Skip to content

The River ChurchSermons

Justin Dean · 23 Jun 2026

Justin Dean · Tuesday, 23 June 2026 · 36:49 · 5,169 words

There is no public page for this message yet — the transcript below is the whole of it.

The sermon explains that believers need spiritual armor to stand against temptation, focusing on the breastplate of righteousness that protects the heart. It warns that the human heart is naturally selfish and easily deceived, leading people to pursue harmful desires that oppose God. The message encourages listeners to trust in Christ’s righteousness, read Scripture daily, and follow God’s ways rather than their own impulses. It calls those who have not yet committed to Jesus to turn to Him, and urges all to respond in prayer and obedience.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

heart 61 armor 25 righteous 46 breastplate 11 protect 15 attack 14 live 53 pursue 12 stand 20 piece 10 dorm 4 hallway 5

Topics

Righteousness 13 Prayer 4 Salvation 2 Atonement & Sacrifice 2 Sin 2 Faith 2 The Gospel 1 Israel 1

Scripture referenced 3

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Jeremiah 17 13:00 Romans 1 26:46 Romans 1:16-17 26:48

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

Pre-service announcement — 7 lines, 0:34. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

Hey everyone, my name is Zach, and thanks for checking out one of our sermons today.

We are so glad that you're here, and we want to connect with you and your family.

The easiest way to do that is to text RIVERCHURCH to 97000.

There you can ask questions, submit prayer requests, and even support the River Church financially.

At the end of the day, we just want to connect with you and be a blessing in any way that we can.

You can also visit our website at theriverchurch.cc to learn more about us and what we have going on as a church.

Thanks again for joining us, and we hope you are blessed by today's message.

Have you ever had an idea that at the time seemed like a really great idea?

That you're like, man, this is definitely what we should do, and then later ended up realizing it was a massive mistake?

Have you ever had that? Am I the only one that's had that?

Yeah, for me, I think back, and there's a lot of times where at one point in Justin's mind,

he had the most brilliant idea.

He had the most brilliant idea, only for future Justin to go back and think what an idiot past Justin was.

And I remember one such time that was a little bit more innocent.

I was in college, and there was a guy who lived a couple dorms down from me,

or a couple doors down from me in my dorm room on my floor,

who had fallen in the shower and broken his ankle.

And so he had been given a set of crutches.

And he had been given a set of crutches.

Instead of bringing the crutches inside of his dorm room, for some reason, maybe just to tempt us all,

he would leave those crutches right outside his door in the hall.

And so naturally, when you live on a floor with 50 guys who are all in college,

those crutches immediately became weapons that we could utilize, right?

For whatever it is, whatever dumb idea we had that day.

And so we were...

Out there, we saw this guy's crutches.

And one of the things that was common places in our dorm floor is,

at that point, I lived in Chicago.

And so during the summers, we would just skateboard and longboard everywhere in the city.

You needed to get somewhere, you would longboard onto the public transit,

get on there and go wherever you needed to go.

And so there was always a plethora of longboards that were hanging out in the hallway.

People would use them just to get up and down the halls because we were...

super lazy and that's just how it was.

But on this day, I looked and I said,

crutches and skateboard equals a wonderful jousting match in our long hallway.

And so we're like, all right, here's what we're going to do, guys.

Each one of us, we're going to...

We have one super long hallway that went down and it was really wide.

So it made for plenty of activities.

And so we decided, all right, you're going to be at one end of the hallway

and I'm going to be at the other end of the hallway.

We both...

We both get one of the crutches, we're on a longboard

and we're going to ride at each other

and try and spear one another off of the longboard

and whoever can do it the best wins.

And there's a moment of clarity where I stopped and I said,

guys, maybe this isn't such a good idea, right?

Like maybe this is going to hurt, right?

Like we're riding fast each other.

We have these metal crutches and we're going to spear each other.

Like this could be a really bad idea.

And then I thought to myself, you know what I could do?

Make some armor out of pillows.

That will make this idea brilliant.

That will solve all the problems and it'll move from a dumb idea to a brilliant idea.

And so what do we do?

We grab one college dorm room pillow, which is essentially a piece of cardboard,

and we tape it, duct tape it to our chest, right?

Just about this much.

That's all the protection you have.

And we, with all the confidence in the world,

ride full speed at each other.

And one cracked rib later, we realized that was a very dumb idea, right?

And so as fun as this story is, right?

And as stupid of the story as this is,

there's this reality of what seems fun, what seems right,

and really, for me, what my heart wanted to do in that moment,

oftentimes ends up with a severe mess, right?

And we know stories of our own lives.

