The Helmet of Salvation

SERMON: 2017-01-15--e0606--the-helmet-of-salvation SOURCE DURATION: 00:41:25.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The material up to candidate 13 maintains a consistent theological exposition (restoration of the universe). Candidate 14 and 15 show an abrupt shift in tone and register ('I know about you,' 'pretty neat'), indicating a transition away from the formal sermon content into unrelated or conversational material. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:41:12.500-00:41:16.980 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, so far in our study of Ephesians chapter six, the full armor of God, we have looked at four of six items that Paul says make up the full armor of God. We have looked at the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness. We have looked at the shoes of the gospel of peace, and we have looked together at the shield of faith with which we can quench all the fiery darts of the evil one. That brings us this morning then to number five, as I mentioned a few moments ago. The helmet of salvation, Ephesians six, 17, take the helmet of salvation. In 1 Thessalonians chapter five, verse eight, the apostle Paul calls it the hope of salvation as a helmet. He says, "Since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet." Both of those references actually trace back to the Old Testament book of Isaiah chapter 59, verse 17, where the Bible says he put on righteousness as his breastplate and the helmet of salvation on his head. The Isaiah passage refers to God putting on the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation. Paul here in Ephesians and in Thessalonians makes it apply to you and me. We are in the spiritual battle to put on for a helmet the hope of salvation. In the time that we have this morning, let me say just a little bit about each of those three things, the helmet, the hope, and the salvation, and see how they link together. First of all, the helmet is, of course, a head covering that is to protect the head. For the Roman soldiers, that head covering came in a variety of different ways. If you take a look at this picture, you'll see this is a helmet that is actually made out of leather. This interestingly enough was one of the early helmets of the Roman soldiers, very similar to helmets that modern armies wear, interestingly enough. This one goes way back, and then this is what's called the Gallic helmet, and that became the more traditional helmet for the Roman soldier. The plumes on top, of course, are an indication of an officer. It was one of the ways in which they were distinguished from regular soldiers. The purpose of the helmet, as I said, is to protect your head, and the reason that is important is that your head houses what? Your brain. Your brain houses your mind, and the relationship between those two is a very complicated one that nobody has quite figured out. Some people think your mind is something separate, some people think your mind is just a function of the brain, but in either case, your brain serves as the controlling agent of your body. What happens is that the organs of sense, sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, all feed into the brain. The brain processes all of these signals and then instructs your body to do what it needs to do. If your body and brain are functioning normally, that's just the thing that you take for granted. It's not until you have a stroke, a brain injury, or start suffering from some brain disease such as Alzheimer's that you discover how incredibly complicated the system is. Damage the brain, and you severely incapacitate a person's mobility and a person's ability to fight. That's why in wartime, snipers will often concentrate on headshots, because if I can take out your head, you're out of the battle altogether. And that is why Satan, too, specializes in headshots. If he can get into your thoughts and into my thoughts, lead them away from the living God, then he's got us eating out of the palm of his hand and he's got us immobilized for the purposes of God. Paul's words to the church in Corinth in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 are very instructive in that regard. Chapter 11 verse 3, he says, "I'm afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's running, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ." I was afraid, he says, that your minds might somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. The mind is incredibly important. And while there are many ways in which Satan will try to play on our minds to keep us from being faithful to the Lord and to keep us from carrying out the purposes that God has for our lives, I believe there are two tools that he uses in particular. And that is doubt on the one hand and discouragement on the other. If he can make us doubt the promises of God, if he can make us doubt the goodness of God, and if he can bog us down in depression and in discouragement, then he's got us eating out of his hand and we are virtually incapable of carrying out the purposes that God has for us. Now this doubt and discouragement comes to us in many different ways. It particularly, I believe, comes to us in the form of four very common questions that we ask. Let me run you through them as quickly as I can. The first place where doubt or discouragement will enter into your heart and mind and mind is the question, "Is the gospel true?" Is there really a God who created this whole universe, who revealed himself in scripture, and who one day is going to judge all the nations of the world and punish the evildoers and reward the good? Is it true that Jesus is his son and that Jesus is