©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

09-18-05

The Helmet Of Salvation

9-18-05 The Helmet Of Salvation

Our study of the protective armor

given to us by our Lord

in preparation for this warfare in which we are involved

has brought us to the second to the last piece of our protection.

EPH 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation...

And to understand what he’s talking about here

we need to spend some time

looking first at just exactly what this helmet of salvation is,

and then I want to talk a little about how we put it on.

When we were studying the breastplate of righteousness

I mentioned that, though all the pieces of our armor

are vital to our survival and success

in this warfare in which we are involved,

yet there are two pieces

that, perhaps more than any of the others,

are designed to protect us from truly devastating blows from the enemy -

the breastplate which protects the heart,

and the helmet that protects the head.

And let me say first of all

that this one piece of our armor

more than any of the others

helps us to understand the nature of our relationship

to everything we have mentioned in this passage.

And let me see if I can explain what I’m trying to say here.

We sometimes mistakenly view the entire New Testament

as being a sort of open book

written by God to the whole human race.

That is not strictly true.

It is certainly true

that the Spirit of God can and does use truth from His Word

in the lives of many of us prior to our submission to Christ

as He seeks to draw us to Himself.

But of the 27 books that make up the New Testament

only five of them are written as open books

addressed, in effect, to the entire human race.

Those five are the first five,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts.

They provide us with the historical introduction

into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ,

and then into the events surrounding God’s establishment of His Church on the earth.

Those five books

give the human race the historical facts we need

for the decisions we will then make

concerning God’s revelation of Himself through Christ.

But then there is a major shift in the final 23 books of the New Testament.

Every one of them,

from Romans through the book of Revelation,

is clearly, specifically addressed just to those

who have responded to God’s offer of redemption through Christ.

They are written just to Christians,

and they all contain promises,

instructions,

insights,

and statements that are only true about Christians.

Now, as I just mentioned,

there are many times when the Spirit of God

will use some statement from these 23 books

to bring light into our lives prior to our submission to Christ,

but that is a special, sovereign work of God

and for us to suggest to non-Christians

that all the truths in these books apply to them

is simply not true.

These 23 books are filled with truths and statements

that are simply not true about us until after we have come to Christ.

ROM 6:3 ... you ...have been baptized into Christ Jesus (you) have been baptized into His death...

ROM 11:30 ...you once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy ...

EPH 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

COL 2:10 ...and in Him you have been made complete...

COL 3:1 ... you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

1PE 1:23 ... you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God.

1JO 2:14 ... you know Him who has been from the beginning... you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

None of those things are true about us prior to our union with Christ,

and for us to suggest they are

simply muddies the water

and makes it more difficult for us to present the truth about the redemptive work of God among us.

But I bring all of this up

because there is something fascinating I want us to see

about this helmet of salvation spoken about by Paul here in Ephesians chapter 6.

This one piece of our armor

more than any of the others

helps us to understand the nature of our relationship

to everything we have mentioned in this passage

because we know that Paul is not calling us TO salvation,

he is calling us

to clothe our minds in the truth of the salvation that we already possess.

Do you recall those words with which Paul began Ephesians?

They mirror the words used to open nearly every one of the final 23 books of the Bible.

EPH 1:1-2 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus, and who are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

“...to the saints..., to the holy ones of God”.

And then, from there,

Paul moved immediately into the most remarkable catalog

found anywhere in Scripture

of those gifts given by God exclusively to those of us

who have responded to His offer through Christ.

EPH 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ...

And then he lists for us

gift after gift given exclusively to the people of God.

And my point here

is simply to remind us

that, when we get to this sixth chapter of Ephesians,

and read this description of the protective armor our Lord wants us to “put on”,

He is still talking to those of us

who have already placed our lives into His hands.

He’s talking to Christians.

And because Paul has made it clear

that he is writing exclusively to Christians,

when he tells us to “... take the helmet of salvation...”,

we know that he is not calling us to receive the salvation offered to us by Christ

because the audience he’s writing to

has already done that.

But rather

he is calling us to cover our minds,

to surround our thinking

with the truth about that salvation,

with the truth of what this salvation we already possess really involves.

Until we do that,

we will continue to live

with a performance-based tension between us and our Creator.

We will bring assumptions into our interaction with Him

that will make us extremely vulnerable

to a wide variety of lies

that, once they enter our minds,

will cause tremendous disruption,

and confusion,

and anxiety,

and fear in our relationship with God.

Do you know what putting on the helmet of salvation is?

It is closing the gap between what’s true

and what I believe.

Now, I know that none of us here this morning

are consciously aware

of any such gab existing.

