on what is tough.
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This is Real Life. Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I’m David Jay, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God’s Word, the Bible. Looking for real answers in real time? JackHibbs.com is your go-to destination for resources on faith, world events, and everything in between. Explore Happening Now, where Pastor Jack Hibbs takes a timely, no-nonsense look at today’s biggest issues, blending biblical insight with the latest headlines. Now, whether you’re curious about the world around you or you want guidance on a personal level, Pastor Jack has you covered. And, by the way, don’t miss the Real Life Network. It’s packed with relatable, family-friendly content that really speaks to everyday challenges and triumphs, offering something really valuable for every member of your family. Now, if you’re new to the faith, you want to refresh your perspective, start with that tab that says Know God, an accessible, welcoming space to learn and reflect and find your footing. Now, whatever your path, jackhibbs.com has the tools and the insights and the encouragement that you need. Tune in, log on, find something real. Once again, the website jackhibbs.com. on today’s special edition of Real Life Radio. Pastor Jack brings to us his New Year’s series with a message called The Great Put On. As we enter 2025, let’s continue to live with hope and expectancy in our hearts by living a victorious life, equipped and ready for whatever comes our way. You see, as we move forward with expectancy, God wants us to live a victorious Christian life by being equipped. God’s plan is to enable us, armored up and ready for spiritual battle. So today, Pastor Jack teaches us that the armor of God brings truth, righteousness, and peace wherever we go. Now, with his special New Year’s message called The Great Put On, Part 2, here’s pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs.
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I’ve got to give you this disclaimer, everybody. Listen, how many of you have come now to this church since, um, since… So a year. You’re new here in the last year. That’s it? That’s it? A year and a half. Okay, I just want you to know in advance that what we do here never changes. Okay, so you’re going to see what normally happens here at this church during election cycles. which means we are gonna hit every topic, we are gonna expose every lie, we are gonna use this book to illuminate the path, to shine the light of this word, and every time, it’s so fun, every two years, I get slapped with, we’re gonna sue you, and we’re turning you into the IRS. Listen, we turn ourselves into the IRS. I just want you to know that for real. We know exactly what we’re doing. We’re going to be exercising our religious freedoms based upon the truth of God. And we are going to be making a difference. We’re going to be salt and light everywhere we go. And that even means however we’re going to vote. I don’t even know how it happens anymore. But when we do vote, because we’re going to vote, we’re not going to surrender. But there’s people that cheat. Let them cheat. We’re going to do the right thing. We’re going to be equipped to do the right thing. And we’re going to do truth. And we’re going to not put our light and hide it under a basket. We are going to let it shine. And then we leave the results to God, no matter what that might be. But this is going to be a thrilling year. And we’ll go through the Bible. Don’t worry. Nothing changes about that. But we’ll have special events and we’ll bring in some friends. And we’re hoping to have our good friend Mike Pompeo to come back. And love that guy. And some other things. Stay tuned. It’s going to be a wild year. Father, we pray. We ask you, Lord God, that as we as a people commence this first New Year Sunday to you, Lord, we are excited and we are thrilled. And Father, we pray that you would do things that we had never imagined that you would do. That God, that we’re living at a time that we would see you move personally in our lives. In fact, that when we do come together as a church, as a convocation of your people, that we would simply celebrate what you’re doing. That these services would be dessert, really, to the meat and the potatoes of our private life with you. God, may this year be incredible. We pray that you would use our teaching your teaching, your word to transform our lives. We pray it in Jesus’ name and all God’s people said, amen. Don’t stand yet, church. Don’t stand yet. You’ll stand in a moment. But this is part two of a message we started on New Year’s Eve and we’re calling it the great put on. And the great put on is that we’re talking about putting on the armor of God. And what does that mean? And what was Paul thinking about when he wrote to the church at Ephesus regarding the armor of God, Paul’s exposure to Roman centurions. You know, listen, we love Paul the Apostle, and if he walked in the room, we would probably have to really get control of ourselves to keep ourselves from, in a sense, being tempted to worship the guy because he was the living epitome of what it is to be a Christian. But little do you remember that Paul that epitome of being a Christian did a lot of jail time. I mean, he had a rap sheet on him and that was for obeying the Lord. He went to jail numerous times, but during those jail sentencing that he experienced, God spoke to him and he wrote what’s known as his prison epistles. And you got to be thinking that as he speaks to the church at Ephesus