the only way to the Father? What about other religions? Isn't it incredibly arrogant for Christians to think that they are the only ones who have it right? You ever ask yourself that question? Who do we think we are? Are we the only ones that got it right? Everybody else wrong? Some of you will recall that almost wiped me out in my seminary days or my pre-seminary days when I began a study of comparative religions and I said, "Lord, how do I know? How do I know the Bible is true? How do I know that what you're saying about yourself is true?" It was an incredible struggle and there are many who never get beyond that struggle because they bog down in doubt and in discouragement. The devil can get you there. He's got you because you won't have the courage to stand up for your convictions. Second place, question that he will ask and that he will try to get us to doubt and be discouraged over is does the gospel really work? The gospel makes some incredible claims for itself. It says that God not only can transform me to become like Jesus, but it can build a community of faith that reflects the values of Jesus and it tells me that one day the whole world is going to be renewed by the power of Jesus. It promises great callings upon our life, but if that's true, then why do so many of our prayers not get answered? Do you ever ask yourself that question? Or why after all the pleading that I've done with him and maybe the ministry even that I have received, how come I'm still so miserably stuck in my own brokenness and in my sin? And frankly, why is the church in so many places around the world such an incredibly poor reflection of who Jesus is and do I really think the world is going to change in my lifetime? See, is the gospel true? Is the gospel able to change my life? Does it really work? If we can begin to doubt that, it won't take very long to be discouraged because we'll just give up in view of the overwhelming brokenness, negativity, and sin in our own lives as well as the world. Third question, is the gospel worth giving myself to? We talked about that a bit last week, you'll recall when we asked the question, is Jesus worth it or turn it around and said, what is Jesus worth to you? Is he worth laying down my life for? Is he worth laying down the life of my wife and children and husband and is he worth sacrificing my time, talent, and treasure for? And we saw last week how you answer that question is determined entirely by your view of Jesus. For Mary, the sister of Martha and the sister of Lazarus, having seen Lazarus raised from the dead by the power of Jesus, Jesus was worth everything she could give him and she lavishly poured out a year's worth in wages of anointing oil. What he wasted on Jesus, if that's how you see waste. To Judas, who saw his political aims and ambitions go up in vapor, if you don't mind the pun, he wasn't worth that at all. He was worth no more than 30 pieces of silver. There comes a time in each of our lives where we ask that question, what is Jesus worth? And how we answer that question will determine whether we give in to doubt and to discouragement. You might recall that even John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus, the greatest prophet said Jesus that had ever arisen at the end of his life, sitting in jail, waiting perhaps for his execution. He got full of doubt and full of discouragement and he sent his disciples to Jesus and he said to them, "Are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone else?" See if the devil can make you doubt the price that you paid to follow Jesus and make you discouraged because the road is hard and weary, then he's got you because you'll give up on the battle and you'll go with the flow and he will be happy and your life will be much freer of stress because the road with Jesus is narrow. Few there be that walk at and the road that leads to destruction is wide and it's easy. And then there's still a fourth question, a place where you and I can readily bog down in doubt and in discouragement, do I have what it takes to be faithful? Do I have what it takes to be faithful? Do I have what it takes to say no to the besetting sins of my life? Do I have what it takes to say yes to Jesus and to the call that he places on my wife? Do I have what it takes to take up my cross and to follow Jesus? Not an easy question to answer, particularly when the road is sometimes difficult and the journey hard and you look around you and those who aren't following the Lord don't seem to have the struggles that you're having and they're just going with the flow and they're happy as a lark. And I might remind you that the psalmist in Psalm 73 felt that way. He looked at the ungodly and he saw how sleek and well-fed and happy they were. And he says in verse 2, "As for me, my feet had almost slipped. I had nearly lost my foothold, for I envy the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." And he goes on that way in the Psalm and then he gets to verse 13 and he says, "Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure. In vain have I washed my hands in innocent. All day long I have been plagued, I have been punished every morning." Do you ever feel that God's giving you a rough go? You've put it all on the altar, you've put your money in the offering plate expecting Him to bless you, you've given your heart in a relationship, you've become part of community and you've stepped out in faith and you thought, you know, I'm going to sprout wings, sport a halo and God's going to bless me. And the rug got pulled out from underneath you and you said, what in heaven's name just happened to me? That's doubt. That's discouragement. Do I have what it