The Armor of God: The Helmet of Salvation

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, happy Sunday to you. It’s good to see you all here. I have just a few announcements to mention as we begin our worship service.

The men’s group will meet tonight at 6:30.

We’re still collecting for the community food pantry at Calvary. You can leave your donations in Randal’s Sunday School room or in the church office. You can also mark your offering check as “food pantry”, and we’ll make sure it gets where it needs to.

If you would like to pack a shoebox for a child, those are due by this Tuesday, the 15th. Please see Della or Joanne if you have any questions. And please save your shoeboxes from now until next year.

George

Also, don’t forget the pastor vote next Sunday, the 20th. That will be a special meeting after our service. Anyone who is a church member is eligible to vote. So if you’re not a member and you’d like to vote, today’s your day to join the church.

Jesyka, do you have any announcements?

And Sue, do you have any announcements?

Opening Prayer

Father, thank you for allowing us to be here together this morning as we start this hour of worship. We praise and glorify you for your love and your goodness. We are here to seek for your face, and pray the Holy Spirit that you promised to abide in us forever to remind us and teach us Your will.

We thank you because you are a wonderful God, you are a protector for our lives and you always guide and show us the way.

Thank you Lord for the grace that is sufficient to us. For we pray through the might name of our Lord Jesus,

Amen

Sermon

I’m going to start out today talking about a man you probably know depending on your age or upbringing.

He wasn’t the sort of man who’d say he was famous, but he is well-known. He even had a song written about him. I won’t sing it and break this microphone, but I’ll tell you some of the words:

“Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed,

A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed.

And then one day he was shootin’ at some food,

And up through the ground come a bubblin’ … ”

What? Crude.

“Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea.”

Jed, as most of us know, suddenly found himself a millionaire. All his kinfolk said he had to get away from the mountains and hollers and move to where millionaires belong. So Jed packed up Granny and Ellie Mae and Jethro and they all went where? Beverly Hills. Swimmin’ pools, movie stars.

Here’s a question though: When did Jed really become a millionaire? Was it when he discovered the oil on his land, or was it when he first bought that land? Philosophers would say that Jed actually became a millionaire the moment he bought that land. He just didn’t know it yet.

Jed didn’t know the value of what he had because he didn’t know about the oil, and so for years he lived a hillbilly’s life, just barely scraping by.

And Jed got so used to that hillbilly life that even after his riches allowed him and his family to move to the luxury and ease of Beverly Hills, he didn’t know any other way to live.

That’s what made The Beverly Hillbillies so great. This simple family from the mountains had their lives transformed, but that didn’t change who they were or how they lived.

That sounds very noble, doesn’t it? But when you look at it another way, it’s actually a little sad. I love Jed Clampett, him and Andy Griffith, they’re my guys. But let’s be honest: Jed was given what most people can only dream of, but he never really lived up to it. He had all those blessings but never claimed them.

I mention him this morning because a lot of times we act like spiritual Jed Clampetts. We don’t realize what God has given us.

We don’t claim it, and so we’re stuck living a kind of hillbilly life of the spirit where we’re just struggling to get by. Where we feel like we’re at the mercy of the world and the devil, when actually Christ has already given us every victory, along with all we could ever need or desire.

All of that — all of the victory, all of our wants and needs — is wrapped up in a word called “salvation”. That’s our supreme gift; nothing God could ever give us is so great as that.

But too often we treat our salvation the same way that Jed treated his fortune; we accept it, but not fully. We believe it, but don’t live it, because we limit what salvation is. We think salvation just means we’re going to heaven. It does, but it also means so much more.

To Paul, your salvation is such an important part of the armor you need to fight your spiritual battles that he calls it your helmet. And what part of your body does a helmet protect? It protects your head, doesn’t it?

Remember when we talked about the breastplate of righteousness? The breastplate protects your heart, and in the Bible your heart is the very center of your body. Your heart is your true self.

In much the same way, when the Bible talks about the head, it tends to mean your whole person. It’s the most essential part of you.

If you were being blessed, a person would place his hands on your head. If someone cursed you, they’d say, “May a curse fall on your head.” In Genesis 3, God says that Jesus will crush the head of the serpent, meaning that Jesus will destroy Satan completely.

So when you’re spiritually attacked, you have to protect your head at all costs. You have to put on your helmet, and you do that by understanding your salvation.

Turn with me again to the book of Ephesians, chapter 6. Today we’ll be looking at verses 13 through the first part of verse 17:

Therefore 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. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation …

And this is God’s word.

So why does Paul call it a “helmet” of salvation? The Roman soldier’s helmet was called a galea. It had cheek guards that came down along either side to protect the face.

Like I said a few minutes ago, a soldier’s helmet protected the head. But a spiritual helmet for spiritual warfare protects something beyond the head, something that’s both your greatest ally and your greatest enemy — your mind.

