Helmet of Salvation
Notes
Transcript
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.
Helmet of Salvation
What have we been saved/rescued from?
The kingdom of darkness, Satan’s domain and his work
Slavery to sin and it’s wages of death
From self-service, self worship to the service of God
From a life separated from God
From the wrath and punishment for sin from God
We see other characteristics of salvation in the ministry of Jesus in rescuing people from illness, disease, demon possession.
The relevant message of the Gospel for today is that Jesus has recused us from a meaningless existence that materialism and humanism offers.
The twin sister of salvation is hope. Or we could say, salvation leads to hope or we could say the Christian hope rests on Gods saving act in Christ.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:8–10“But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.”
Hope: A confident expectation for the future, describing both the act of hoping and the object hoped for.
Hope, especially in the Old Testament came through people knowing the character of God and actions rooted in Scripture. The God in Scripture who has fulfilled his promises in the past will continue to be faithful in the present and future.
The New Testament hope is also rooted in the Old Testament yet our situation is decisively different in that we rest and trust in God’s act of salvation in Christ Jesus. Christ’s resurrection marks the beginning of the messianic age, the presence of the Spirit is evidence that the end has begun and Christian hope waits for the complete manifestation of the kingdom of God at the appearing of Christ.
Hope works miracles in us: When grounded in God, hope provides the motivation to live the Christian life even in the face of trouble. It gives us strength and joy to endure whatever comes our way.
Salvation as a helmet, a form of protection.
Protects our thoughts.
Spiritual war we know and has been well written on finds the battlefield in our mind.
2 Corinthians 10:2–5“I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
A Stronghold is a mindset impregnated with hopelessness that causes us to accept as unchangeable something we know is contrary to God’s will. They are negative patterns of thought that cripple our ability to obey God and create within us feelings of guilt and despair.
Now you see the connection of salvation and hope and it as a helmet that protects our mind, our thoughts.
The enemy desires to create in our minds a stronghold of hopelessness.
Example, you have always been this way, you are this way, and will be this way.
Salvation encompasses our whole reality Past - Present - Future, provides us with assurance, and gives us hope.
Was Saved
2 Timothy 1:9 “He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,”
Being Saved
1 Corinthians 1:18 “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Will Be Saved
Philippians 1:28 “without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved—and that by God.”
Then you believe, Jesus enters a new equation of salvation and says, the way you have always been has died, I’m sanctifying you in the present, rescuing you at this moment, and you can be assured that you will be rescued in the future.
The enemy wants to convince you that you are hopeless, there is no hope for you. You will always be this way and in this situation!
Jesus saves! He is a rescuer.
The solution is to experience the truth found in the Scriptures and Prayer.
Romans 15:4 “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.”
Numbers 13:31–33 “But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.””
They forgot that the Egyptians were so much stronger as well. They forgot that they had been saved, they were being saved, God was sustaining them and providing for them in the wilderness, therefore they foretasted their future with equating the salvation of God in the mix and had no hope.
Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope (a person filled with hope lives with a smile on their face) fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Protects our faculties of perception and response.
We can see this displayed in Numbers 13 with the perceptiveness of the 10 spies with a negative report.
Yet also, we see in the very nature of salvation, humility is required. Jesus speaks of those not coming to him to be saved as having ears to hear but do not hear… etc.
In Isaiah 6:9–10“He said, “Go and tell this people: “ ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”” (Jesus quotes this in Luke 8:10)
Note the chiastic arrangement: heart, ears, eyes, ears, heart. A “fat heart” speaks of a slow, languid, self-oriented set of responses, incapable of decisive, self-sacrificial action. The disease of pride and rebellion has gone so deeply that we will mis-perceive the truth of what we hear.
We can approach life with the right perspective, not a self-serving, “What do I get out of it?”
Why? Pride makes you the center. It makes everything we see and hear about ourselves. Offense follows. Only a prideful person gets offended.
Proverbs 13:10 “Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.”
I get the opportunity to speak on this topic every month at Growth Track, God wants to heal us in our heart. So much of what we perceive is from hurt or pain that has happened in the past. How we were hurt and rejected which then frames all our relationships in the future.
Jesus took that rejection for us and forgave those who crucified him, we can too.
Without healing in the heart we won’t perceive what God has for us in the future.