I mean, we all assume

that what we believe

and what’s true are the same thing.

If we knew something wasn’t true

we wouldn’t believe it.

But in reality

all of us have huge gaps between those two.

And the more fixed we are in our beliefs,

the more difficult it is

for us to recognize where they are not true.

Several weeks ago

Cook Inlet Academy installed these new scoreboards in their gym.

They’re niece, modern, digital boards.

I have been looking at scoreboards

for more years than most of you have been alive.

I know how they work.

The time readout on a score board

begins with the number of minutes allotted

for the quarter, or the half, or the period of whatever game is being played -

15:00 minutes, 12:00 minutes, 8:00 minutes, etc.

Then the clock readout counts down by seconds

until the quarter or the period is over.

This is not high-tech.

I know this!

I have known this

since my grade school days back in North City Elementary School

in the 1950's.

OK, now when these new scoreboards were installed a few weeks ago,

when I came in here

I looked up and noticed that the digital readouts on them

were running backwards.

Rather than counting the time down,

they were counting up,

adding minutes to the time

rather than removing them.

I’d never seen a scoreboard do that before,

but I just assumed that whoever installed them

was running some sort of test on them

to make sure they would record the minutes accurately

and to do that over an extended period of time

they had to run the system backwards

so that it would continue going for several days

rather than having it simply time through one period down to 0:00 and then stop.

Now, many of you will probably remember

the conversation I had with you about that scoreboard several weeks ago

in the few minutes prior to my starting to teach.

I pointed out to you

how much I liked the timing system on that board for preaching

because, rather than taking time away from me,

it kept giving me more time.

Every so often

the numbers on the readout would increase

rather than decrease,

which meant it would never get down to 0:00

and the buzzer would never go off,

and I had as much time to preach as I wanted.

At that point

several of you said to me,

“No, Larry, it’s a clock.”

When you first said that

your words to me made no sense whatsoever.

Of course I knew it was a clock -

it was a scoreboard clock that counts down the minutes and seconds

until the game is over.

And when you said, “It’s a clock.”,

I responded by saying,

“Yes, but they have it running backwards

so that it’s adding minutes rather than subtracting them.”

At that point a number of you probably thought to yourself,

“Oh dear!

The years have really taken their toll.

Larry is already into that diminished mental capacity

that so often accompanies the final phase of life.”

And then a few of you tried again.

“No, Larry, it’s really a clock! It’s telling us what time it is!”

And then,

all of the sudden,

I got it.

It isn’t a timer running backwards,

it’s a literal clock

telling me what time it is.

That’s the difference

between what we believe

and what’s true.

Because my belief system about scoreboards in high school gyms

stretched back more than 50 years,

I couldn’t see what was true

because of my absolute commitment to what I believed.

There is a similar process

that I believe every one of us must go through

in our understanding of this salvation we have received through Christ.

And it is that process of reaching that understanding

that I believe Paul is talking about

when he calls us to “put on the helmet of salvation”.

He’s not calling us to be saved.

He assumes we already are.

He’s calling us

to enter into a true, accurate discovery

of what this salvation really is.

And maybe it would be easiest

if I try to show it to us

not from the negative, not from the perspective of what it’s not,

but rather from the perspective of what it is.

Though the entire New Testament

is filled with descriptions and explanations

of what we enter into

when we enter into Christ,

Paul gives us an absolutely perfect one-phrase description

of our life with God

once we have correctly put on the helmet of salvation.

It is found in a passage

that you have seen me interweave into my teaching

countless times in the past 20 years.

It’s found in the first verse of Romans chapter 5.

Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...

Peace with God!!!

And before we look more closely at this phrase,

just to help us appreciate that gap between what we believe and what’s true,

let me ask you a question.

If you were to stand before God right now

so that He could give you His personal progress report on you

and your relationship with Him,

how do you think it would go?

How does the thought of such an interview make you feel?

To the degree that the thought of your standing in the physical presence of God right now

does not flood you with a sense of peace,

and hope,

and joy,

and absolute contentment,

to that degree you have not yet put on the helmet of salvation.

And some of you think that just can’t be right.

When I suggest that the thought of your standing in the presence of God right now

should flood you with an overwhelming sense of peace,

you think to yourself,

“Yes, but I’ve got some stuff in my life right now

that I sort of haven’t quite worked through yet,

stuff that I know a righteous, holy God just isn’t going to like very much.”

And the thought of you standing in His presence

with those issues still unresolved

doesn’t flood you with a sense of peace at all.

In fact it makes you really uncomfortable.

Well, let’s look more closely at what Paul is saying here.