Just like your brain controls your body, your mind controls your will and your emotions. That’s why you need a helmet that’s built to absorb the shocks of being hit over and over again by the enemy.

And by the way — when you’re in the middle of a battle, the worst thing you can do is take your helmet off. I always think of the movie Saving Private Ryan, about the D-Day invasion. In one scene early on, a soldier gets shot right in the helmet. He’s fine. But then he takes his helmet off to look at where the bullet struck, and another bullet hits him in the head, killing him instantly.

That’s what happens in your spiritual battles too. If you take off your helmet of salvation in the middle of the devil’s attack, it’s like you’re wearing none of the other pieces of armor at all. That’s how important your helmet is.

And I know I keep saying that about all of these pieces of spiritual armor that Paul lays out. Every week, whether it’s the belt or the breastplate or the shoes or the shield, I say, “This is the most important piece.” And it’s true. Every piece is the most important piece. Every piece builds upon the other.

But the helmet is special because it protects your mind, and everything about your life — almost all of your physical and spiritual health and all of your mental and emotional health — depends on the state of your mind.

Proverbs says that what you think determines how you live. Paul says in Romans 12 that renewing your mind, making your thoughts God’s thoughts, will transform your life.

When your mind is thinking the way it should, you stand firm on spiritual ground. Your thoughts are to the truth of the Bible, which means your belt is on tight.

They remind you that God looks at you and sees His sinless son, and that every day the Holy Spirit is working to make you more like Christ, so your thoughts keep your breastplate tight.

When your thoughts are to the promises that God makes to you, the God who is in complete and total control of everything in your life, they keep your shoes of peace tied.

Your thoughts strengthen your faith, helping you to raise your shield.

But when your mind starts acting in ways it isn’t supposed to, all of that goes away. Your armor starts getting loose. It starts falling off piece by piece, because your thoughts stop your will from doing what it should.

So it’s no surprise that one of the devil’s favorite ways to attack you is to attack your mind. If he can mess with your thinking and take your thoughts off God, he has you right where he wants you.

So how does Satan accomplish that? A lot of times, he’ll try to substitute God’s voice for the voices of other people, even people who are well-meaning and just want to be helpful.

God will absolutely speak through other people to help you and give you wisdom. But to have to have God’s voice first. He always has to be the filter that everything else flows through, because God is truth.

So if you stop listening for Him and instead start depending on the thoughts and opinions of others, what’s going to happen?

You’re going to drown out God’s voice, aren’t you? And the worse thing you can do when you’re in the middle of a battle is lose communication with your general. When you’re under attack, you need God’s voice speaking His wisdom and comfort more than ever.

Another way the devil will try to turn your thoughts from God is to get you to focus on your circumstances.

We’ll talk more about that later, but if Satan can trap you into focusing on the surface of whatever you’re going through — and more importantly if he can convince you to be overwhelmed by it — you’re going to be so consumed with what only appears to be happening that there’s no room for God’s thoughts at all.

I’ll give you an example. A few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with a fever. That morning I had a sore throat. Then the coughing started. By the middle of the day, my voice was completely gone. So I did what any modern, sane, intelligent person would do — I got my phone out and went to Google. I was going to diagnose myself.

Do you know how many fatal diseases begin with a fever? Quite a few, as it turns out. I read about one, which led to another, which led to worse.

And what about my voice? I had never lost my voice before. Ever. But now I couldn’t talk. How long would my voice be gone? Is it possible to lose your voice permanently? I googled that too. Turns out yes, you can.

It could be because of an infection. It could be the result of a stroke. “Oh no, is that it? Did I have a stroke? I had a stroke. I had a stroke, and now I’ll never get my voice back. Why are you doing this to me, God? I thought you loved me. I thought I was safe with you.”

We laugh because it’s funny, but we also laugh because that’s what we all do. In the space of just a few minutes, I went from having a cough and a sore throat — something I’ve had dozens of times, to no lasting effect at all — to thinking I was going to live the rest of my life disabled. Why? Because I let my thoughts run wild. I lost my mind there for a minute, and that’s not uncommon. We all lose our minds sometimes.

That’s what that helmet is for. You might think that the thing that decides either victory or defeat in your spiritual battles is your heart. It isn’t. It’s your mindset. It’s your perspective. And if your perspective is wrong and your mindset is flawed, your thoughts won’t be on the truths that God has given you, and you’re going to sink.

The devil wants there to be no barrier between him and your thoughts. That way he can keep making sure that he’s the one dictating your perspective on things, and that your mind just leaps from one horrible conclusion to another. But God wants your mind to be filled with truth, because truth takes away the devil’s greatest weapon against you, and that weapon is doubt.