takes to work in this marriage? Do I have what it takes to walk in obedience? Do I have what it takes to be part of community when community is so full of people who are just as broken and failing as I am? Do I have what it takes? See those are questions that all of us get to face eventually, I believe, if we're serious about following Jesus. We'll face them in varying degrees. Some of us may be more prone to that than others, but none of us is immune to the attacks of hell. I believe that the more intent we are on serving the Lord, the more open our heart has been to Him and the more open our heart has been to each other, the more painful that reality will sometimes come home and the more we will struggle with doubt and with discouragement. It's my conviction that nominal Christians hardly face that battle at all. Because God is just not that much part of their daily lives and God could be gone altogether and life would just go on the way that it was going on. But lay down all your coping mechanisms, surrender yourself to God, depend on a living God who has to be there to answer prayers, to guide your life and to guide your step. Doubt and discouragement is often not that far away and even the greatest saints in history and in scripture have known the reality of having their minds infested with that doubt and with that discouragement. Martin Luther, the great reformer you will recall, was in such despair and had such anger towards the devil that at one point he took his ink well and threw it at the wall, trying to get rid of the devil. And Elijah, remember Elijah in the Old Testament? One of the greatest Old Testament prophets. One Kings chapter 18, he has this great power encounter with God on Mount Carmel where God sends fire on the altar and the prophets of Baal are defeated and destroyed. Remember that spiritual high? You remember what happened in the next chapter, don't you? Queen Jezebel was rather unhappy. All her prophets had just been killed. She made a vow and she said, you know, I'm going to get you. And Elijah, that great man of God goes scurrying into the desert, hides under a broom tree and what does he say to God? Take my life. That's a man of faith and power who is bogged down by doubt and discouragement. The more God uses you, the more you will have those moments when that happens. And the higher your spiritual experience has been, the more vulnerable you are to the letdown that follows. I want you to understand there is a principle here. One reason for that is the adrenaline rush. When the adrenaline rush wears off in your big encounter with God, then depression commonly takes over. That's why a lot of preachers, by the way, are depressed on Mondays because they put so much energy into Sundays. But the other reason, of course, is that the enemy does not want you on a spiritual high, doesn't want you to be passionately committed and involved with Jesus and with other people. And so if he can point out your failures and other people's failures and all the rest of this going on, then he's got you eating out of his hand and doubt and discouragement will follow. Am I talking to anybody here or just to me? The great thing about preaching is you always preach yourself under conviction because I figure that my experiences really aren't that different from most anybody else's experience. So what do you do? Well, Paul says you have to put on as a helmet the hope of salvation. Now let me say just a couple of things about hope because when the Bible uses the word hope, it uses it very differently from the way that you and I use it. We use hope as looking for something that may or may not come true. I hope the weather tomorrow will be good. I hope I get a promotion. I hope that girl notices me and will say yes when I invite her out on a date. If you're the gambling type, you might even say, well, I hope I win the lottery. Well, good luck with that. Hope. That's not how the Bible uses the word hope. The word hope in the Bible is the steadfast assurance that what God has promised has already been fulfilled in Christ and therefore he's going to fulfill it in your life and in my life. Listen to these couple of verses that really spell this out, I think, very clearly. One Peter one, three and four and five. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ by his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. We'll talk about salvation in a few moments, but born anew to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. What does that mean? Jesus is alive. He is at the right hand of God and the father. He has conquered death when by faith we are joined to him. His resurrection is our resurrection and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. We have hope. That's the hope of salvation. Hebrews tells you the same thing six, 19 and 20. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain where Jesus who went before us has entered on our behalf. We have this hope as an anchor of the soul. What hope? The hope of salvation because Jesus Christ has conquered. One more passage is very quickly from the book of Romans 24 and 25 of chapter 8. Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently. The helmet of the hope of salvation is a guarantee that what God has accomplished in Christ is coming my way and it comes my way through the power of salvation. What is my hope? My hope is salvation. Let's put that up for a moment. Salvation is the kind of word we use a lot but we don't always clearly think it through and when it comes to fighting off doubt and discouragement, you need more than have feelings that you go by because feelings will come and feelings will go. They're often determined by the circumstances in which you find yourself. We need to think through the truth of scripture. So here is a definition that I think describes what salvation is. The process whereby God in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, delivers us from sin and all its consequences and restores us to a rightful position as the sons and the daughters of God. Remember we were created to be in fellowship with God. In Adam and Eve we sinned. God is outside of our lives. We are suffering under Satan's power. We are prisoners to sin and death in hell. God sent his son and through his son he makes possible the reversal of this. We move from here back to here. That is what salvation is. It's the process whereby God in Christ delivers us from sin and all of its consequences, all of its miseries that come along with it and restores us to the full privilege of our inheritance in Christ as the sons and the daughters of God. Now, here's what we need to understand. Salvation in scripture has three tenses. It has a past, it has a present, and it has a future tense. Very important to understand. I'll try to walk you through that as quickly as I can, but we really need to lay hold of what this means. Past means we have been saved. This happens when God opens our eyes to sin. We come to faith in Jesus. We invite him into our lives and we now are theologically justified. That is to say just as if I had never sinned. As I've said many times before, God not only forgives me all my sins that I committed over here, but he attributes to me the righteousness of Jesus. God looks at me after I've come to Christ and he says, "What sin? Doesn't matter what the devil comes up with, doesn't matter what the accusations are. I have been saved." That is the reality of the past tense of our salvation. Then we have a present tense of salvation. That is to say we are being saved. We've talked about this a lot in the past. Just because positionally I am in Christ, a new creation, doesn't mean that I have yet learned to live it out in every part of my life. I'm still very selfish sometimes. I will have conflict. I will pick fights. I will serve Satan sometimes instead of serving God. That's why these two circles overlap. I am a new creation on the one hand, but boy oh boy, there's a lot growing up that I've got to do. Theologically we know that is sanctification and sanctification is that process whereby God helps me to put off the old and to put on the new. So yes I have been saved, I am being saved, and the good news is I will be saved. That refers to what the Bible calls glorification. That happens when Jesus comes back at the end of history. He's going to come in the clouds. Every eye will see him. All the nations will be gathered before him. He will separate the nations as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. To those in his right hand he will invite them into his eternal and everlasting kingdom. To those in his left hand he sends into eternal condemnation because of their disobedience, and God will create a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness will reign and in which you and I will take our rightful place as the sons and daughters of God. We're going to sit on the thrones in his new kingdom and we're going to have a blast for all eternity. Can't even begin to imagine what it's going to look like. That's what it's going to be. That's the promise of God. That is salvation and that salvation is a biblical promise and a biblical reality. So we put on the helmet which is the hope, now stick with me, the helmet is the hope of salvation. That is to say what God has committed himself to in Christ which is to redeem me from sin and from Satan and all of the devil's power that is a God-given reality that all hell cannot stand against because God is not a man that he should lie nor the son of man that he should repent. And so what we need to do in each instance is to put on deliberately that helmet, that hope of salvation in each of these three dimensions where salvation happens. And so salvation I said was past, present and future. So I need to put on the helmet of salvation, the hope of salvation in each of these areas and let me just walk you through that quickly and then we'll wind up in a few moments. Salvation in the past is we have been saved. We said it's justification. So when the devil comes at me and he says, as he will, do you really think God wants you? I mean, have you taken stock of what a crappy person, pardon my French here, what a miserable person you are? And you know, look at that sin that he just fell, do you really think that you qualify as a Christian? Besides that, how do you know, you know, I know you went forward or you got prayer but probably really didn't take anyway, right? So you get all of that coming at you and before you know it, you agree with him and you say, uh, I guess I, you know, you have people that go forward at every altar call under the sun because they don't ever believe that it really takes. Well, the antidote to that is the hope of salvation, the helmet of salvation. And here is where the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit all start working together because the antidote to that is to use the scriptures. We'll talk more about that Lord willing as time goes on 1 John 5, 11, 12 and 13 great passage of scripture. This is the testimony God has given us eternal life. This life is in his son. He who has the son has life. He who does not have the son does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. My father came out of a religious tradition where having assurance of salvation was viewed almost as pride. You know, you could say, well, I hope I'm saved