regarding this list of armament, that he’s probably chained to a Roman guard and he’s looking at the sword and the shield. He’s looking at the helmet. And if that’s not the case, he was certainly aware of what these gladiator type, Russell Crowe, you’ve seen that movie? Yeah. That’s a great depiction of how they were armored up. And Paul lived in that world. And he looked at it and he said, that’s how the Christian needs to live. And he began because he thought and looked at things spiritually, as you and I should, that what he saw in the natural world, he translated and interpreted through spiritual eyes. And that’s always a great thing. But before we get into that reading, I want to draw to your attention a great verse for the year. Psalm 65, 11 says… You, that is God, crown the year with your goodness and your paths drip with abundance. Somebody say amen to that. That’s a verse you ought to grab onto. I know personally, I’m going to give you three passages of scripture. These are my go-to verses for the year when I have got the wind knocked out of me or I need to refocus. And maybe it’ll be a blessing to you as well. Psalm 65, 11. And of course, this is a go-to wonder. It’s Jeremiah 29, 11 to 13. God says there to all of us, for I know the thoughts, remember this now in 2022, for I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace, not of evil. to give you a future and a hope, then, I love that. Look at verse 12, it’s so awesome. Because verse 11 is true, verse 12 begins with, then you will call upon me and go and pray to me and I will listen to you. And you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. That’s a key to your spiritual success in this year. And then finally, you guys, it’s Joshua chapter 1, verses 5 through 7. Joshua chapter 1, verses 5 through 7. I want to preempt what I’m reading by telling you that Joshua must have been a very, very faithful young man. He proved himself with Moses. He became Moses’ assistant. And yet he was a man just like all of us. Why? Because constantly in the book of Joshua, God speaks to him and says to him, don’t be afraid. Why did God say that? Because Joshua was prone to being afraid. God’s going to say to Joshua, be of good courage. Why did God say that to Joshua? Because he was prone to not being courageous. Do you find yourself weak? That’s a good thing. Find out where your strength is. That’s a very, very important thing. Verse five, Joshua 1. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. You thought that was a New Testament verse, didn’t you? Wow, look at verse six. Be strong and of good courage, for to this people, Californians, You shall divide as inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous that you may observe to do according to all that the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left that you may prosper in whatever you do. Church, those are your verses to hang on to for this entire year. So with that, let’s all stand together. Father, we pray in this year that you would fulfill this passage in our lives as your followers, as your children. We pray it in Jesus’ name and all God’s people said, amen. You can be seated. Well, as we get into this, there’ll be a little bit of recap from New Year’s Eve, but we’ll finish off this study today. But I want to show you two images that ought to just prime the pump of your imagination, I would hope. And the first one is on the screens as you look at this. And what I love about this graphic is just how gnarly that armor is that this image portrays and I love of course the statement dress for success put on the armor of God and so as I mentioned on New Year’s Eve night that throughout the Bible which I find extremely graphic and romantic is that when God’s word speaks to us he speaks to us in words and terms such as armor so Swords, shields, horses, dragons, kingdoms, right? He speaks to us in an age that most of us would say is a medieval period of verbiage, of language. And I think there’s a reason for that. There seems to be a fascination about all that stuff. And I don’t know, but the things that are revealed in scripture, you might say, well, Jack, that was kind of the era in which the King James translators put this together. This is what’s awesome. The King James translators took the words out of Latin or Greek or Hebrew and put them into English. And those words and definitions predate by millennia or more, right? That very era in which they lived. In other words, there’s something about what God is speaking to us regarding this armament. Next image, kind of a cool, it’s a cartoon look, but it gets the picture. The Christian warrior, you see, for example, the helmet of salvation, the foundation for which the warrior stands, true, salvation. We’ll talk about why it’s on his head. Why is salvation on his head? Why is that important? Notice the sword of the spirit. Listen, used to attack the enemies with the word of God. We’ll see specifically, that drawing is a little off, by the way, that drawing, the sword of the spirit is the word machaira. Take that image and cut that sword about half in size. We’ll tell you why in a moment. You say, wait a minute, you mean God gave us a shorter sword? Hang on. You’re going to be happy about that in a minute.
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You’re listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. You know, to hear more episodes and maybe catch up in the series, just go to jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. And for now, let’s get back to our teaching. Once again, here’s Pastor Jack.