We can think about,

well, more stories, right?

And maybe aren't so innocent where we've done the exact same thing.

Something sounded good.

Something seemed good.

And we wanted to do it.

And we went after it only to realize it was nothing but a mistake.

The reality is we need protection from ourselves.

We need protection from temptation.

We need protection oftentimes from our own stupidity or naivety at times

or simply wrong.

Things that we want that just simply are bad and badly and poorly.

And so we've been talking about this series, right?

Where we talk about the realities of spiritual warfare,

how we're under attack from the enemy, under attack from our flesh.

And God has provided us as believers with spiritual armor that gives us victory,

that provides us the path to victory.

And what that looks like,

how do you,

how do you utilize that and how to look for those things in our lives?

And so last week we talked about that first piece of armor that doesn't really on its own seem like armor,

but is so crucial to the set of armor,

which is the belt of truth and how it binds these things together.

It holds these things together and it binds us to Christ in our lives.

And this week we're going to continue with a more traditional piece of armor,

a piece of armor that even dumb college age,

he needed in that moment,

the breastplate.

And we're going to talk about what that is,

what the breastplate is and what it means for our lives.

But before we do,

let's pray.

Let's dive into God's word.

we love you.

we turn to you this evening.

We ask that you'd guide us through your word,

that you teach us,

that you would help us to follow after you with our lives.

I pray for whoever it is in this room who doesn't know you,

that tonight you would give them ears to hear,

your word that are new and that you would work on their hearts and help them

to see the need that they have for you and your precious and holy name,

So let's dive back into this passage in Ephesians six.

Paul is writing to this church,

this group of believers who are in this city called Ephesus,

and he's helping to teach them how to live in light of their faith in Jesus

Christ and how that plays out in a multitude of facets in their life.

But specifically with how to get along with one another and how to do life with difficult people.

And so in Ephesians six,

13 through 14,

it says this,

take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm.

having fastened the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

And so he's reminding us,

here is why we need to stand firm.

Here is why we wear this armor.

This armor is for the purpose of us standing against temptation,

standing against the old way in which we've lived,

standing against sin in our lives,

resisting these spiritual forces that are coming after us.

And so we take up this whole armor and then he begins to parcel out that armor and what each of these things do.

And so he talks about this breastplate of righteousness.

if you're trying to think about what a breastplate is,

it is,

it is that when you traditionally think about armor,

it's kind of that.

So just picture whatever,

however you picture armor,

it's the piece that goes over the torso,

right?

It's designed to protect the body of a person.

And so as we talk about this breastplate of righteousness,

it's this giant piece of armor or layered pieces of metal that would effectively stop,

everything that would be looking to get at the heart of someone.

So whether that's arrows,

whether that's spears or swords,

the purpose is to protect a major organ or really several major organs.

But the main one that people are oftentimes thinking about is the heart,

right?

The heart,

the lungs,

all that.

But the reality is most times that picture of a breastplate,

it covers your chest to keep,

your heart safe.

And so when these things would naturally come at the,

right?

The breastplate was divine to absorb and deflect.

So if there's a hammer,

right?

It absorbs the hit.

If it's a spear,

if it's a sword,

that's,

you know,

trying to slash or to stab it,

it is designed simply to say,

right?

There's nothing that's going to get through this chest plate,

this breastplate.

And it is of crucial,

importance to any soldier because they know they're coming for really two places,

either my head or my heart.

And so the picture of what is being protected is our heart.

And our enemy is going after that crucial,

not really Oregon,

but the spiritual Oregon,

which is our heart,

the things that we naturally want to do,

the things that are,

our will,

the things where we look and we say,

that seems right to me.

I want that.

When we think about the way that we think and perceive things,

right?

And so the picture of our enemy,

right?

How is our enemy coming after us?

If they're this warrior,

that's trying to stop us,

is they're going after our heart.

And really our heart is going after our heart.

Our heart is wicked.

And it's interesting that when we look at culture,

in our world,

there is this notion that we are called to follow our heart.

It was like every movie is preaching this,

this doctrine of follow your heart.

Every Hallmark movie is playing into,

you know,

follow your heart,

be with that person that your heart wants you to be with.

Make that choice that seems right.

It's all about your trusting your God,

trusting your heart,

trusting your intuition.

If you go with your heart,

I feel like I've,

heard it said so many times,

your heart won't ever lead you astray.

But the reality is this is a,

a pursuit that our enemy has placed before us because the truth is sinful

desire corrupts our heart,

our flesh,

our natural inclination,

our natural desire is what opposes God.

Why?