In the end, poor Jed Clampett doubted the real blessing he’d received when he bought that piece of land filled with oil. In his heart he felt like he didn’t deserve his riches, that he wasn’t worthy of all that he’d been given.

And in the case of my sickness, which turned out to be nothing more than a bad infection, my mind was so quick to leap to the worst possible cause because I doubted why an all-powerful, all-knowing God would ever care for someone like me.

How many times have you desperately needed God but doubted He would help you? That He would give you His peace? That He would lift you up?

Those doubts you have are Satan’s greatest weapons against you. If he can turn your thoughts away from the truth that gives power to all those pieces of armor, then your defeat and his victory is all but guaranteed.

That’s why you need a helmet to keep your mind focused on God. And Paul calls it the helmet of salvation because all those doubts that plague you, no matter how many and how different they are, all come down to that — to your salvation.

Am I really saved? Will I really go to heaven? Are all of those promises in the Bible about blessings and peace and joy and comfort really true, and are they really for me? Because that all seems a little too good to be true, doesn’t it? Kind of like Jed trading a poor life for a life of riches. It’s too wonderful, and so it’s too impossible.

In the last verses of Matthew 28, Jesus has been raised and calls his disciples to the mountain to give them the Great Commission. And in Matthew 28;17, we read this: “And when they saw him they worshipped him, but some doubted.”

Some doubted. Why, after all they’d seen? Because of the same reason you doubt. Because the more we wish for something, the more we’re afraid to believe it. And what does anyone wish for more than a life that truly means something, followed by an eternity of joy with those we love and have lost along the way?

But that’s exactly what you have, it’s just that sometimes you forget it. You forget the greatest thing you’ve been given. Paul warns us of that in verse 17.

He’s telling the Ephesians that they have to put on the helmet of salvation, but the Ephesians were already saved. Just like you. These were people Paul called “saints”. He called them “faithful in Christ Jesus” and said they’d already been blessed with “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” Just like you.

Why is Paul telling saved people to put on the helmet of salvation? Because he knows that sometimes we can act like “unsaved-saved” people. And the reason we do that is because we don’t truly understand what salvation is.

The moment you trusted Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, a change occurred. The penalty for your sins was removed. God no longer held you guilty. From that instant on, He looks at you and sees Christ, and your eternal security was assured.

As great as that is, though, salvation means so much more. We make the mistake of thinking that salvation is only a promise of something to come. Salvation’s just for when we pass from this world into heaven, and then later when we receive our new bodies and take our places in the new heavens and new earth.

But salvation is also for your past, because it wipes away all of your failures and regrets and sins. And maybe most importantly in your spiritual battles, salvation is also for your present. It’s for today, in whatever you’re going through, changing you little by little to be more like Christ and to free you from sin.

Your salvation is the power of God to deliver you from hell in the future, but it’s also the power of God to deliver you from hell on earth. From worry. From fear. From doubt.

If a sin is ruling over you, if the devil knows that all he needs to get you thinking wrong is to is push that button or give you that nudge, that’s when salvation works through you — right then, in that moment. That’s when you need to put on your helmet.

Because your salvation wasn’t just for the moment you accepted Christ, and not just for that moment when you pass from this life into eternity. It’s for this moment right now, and for all the moments in between.

But how exactly does salvation work? Turn back to the second chapter of Ephesians. Look at verses 8-10.

Paul tells us, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Notice the order that Paul describes it — salvation is by grace, through faith, for good works. All three of those make up the one word “salvation”.

You are saved by grace. Grace has nothing at all to do with you. Grace is all about what God has done for you out of his perfect love.

As Christians, we speak of God’s grace and mercy. It’s important to know the difference between those two, because they’re not the same. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve. Mercy is not getting what you do deserve.

The problem with grace, of receiving what you don’t deserve, is that we tend to treat it like Jeb Clampett treated his fortune. We know we don’t deserve it, and deep down that kills us because what’s one of the first lessons we learn in life? You have to work for what you have, right?

That goes for our homes, our cars, our clothes, our groceries, everything — including, we sometimes think, grace. And so we either live like we don’t have grace, or we think we have to try to earn it.

That’s exactly why Paul says you have to put on that helmet of salvation even though you already have salvation. The devil wants you thinking that you have to earn God’s favor. Or worse, that you can do something that somehow makes you lose God’s favor and costs you your salvation.

When you start thinking that way, Satan has all the fiery arrows he needs to shoot at you. Because guess what? You’ll never do enough to feel like you’ve earned God’s favor, no matter what you do or how hard you try. And so you’ll always live in fear that you might lose your salvation.

That’s where faith comes in. Remember the shield of faith from last week? That’s connected right with your salvation, because you are saved by grace, Paul says, through faith. That means the only way you can really understand and accept the grace that’s been given to you is through faith.