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The breastplate of righteousness to protect the warrior from the evils of the world. There’s more to that coming. The shield of faith, remarkable. It extinguishes the arrows of the evil one that is launched against us. Of course, that being faith. The belt of truth, which really is where you begin. The belt of truth, it stands for the word of God. And we’ll talk about the sandals or the shoes of readiness or the gospel, always being ready to present the gospel. So church, this is what we did on New Year’s Eve. Number one, we saw that we are to put on Christ, that as we go now into this new year, the number one thing is to put us off. Listen, the That’s the old temptation, the old person, the old Jack, the Jack that used to live in this world, the Jack that used to live for Jack. Whoever you may be, that’s who you lived for. Every day as believers, we’ve got to put us off and put Christ on. And we saw that beginning in verse 10, that we’re to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might and to put on the whole armor of God. Number two, we saw that you and I are to put on what’s tough. What is tough? I told the New Year’s Eve crowd, put on what is tough, meaning get control of your emotions and your feelings and stop being so sensitive about what people say about you. Because in 2022, we’ve got to woman up and man up. We’ve got to soldier up. And we’ve got to stop allowing the world to intimidate us. Okay, you can’t do that. You cannot fight the Christian fight if the world says something about you and you wither like a little flower because some stranger posted something about you. Listen, note to self. Go ahead and have social media if you can handle it. But don’t read the comments. Because 100 people can compliment you and you won’t be able five minutes later to quote anyone of what they said. One person will say you’re ugly and that’s the person that you’re gonna remember for the rest of your day. Is that not true? Come on, come on, come on. It’s totally true, isn’t it? Absolutely true. The way that the enemy works against us and the way that our flesh works against us is that we somehow gravitate to those things that wound us. And we need to be very careful to put on Christ and to put on what is tough. And that is learning how to walk in the Spirit. And we learn that we’re to stand against the wiles of the devil. We learn that that word means methodology. That the devil has a method on how to attack you. Now watch this. The devil has a method… as how to attack Peggy. He’s got a method on how to attack me. He’s got a method on how to attack Mike. He’s got a method. And listen, a lot of it runs in the same genre, but there’s some outliers. And the main attack is pretty dependable. But Satan studies you, and he looks for those areas of your life whereby he will track you, he’ll hunt you down, and he’ll wait. Somebody told me recently, this guy, I couldn’t believe it, I saw it, where this guy on TV, they showed this guy taking a picture of a mountain lion, mountain lion puma lion, Right, it’s all the same thing. Depends on where you live in America. We have them here in Chino Hills, mountain lions. Listen, when you see one say, oh my goodness, it’s so beautiful, it is beautiful. And look, it’s looking right at me, it’s so big. Hello, it is looking right at you and it is so big. Okay, don’t think it’s a big kitty. Because you know, you can be on your mountain bike or you can be on your jog and you can an hour later look back and there he is again. And he’s looking at you with the same look, except this time he’s a little bigger because he’s closer. That’s how Satan works in our lives. The wiles, the methodology of the devil, he will stalk you and watch you for hours, sometimes days, weeks, months. Maybe he figures out a plan even years. But we need to get tough. And we saw that against this attack that is spiritual, we have the ability by God’s grace to wrestle against these spiritual entities. That the Christian experience is one where we battle spiritual attacks that manifest most often, not always, most often through physical people or things. Not always. Sometimes you can be having a just perfectly fine time and everything’s just dandy, you know, and yet there’ll be some strange depression that comes over you and it’s unexplainable. The believer is prone to all of these things. One of my great heroes in the faith is Charles Spurgeon. Whatever Charles Spurgeon wrote, you should read it. But did you know that Spurgeon had severe bouts of depression after he became a Christian? He didn’t have the depression bouts until he became a Christian. And he explains them, and they were dark, sinister, hopeless feelings of being alienated from God. God doesn’t love me. God’s really not gonna save me in the end. When I do die, I’m not gonna make it. He had all the thoughts. Recognize those thoughts? They’re on the tip of the arrow of Satan. We need to get tough against those things. In 1 Peter chapter five, verse eight, we learned that we’re to be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He’s for real and we wanna slay him. We saw also that the great put on is that we’re to be firm in verses 13 to 14. We need to put on what is firm. This is a discipline. It says in verse 13, “‘Take, or therefore take up, “‘take up the whole armor of God “‘that you may be able,’ listen to this, “‘to withstand in the evil day. “‘And having done all to stand,’ verse 14 says, “‘stand therefore.’ That is the command. Christian, are you listening? That’s the command given to every one of us who name the name of Christ, listen carefully, in this year to come. You and I need to stand, and we need to stand together with one another as a church. This is a big church. Forget about the size of the church. It’s irrelevant. How many times have I told you, get to know the people that are around you? There’s like, I can get 10 people in this circle right there. If all 10 of you, if all 10 of you began to get each other’s names and pray for one another and realize that, listen, we’re going to be going into battle this year. We need to be linked up together. We need to be talking. You ought to start asking each other out to breakfast or lunch or whatever and really become friends and share prayer requests. Maybe you only see each other on Sunday morning, but listen, after service, meet for a moment in the parking lot or go to some place or whatever it is and link together. We cannot survive the year to come if we just come here on Sunday and go and isolate ourselves. We’ve got to link up because we’re at war, we’re in a battle, and we need to be able to fight the enemy. And listen, we’ll learn from this armament in a moment. that there’s a reason why all the armament is forward-looking. The soldier here in Ephesians 6 has no armaments in the back end of himself. His back of his legs are not covered, his rear end’s not covered, his back’s not covered. Think of that. We’ll talk more of this in a moment, but we need to be firm. And we need to make decisions that are the best thing for our Christian growth. I understand the feeling, well, honey, don’t invite them over. I’m tired. I talk to people all week. And then, come on, just say, honey, remember that Sunday sermon? I love you, dear, but we’re gonna invite them over. We’re gonna do this for Jesus. And you know what? 10 minutes after they show up, you’re glad they’re there. God does that stuff. It’s amazing. By the way, years ago, we used to do something called Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. We should do that again. Where you, we got your name, you put your name in, and we wound up assigning someone to your home for dinner. You have no idea who they are, but we matched the singles up with singles and all that kind of stuff. But let me tell you. Open the door, and I have to tell you, Christmas Eve, the first family Lisa and I ever went to, wow, in 1992, in 1992, we didn’t know they attended the church. We got their address. We drove up, knocked on their door, and they opened up the door, and we’ve been friends, close friends ever since because of that night, and they were here at Christmas Eve service, and we met after service, And why is that? Because guess who’s coming to dinner? Listen, why did we do that? That’s such a cute little social thing. Had nothing to do with it. It was our sneaky way of getting you to meet up with other people and find out that you’ve got friends in Christ and that you can stand together and link arms together. Get to know one another. You’re going to be in heaven for crying out loud forever with them. Get to know them now. You don’t want to walk around heaven looking dumb like, who are you? Say, I know you. i know you and then we learned in verse 14 that we’re to put on what is right put on what is right having girded your waist with truth
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Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio with his special New Year’s message called The Great Put-On Part 2. Thanks for listening and Happy New Year from Pastor Jack and all of us here at Real Life Radio. Our prayer for you is that your 2025 will be full of contentment and joy that can only come from knowing Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. It’s been a great joy sharing our Real Life Radio program with you. And thank you for welcoming us into your home this past year and into your life. And we’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio. You know, as Christians, we have this desire to live out our faith. to become more intentional in ministry so that others we share with can have the life-changing experience of salvation through Jesus Christ. That’s exactly why the Real Life Network was created. Real Life Network offers faith-based content that will strengthen us and the beliefs we value. As big tech, big government, and big business have increased their efforts to silence the teachings of Jesus, the Real Life Network is available on your favorite device. Anytime, anywhere, it really has something for everyone. The whole family can choose from a wide range of categories like culture, current events, faith and politics, as well as programming for kids. So don’t miss out on the relevant, life-changing Christian and conservative programming that will inspire you and strengthen your faith. Find the Real Life Network at reallifenetwork.com and sign up for free. That’s reallifenetwork.com. Did you know that along with the radio program, Pastor Jack also has a TV show with more of the Pastor Jack Hibbs content that you like. It’s called Real Life TV. If you enjoy Pastor Jack on the radio, you’re going to love him on TV. So check out your local listings or visit jackhibbs.com and catch the latest episodes. That’s jackhibbs.com. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We’ll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.