Because it's all in selfish,

pursuit and selfish ambition.

Our heart is naturally focused on us and us alone.

And so we see that our hearts are easily swayed to going back to sin,

abandoning God's plan,

abandoning anything that matters outside of me and what I want and how I think

things should go and my understanding.

But really we're,

we're reminded of this truth time and time again,

in the Bible.

Our hearts are wicked.

We see it in the old Testament in Jeremiah 17,

it is explicitly said,

it says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it?

Our hearts simply desire to deceive us.

Our natural desires,

the things we naturally want to pursue.

Our flesh is there telling us,

do you,

your life,

your wants,

your understanding,

you,

you,

you,

you,

you,

you.

It's desperately sick.

Why?

Because it pursues what is contrary to God.

But Jesus reminds us in the new Testament of this very same truth.

21 through 23 from within out of the heart of man,

come evil thoughts,

sexual immorality,

all these evil things come with come from within and they defile a person.

Each of these things start with a sinful,

selfish desire.

and I should,

I should have.

And so I'll do whatever pride.

I think higher of me.

I don't care about everyone else.

I'm just better murder for whatever reason.

I want to kill.

And so I do.

We go down.

We go down the list.

We talk about how each of these things form first with a selfishness and a desire for me,

my ways,

me.

And so the heart pursues all these things.

It's an outpouring of this desperately wick,

deceiving heart.

And so our heart is easily persuaded and it's filled with this selfishness that gives in to personal temptation,

our own desire to sin.

Satan knows.

And he looks and he says,

here is a place of vulnerability,

the heart of man.

And he entices and he attacks and he sees it as a weak spot of humanity.

They just want to do what they want to do.

And so I'll give them that even back all the way into Genesis,

right?

He appeal appeals to the heart and the mind of Adam and Eve.

God just doesn't want you to be like him.

You should be even with him.

He's,

he's telling you the wrong thing.

Eat of this fruit.

And so he attacks us.

He attacks our hearts by feeding into this delusion.

He attacks our hearts by pushing us towards giving in.

For those of us in this room,

we're here because we have given in to our substance of choice.

That's a heart decision because we look all the facts.

We know what that substance does to us,

our minds,

our lives.

But our heart tells us we want that.

It's a heart attack.

We were attacked by being tempted to look at things.

We know we shouldn't look at whether that's inappropriate stuff on the internet,

whether it's slowing down while we pass that liquor store,

that corner that we know has what we need or we think we need.

This attack on our hearts comes in the form of shame that leads us to lying and hiding our sin.

This attack on our hearts happens through the justification of our actions through the actions of others as an excuse.

Well,

they did that to me or I have all this hurt from others.

I have all this hurt from other people and what they did to me and how they treated me.

And so I need this to get through.

I need this to cope.

I need this to self-medicate.

It's only right.

They did this wrong.

So I'm just trying to make it right.

Tax our hearts by minimizing the realities of sin in our lives.

it's really not that bad.

It hasn't gotten me in any real trouble yet.

I can do it and no one will find out.

I can do it and keep it hidden.

I can do it.

You know,

it's only a couple of days in jail.

The reality is that when,

when you find yourself feeling these things or when you find this temptation creeping into your heart,

you know,

you're under attack.

There is this need for this spiritual protection and provision from God.

And we look at and we know the realities of what that attack means when given in to death wish.

We have friends who have literally died to the attacks of the enemy on the heart of people that we know.

And so we need protection.

There's a very,

very real need for us.

Paul is not talking about some abstract theological doctrine that goes over our heads.

He looks and he says,

you need this every day in your fight for sin.

If you go out without your breastplate of righteousness,

without this piece of armor,

you are walking into an active battle zone with nothing protecting a vital piece that you are susceptible to.

And so we look,

we say,

okay,

we know we need this breastplate,

this protection for our heart.

But why does Paul call this piece of essential armor that we look at?

We say is desperate to our lives as a believer in Christ Jesus.

Why does he call that righteousness?

How does righteousness protect me?

Like I understand how like a metal plate over my chest,

how that protects me.

But how is righteousness that?

And really,

if we're talking about it,

what even is righteousness?

Like,

what does that even mean?

It's this churchy word,

but what is this word righteousness?

Well,

if you break it down,

righteousness is the reality of being in the right.

You know,

you say,

well,

come on,

right?

You're just like parceling up the words.

No,

really,

that's what it means.

It's being in right standing,

doing the right things.

It's this sense of,

you know,

following the ways in which God has called you to live.

And so we look and we say,

are we in right standing with God?

Our heart is protected when we are in right standing with God,

because we're when we're in step by step by step with,

with what he calls us to do and how he calls us to live.