and maybe it's not the gospel. The gospel says, are you in Christ is Christ in you then no matter how miserable you are or how false or how far short you fall, you're a child of God. Embrace it and leave out of that and don't let the devil take you down. See, that's the hope of salvation. The reality that in Christ your sins are forgiven in Christ. You are truly righteous before God, then salvation in the present. We're being saved. One of the devil's tactics will be to come along to you and he will say, it's never going to be different. You will never get your act together. You're just a poor loser. You will not be able to conquer the sins of the flesh. Your family will always be a mess. Life will be chaotic. Just give it up. And the antidote to that is again, the hope of salvation. The promise that in Christ you are already more than conqueror. Second Peter one, verse three, his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and goodness. We are being saved by the power of Jesus. Philippians one, six, another passage, one of the first passages in my own Christian life that I ever memorized because I knew that I would need it every day of my life. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ. Isn't that good news? God is bigger than you. He's bigger than your sin. He's bigger than your failure. He's bigger than your past, your present, or your future. He is God Almighty who has done everything that needs to be done by faith in Jesus. And if you will just hang on to him, whatever changes that need to happen, he can make it happen because he conquered. Are you hearing me? This is not idle talk. This is biblical hope, not wishful thinking. This is a biblical guarantee. What always happened quickly may not even happen in your lifetime, but it's a reality that God has promised his children because why? There is a future component to salvation. We are going to be glorified. The world is going to be renewed. And if ever there was cause for despair, you hear it all over the news, all through the world. And if as a Christian, you're committed to seeing the kingdom of God come, lives changed. And sometimes you want to throw your hands up in the air and say to yourself, why am I praying so hard? Why am I hoping so long? Why am I standing so firm on the promises of God? Because you know, as the apostle Peter wrote, a lot of people were skeptics in his day and they said, well, ever since the creation of the world, the world has continued just as it has. And where is the promise of his coming? Bible says that one day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like one day. And the Lord is not slow about his promises, some can slowness, but he doesn't want any to perish, but all to come to repentance. And so the promise of scripture, the hope of salvation is that no matter how bad it gets, the worse it gets, the closer we are to the cry of the archangel of God and the cry of the trumpet of God when Jesus comes and he makes the kingdoms of this world the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who eagerly are waiting for him. In Matthew 16 27, the son of man is going to come in his father's glory with his angels and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. And I tell you the truth, he said to his disciples when they were wondering, is this worth it? We've given up everything for you. Jesus says, at the renewal of all things, the regeneration, when God makes all things new, when the son of man sits in his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The hope of salvation. In the Lord, I like this verse, let us not become weary in doing good for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. In Corinthians 15, my dear brother, stand firm, let nothing move you, always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. I want to tell you I know the reality of doubt in my own life. And boy oh boy, I know the reality of discouragement. And I bet you, you do too. Times when you say, when I gave my life to Christ, I didn't think it would turn out quite this way. It's been harder than I ever thought. And I don't know if I can keep on going. I've previously told you the story, one of the favorite stories my father used to tell me about a man who was in jail, ready to be burned at the stake for the sake of the gospel. And he was saying to himself, I don't think I can do this and he had a little candle in his cell and he was putting his finger through the flame to feel the pain and how he despaired of being able to remain faithful to Jesus at his execution. And I think a lot of us feel that way when things are hard, when the doubts are big and the discouragement is great. You know what the good news is? In Christ, God is more than evil. And for that man, afraid as he was of that little flame, he went out the next day to be burned at the stake with a testimony of faith in Jesus because the power of the Holy Spirit gave him what he needed when he needed it. And that's the promise for you and for me. Doubts will come, discouragement will come, thoughts will flip through our minds like crazy to fill us with panic, but the good news is the hope of salvation. Jesus has already accomplished it. By faith in him, we are saved. By faith in him, we're being saved. And by faith in him, one day the whole universe is going to be restored and all things united in heaven and on earth under the person of Jesus Christ. I know about you, but I think that's pretty neat. [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:41:12.500; remove through 00:41:25.000] I just really think that [CUT]'s neat. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:41:25.000; resume after this marked segment]