The first half of that statement is in the past tense - “...having been justified by faith...”.

He’s talking about every Christian,

and he states our “justification” before God as a completed act,

something that has already been accomplished.

And in those five words

Paul gives us

the very heart of what is really involved in this whole salvation thing.

What do you think happened between you and God

when you became a Christian?

Do you think it was mostly about Him forgiving your past sins

and His then giving you a new start?

Do you think it was mostly about you making a commitment to God,

promising Him that you would try harder to be better?

When Paul says, “Therefore, having been justified by faith...”,

in just three words, “justified by faith”,

he is communicating to us

the most important,

most radical,

most utterly amazing truth

that will ever enter the human mind.

In context

Paul is talking about our relationship with God Himself.

And he says that we have already been justified before God by faith.

That word “justified”

means “to show to be righteous”,

or “to be declared to be righteous by God Himself”.

Though most of the time the Greek word used here

is translated as “justified” in the English New Testament,

it is also at times translated as “acquitted”,

or “freed”,

or “vindicated”.

Many years ago

I had a Bible teacher tell me

that “justified” as it is used here

means “just as if I’d” never sinned”.

When I first heard that

I figured it was probably one of those situations

where a teacher fuzzed the truth a little bit

just to take advantage of a rather nifty teaching tool.

But after more than 30 years of my own study

I know that what he said is dead on.

What God did for us through Christ

had nothing to do with His attempting to solicit from us

our promise of allegiance to Him

or submission to Him.

It wasn’t even really that He just forgave our sins.

It certainly wasn’t that He removed our past sins

and then gave us a second chance to try again.

What He did was to justify us before Him,

to declare us to be absolutely, completely, totally and eternally righteous,

holy,

without any sin of any kind.

He made us as holy as God Himself.

Not just better.

Not just improved.

Not just pointed in the right direction,

but perfect.

You think I’m going to far, don’t you.

You think now I’m the one who’s stretching the truth a bit.

Listen to this.

2CO 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

What does Paul say we became?

The righteousness of GOD.

As righteous, as sinless as God Himself.

And how did we receive that righteousness?

What did we do

in order to be justified by God?

“Therefore, having been justified by FAITH...”.

All we did

is to choose to believe

that God is telling us the truth

when He tells us that apart from Him we are sinful,

and that when Christ died on that cross

He was God in human form

choosing to die in our place for our sins.

That’s it.

That’s all He asks of us

because it’s all we can give -

our choosing to believe

that God is telling us the truth

when He tells us about Christ,

and our choosing to place our sins onto Christ’s account.

And in exchange for that simple act of faith,

that simple choice to believe what God has said

He then responds to us

by declaring us righteous forevermore,

and by creating within us

a new righteous, holy inner spirit.

And it is on the basis of that truth

that Paul then says, “...we have PEACE WITH GOD through our Lord Jesus Christ...”.

If we were to enter into His presence this day

we would not stand before Him

still covered in the filth of our failures,

our sins.

We would stand there pure, and holy, and righteous,

clothed in His righteousness.

I like the way Isaiah said it.

ISA 61:10 “I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, My soul will exult in my God; For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”

What a deal, huh?

What a remarkable arrangement between us and our God.

And it is our understanding of this relationship between us and Him

that forms the heart of our putting on our helmet of salvation.

You see,

once we finally “get it”,

once we finally see that the scoreboard isn’t just running backwards,

but that it’s really a clock,

once our minds begin to grasp

the relationship that now exists between us and our God through Christ

a whole lot of things change.

For one thing,

Satan forever loses his ability

to drive a wedge between us and our God

through his accusations against us,

accusations designed to forever keep us under a sense of shame,

and guilt,

and fear of our God.

And we will discover

that our awareness of the true nature of our God’s love for us

will cause our spirits to overflow with gratitude and praise.

And we will find

a new freedom within us

to face honestly those areas in our lives

where our thinking and behavior are still all messed up.

Rather than fearing God’s wrath and judgment if we dare bring the struggles out into the open,

we will find within ourselves

the freedom to bring them honestly to our Lord

and to trust His Spirit’s leading

as He seeks to move us toward greater freedom and healing.

In truth,

understanding the true nature of our salvation through Christ

guards and protects and frees our minds

as nothing else can do.

It is the central foundational truth

upon which the Spirit of God can then lead us through that ongoing process in which we are no longer ...conformed to this world, but ... transformed by the renewing of our mind, that we may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. ROM 12:2

Well, we have one more piece of armor to look at,

what Paul calls “the sword of the Spirit”.

We’ll look at it the next time we’re together.