Right?

We know that we're doing the things which protect our hearts from,

from that,

which the enemy is trying to get us to pursue God's ways and the ways of

everything else are opposed God's ways and our flesh,

our wicked heart is they are directly contrary.

Your heart wants to get you to pursue things contrary to God's selfishness.

You where God looks at,

he says,

no pursue me.

And so it's this living differently and lit giving our lives to the way in

which God wants us to get to live.

And so we look and we say,

well,

how do we have this righteousness in our lives?

It's a very basic question.

Well,

when we look back to this verse in Ephesians six,

we see we are given these things.

Therefore take up the whole armor of God,

not the armor of Justin,

not the armor of you,

the armor of God,

take it up.

It's given to you,

put it on.

And so how do you first begin to access this?

This righteousness.

The first first is through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

We,

because of our sin are not in right standing with God.

We're actually completely opposite.

We are in wrong standing.

We are in the wrong.

We are pursuing evil.

We are pursuing these things contrary to God.

We are in the ways of our heart,

which are desperately sick and leading us towards death.

And so we are not righteous by nature.

So Christ seeing that God seeing that had this love for us and this care for us,

where he looks,

he says,

I want righteousness for them.

I want them to be made in right standing.

I want them to live in the right ways.

And so how does he free us from this wrong standing?

How does he take us from wrong standing and move us to right standing?

He sends his son,

Jesus Christ and Christ.

And so,

being completely righteous,

being the son of God goes to the cross and endures a wrathful death on the cross.

Christ died as a sinner should an unrighteous man,

even though he was completely righteous.

He died as the unrighteous so that we could have the righteousness of God so that we could be moved.

He took our punishment so that we could be moved.

So that we could be made righteous through his death and his resurrection shows that it has been sealed with God.

How do you have access to this righteousness?

How are you?

How do you take up this righteousness?

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and you believe in your heart that he has risen from the dead.

And notice what I said there.

You confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Not that he's real.

Not that he died on the cross.

That he is my Lord.

I walk his ways.

I obey his laws in my life.

He sets my path.

He protects me.

He is mine and I am his.

And through this righteousness that's imparted to us, right?

We're made in right standing before God.

So now when we stand before the Lord,

God doesn't look at us and say,

wow, you've never sinned.

He looks and he says,

but Christ paid for it.

You've been made righteous.

And so this righteousness is imparted to us.

And then it shows us how to live righteously in our lives.

Because we can be made righteous and still go back to living the old way.

Christ will forgive us.

Our works are not what get us to heaven.

It's Christ and his work on the cross.

But as people who look and say,

Jesus is our,

our Lord.

We look and we say,

I want to live in right standing.

I want to live as if he's my Lord.

I want to live with my life different.

I want to live in right standing.

I want to live righteousness.

And so there is this righteousness that's given to us.

And then there is righteousness that is lived out in our lives.

And so we look,

we say righteousness comes from the gospel.

That gospel.

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Christ being our Lord and savior.

And so this gospel is righteousness,

both in how it is received and how it is lived in our lives.

Both protect our hearts.

See this truth in Romans chapter one,

verse 16 and 17.

It says this,

for I am not ashamed of the gospel,

for is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first

and also the Greek.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel,

for is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also the Greek.

For in it,

the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

As it is written,

the righteous shall live by faith.

There's this reality is it saved us from faith,

our faith in Jesus Christ.

And it saved us to continually protect us in the way in which we live,

which is called a consistent way following God.

And so what does Satan try to get us to do?

He tries to stop us,

he tries to stop us from living out the righteousness of God,

How?

By getting us to doubt that God knows best and pushing us to our own way rather than God's.

A continual attack on the heart.

you read this in the Bible.

That's not what you want to do.

So why do it?

It's as simple as that question.

Because when I sit with people in my office who are dealing with sin in their lives,

I can say,

you know what God's word says.

That's why you know what God's word says.

You know you're in the wrong.

That's why you've hid it for so long.

That's why you're feeling all this shame.

You just simply didn't want to follow the Lord.

And so you didn't.

You fell into the trap of your heart.

You said,

well,

my heart wants to do this and that's difficult because it's not what I want to do.

And so I'm not going to do it.

I'm going to do what I want to do.

I'm going to follow these ways.

You had not protected your heart with righteousness.

How do you protect your heart with righteous righteousness?

By looking and saying temptation as it comes,

even though it may,

it may appear as something good,

or it may appear as not that detrimental,

or it may be something that we naturally want.

We compare it to God's word and the righteousness that it shows us how to live.