And what does that faith say? It’s simple, really. God loves you. In fact, God cannot possibly love you any more than He already does. He sent his son to die for you.

You can’t do anything to make God love you one ounce more than He does. What you can do is believe that. Believe it on faith, which just means accepting what God has done for you. And when you’re saved by grace through faith, those good works start pouring out of you naturally.

That’s thinking the way that God wants you to think. That’s how He intends your mind to work. And that’s exactly the opposite of what the devil wants.

Satan wants you weak in your thoughts, and so he’ll plague you with all kinds of doubts about your salvation. He’ll tempt you with worldly thoughts. He’ll get you wondering if God’s really there, and if God really cares. That’s when you have to renew your trust in God. You have to put your helmet on.

So how do you do that? How do you use that helmet of salvation when those arrows start flying at you? I’ll give you five ways.

First, and I touched on this earlier: You have to renew your mind. There’s a whole sermon in that, but Paul says in Romans 12 that renewing your minds means allowing God’s truth to wipe out any thought that doesn’t agree with it.

That’s the belt you should be wearing every day, claiming all of those promises made for you in the Bible. All those old ideas about the world you had that were proven wrong. All those opinions about yourself that weren’t true. Those have to be replaced. You start living by what God says, which is always perfect, and stop living by what you think, which is always limited and very often far from perfect.

Second, you have to reject those bad thoughts and doubts that often come with your circumstances. And this is such a hard thing to do, because we tend to live by our senses. It’s hard for us to trust and lean on what we can’t see, hear, taste, touch, or smell.

That’s why it’s so easy for your circumstances to convince you that God doesn’t love you, or that He won’t take care of you, or that His word isn’t true.

And it’s in those times when you have to decide whether you’ll give in to those doubts or whether you’ll trust in spite of those doubts.

Again, it can be so hard to trust God when everything seems to be going wrong. I know that from experience. But I also know from experience that God will always, always, reward your faith in Him. That helmet gives you the power to believe what seems impossible.

Listen to Hebrews 11:6: “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

The third point goes hand-in-hand with the second. The best way to not let your circumstances control you is to keep an eternal mindset. Tending to the everything that’s going on around you is always a little easier when you remember to look up.

That’s true especially when Satan aims his arrows at you. Again, your salvation is the most precious thing you’ll ever be given. It’s the most valuable thing you possess. It’s a treasure not just for when you leave this world but for right now, because it helps keep a proper perspective.

“Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven,” Jesus said, “ … for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” In other words, think eternally instead of getting caught up in the moment. If it doesn’t have eternal significance, then it’s not really that important.

Fourth, always remember that your victory isn’t just guaranteed, it’s already been accomplished. At the moment of salvation, you were sealed by the Holy Spirit. There is absolutely nothing you can do, nothing the world can do, nothing Satan can do, to snatch you out of God’s hand.

When you live for him and every day say, “Christ must become greater, and I must become less,” you’ll find the devil has quite a few less arrows he can aim your way. You’re a new creature. The old you is gone in God’s eyes. And if the old you is gone to Him, you have absolutely no reason to hang on to that old you yourself.

Lastly, understand that all your hope is in Him. Psalm 73:25-26:

“Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

The helmet you wear is made powerful when you treasure what it represents. I said earlier that a Roman soldier’s helmet had two purposes, and that the first was to protect the head. The second purpose was to identify the legion they belonged to.

When you wear the helmet of salvation, it becomes clear to the enemy whose you are. You belong to Christ. You are marked with his seal. Ephesians 1:13 says that when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

By that helmet, Satan knows he’s beaten. He can tempt you. He can try you. He can fire any arrow he has at you. But you will not be beaten. More than that, every attack allows Satan to commit on you will actually leave you stronger, more faithful, and closer to Christ, and leave Satan even more defeated when your trial is done.

That’s the power of the helmet of salvation. The more you put it on, the more your mind will be insulated against the doubts and desires the devil wants you to plague you with.

When you trade the world’s thoughts with the thoughts of Christ, when you fill your mind with whatever is true, and honorable, and just, and pure, and lovely, and commendable, you form a thicker and thicker helmet that keeps the devil out and the truth in.

And this is the truth — God loves you. He cannot possibly love you more. Let that be your comfort. Let that be your strength.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, salvation comes through you alone. It’s by Your grace that we’re saved, by a love that never fades and never wavers. We ask that You give us the assurance that we are your children, and that You will do all You have set out to do on earth. In this broken and dying world, remind us of Your promises. Help us to renew our minds. Purse from us any thoughts that are not holy or true, and equip us for the battlefield of today. Destroy any doubts that may cloud our minds, and help us to keep our mind on the things of eternity, even in the midst of the worries of today. Help us to trust You, Lord — now, tomorrow, and always. In Christ’s name we ask it, Amen.