And we look and say,

what does God call me to do?

This is what God calls me to do.

Do I want to do it?

No,

but I'm going to pursue God as my Lord and savior.

I'm going to live a righteous life regardless.

There are plenty of things as I walk through my day,

that I want to do and that I don't do because Christ is my Lord,

because my heart has been protected by the way in which God calls me to live,

which is righteously.

I would be a much more wealthy man if I live the ways I wanted to live,

because my heart just wants money.

It wants these things.

It wants to do these things.

Actually,

I probably would be a much poorer man because as much as I would pursue money,

I would really end up pursuing the things that money buys me.

The reality is I would,

I would be unsatisfied.

I would be broken.

I would have this heart that is desperately sick and wicked,

and I would only find the rest of myself just as sick and wicked.

And so we look and we say,

here is how God calls us to live.

You want to know why I tell you to grab a Bible every week?

It's not because I'm getting a commission.

Those Bibles are free.

If you didn't know the reason why it's going to look and say,

how are you going to live out the righteousness that you're called to in your life?

if you don't know what it looks like to follow a righteous God,

you don't know why we talk about reading God's word regularly and daily.

How are you going to expect to live daily following God?

If you have no idea what that looks like in your life,

how are you going to follow a righteous God that you know nothing about?

You don't know his character.

You don't know his ways.

You don't know his attributes.

You don't know what he wants.

What he values,

you know nothing.

But you look and you say,

that's my God.

That's my savior.

That's my Lord.

If he's your Lord,

How do you follow someone?

You watch and learn where they go.

God has laid out that path for you in his word.

To pick up his word.

We're going to talk about his word later on in a set of armor.

But that righteousness,

it's this call to pick up and protect your heart from sin.

here's my encouragement to you.

First and foremost,

if you have not made Jesus Christ,

your Lord and savior,

to do that this evening,

that doesn't mean simply acknowledge that he exists.

That doesn't mean to acknowledge simply that you're a savior

or that you're a sinner and he's a savior.

What it means is to look and say,

I need your forgiveness and I will follow you with my life.

That's the first path towards picking up that righteousness,

that armor.

The second tonight,

if some of you are struggling with this,

it would be to pick up God,

God's word to read it and to live it out with many of you in this room.

There's a breakdown somewhere.

Some of you are reading God's word and you're,

you don't care about living it out in your life.

Some of you guys know what God's word is calling you to do,

and you don't care about picking it up and putting it on every day.

Some of you aren't reading God's word at all.

You are in a battlefield armorless for whatever it is.

You need courage and the strength that God gives you.

I love that picture throughout.

This,

this entire passage,

it's this picture of God providing you and equipping you with each one of these

things.

So if you're trying to do it on your works,

if you're trying to do it on,

I just got to be strong enough.

I just got to be better.

You'll fail.

God is equipping you with each one of these things.

And so we look to him.

And so tonight,

as we sing this next song,

there'll be table leaders down front.

They would love to pray for you,

pray for courage,

pray for motivation to dive into God's word and to live a righteous life.

If you,

if you have questions about what it means to start a relationship with Jesus Christ,

maybe you're apprehensive or you're on the fence or you want to know more,

you have some serious,

serious things in your mind that are like hurdles that you need some answers to.

They'd love to talk to you.

They'd love to pray with you if you want to make that decision tonight.

But ultimately we need to turn to the Lord to be equipped in these things.

And that looks in response like prayer.

And so come down and pray,

pray with them,

maybe pray with them afterwards or talk to your table leader,

but respond to God's word tonight.

Here,

here's what God's word is calling you to do wherever you're at in your faith

journey and respond because it will strengthen your fight against addiction

because that's a battle of the heart.

Let's pray.

we love you.

We turn to you,

but I pray tonight that you would remind us of your righteousness.

First and foremost,

the righteousness that comes from your son,

Jesus Christ and his death on the cross.

So we'd remember his sacrifice to put us in right standing with you,

We,

and we fell short of your son.

He didn't.

And he went to the cross because he loved us.

I pray that you would show us this way of living that is right.

this truth that binds us to your word,

whether we begin to pick up each of one of these armors and make them regular

habits daily in our lives tonight.

I pray that you would guide us towards this right way of living,

that we look at your word and we see the ways in which you call us to live

and that we would passionately pursue,

you as Lord of our lives.

And we would walk step by step with you,

following you so that when the enemy fights out and looks to pierce our heart,

tempt us to lead us astray,

that we would be so in step with your righteousness works as this,

this armor to deflect the temptation of the enemy.

we turn to you.

We rely on you.

We name Jesus name.