Sermon Tone Analysis

Helmet

So we have talked about most of the armor of God and only a couple of pieces are left.

It was good that today worked out to be the helmet of salvation because I also want to share my salvation story with you today.

Before I get to that though lets begin with our key passage.

So the helmet of the Roman Soldier had both a cheek guard and sometimes a nose guard to more fully protect the head.

I don’t have a roman helmet today and if I did it probably wouldn’t mean much to many of us so instead I brought something that might make a little more sense to us.

This is the helmet I wear on disaster relief when using a chainsaw.

It is designed to protect the head from an impact much like the roman helmets and it has some other neat features.

It has earmuffs to protect my ears from excess sound and a faceguard to protect my face and eyes much as the roman cheekguards protected their face.

So what does this have to do with spiritual warfare and with salvation.

Salvation begins with understanding that you are a sinner, it depends on you making a decision to allow Jesus to be lord of your life.

You need to know that Jesus died for your sins on the cross and that He offers you the gift of salvation based completely on what He has done and on who he is and not on anything you have done.

All of these things have to do with your mind.

To be saved you need to give your heart to Jesus but it is your mind that makes the decision of whether of not to surrender your heart.

When the time comes that you don’t feel particularly saved it is your mind and the decisions you make that keep you true to your promise to serve Jesus.

There may come a time when you don’t particularly feel saved or don’t particularly feel like serving Jesus, there may even come a time when you feel like God is far away from you, it is at those times that your mind and your will need to take over and keep you on course.

In any relationship the feelings ebb an flow, sometimes they are very strong and sometimes they are not so strong but it not feeling married that makes you married but the commitment that you have made.

It is not feeling saved that makes you saved but the commitment that you have made and even more importantly the commitment that Jesus has made to you.

The helmet I showed you is a good example of spiritual protection.

The helmet itself protects your head by keeping things from hitting it and your spiritual helmet protects your mind by keeping the wrong things from influencing it.

The ear muffs keep out unwanted sound, your spiritual earmuffs strain out the evil sounds and the evil thoughts that might come into your head and influence you.

The visor on the helmet protects your face and eyes and your spiritual visor strains out the sights that might influence your mind.

There is an old song that says be careful little eyes what you see and be careful little ears what you hear, I propose that it is not only little ears and eyes but all ears and eyes that need to be careful.

I wish I could full expand this idea but since we are talking about salvation today I wanted to also share my own story.

On the evening before my 25th birthday I was on the USS Lake Champlain floating around in the Persian Gulf with 300 or so of my closest friends.

Over the last few years God had been trying to get my attention.

My family did not go to church or have anything to do with God but when I left home at 18 I moved in with a buddy whose dad taught at various churches about the end times and I heard him teach a few times.

Later I went into the Navy and in boot camp I was a squad leader, what that means for this story is that I got better privileges than average.

During boot camp you spend one week in what was called service week, for most people this meant they got up at 4 am to go work in the kitchen, and half of them would work until after dinner and then go to bed and the other half would work until after the midnight rations and then catch a short nap before starting over, sounds fun huh?

As a squad leader I went to leggings issue, which meant on Thursday morning we would pass out white lace up leggings to the graduating class and after the graduation ceremony we would spend the rest of Thursday and Friday cleaning them up and re shelving them.

That’s all we did, the rest of the time we just had to stay out of sight in the leggings issue building so no one gave us extra work to do.

There was a break room upstairs with about 6 magazines and a Gideon Bible.

No phone, no TV and no going out so I read.

First I read all the magazines twice, then I read the bible cover to cover to kill time.

Years went by and I was stationed on the USS Lake Champlain.

As far as I was ever able to determine there were about 8 practicing Christians on that ship and five of them were in my immediate work group of eight people.

I held out for a while but on the evening before my 25th birthday my supervisor and I were talking in Radar Room 1 about God and salvation.

After we talked for a while he asked me why I wouldn’t accept Jesus and I told him that everything I had ever seen anyone do they did for a selfish motive.

People gave to charity to make themselves feel better, they were nice to people because they wanted people to be nice to them and they loved people because they wanted to be loved back.

I told him that everything I had ever done I had done because I thought I would get something out of it and I could not see what God could get out of loving me or why a God who loved people unselfishly would even want to save someone as selfish as me.

He thought for a while and then he asked me if I had children.

I replied that he knew I had children he had met them.

He asked me if I loved my children.

I got a little mad, I remember balling up my fist and telling him of course I loved my children.

Then he asked why, what did I get out of it.

I thought for a long time and then finally I thought I had him.

I said that I loved to come home and see their eyes light up just because they were happy to see me, I loved to hug them and play with them knowing that they were happy to just be with me.

I wanted to help them live a better life that I did and avoid the problems and struggles that I had, to avoid doing all the dumb things I had done.

Yes I got a lot out of loving my children.

I sat back and waited for his response.

He leaned forward and just stared at me for a long time.

Then it penetrated my thick head, what if what God wanted from me was what I wanted from my children.

What if God wanted to see my eyes light up just because He was there.

What if God wanted to spend time with me knowing that I was happy just because I could spend time with Him.

What if God wanted to help me be a better person and avoid the problems, the stupid mistakes and the sins I had done, what if God wanted to see me grow up strong and perfect like I wanted for my own children.

There in the radar room somewhere in the Persian Gulf right around midnight either the day before or the morning of my 25th birthday I prayed and accepted Jesus into my heart.

I have never looked back.

When we got back into port I went to church with the man who led me to Jesus.

I was baptized in an above ground swimming pool in someones back yard in San Diego California.

Within a year I was transferred to shore duty in Virginia.

Sine the only church I had ever been part of was a nondenominational church when we got to Virginia I started looking for a place to worship.

Years before my natural father had died without me ever having met him, but while we were in Virginia one of the sons of a woman he lived with tried to sell their house.

Dad had drown, his mother had died and his only brother had died and when they did the title search they determined that I should inherit half of my dads half of the house and when it was all settled I got about $8,000 and being a wise steward of my finances I bought a motorcycle, the first one I had ever ridden.

I rode it home and started riding on the back roads to get ready to take the driving test and the longest route without getting on a highway was to turn left at the dead end and go to the parking lot of a little baptist church and use it to turn around and go back home.

So after using their parking lot for a week we went on Sunday.

I liked that when I asked why they believed what they believed they said, the bible says......, many of the others I had asked had said things like that’s what my parents taught me, or that’s what the church teaches, that’s what I have always believed.

I liked that they started with the bible so I joined the Southern Baptists.

After about a year people started asking me if I had ever felt called to preach.

I laughed, then I ran.

Soon after I surrendered to preach, and when I say surrendered I mean I gave up.

I was scared to death.

I was mentored by DR.

Lester Curtis and was licensed and preached my first sermons in Round Hill Baptist church in Dahlgren Virginia.

I left there when I got out of the military and went to take over an independent baptist church in Lindale Texas at the request of the current pastor and church body.

From Texas I moved to Kansas where I served in various roles in a community church led by a southern baptist missionary and then moved to Iowa where I pastored a church in the conservative baptist association (there weren’t many southern Baptist churches in Iowa for some reason.)

We moved back to Kansas and I preached in several different churches before moving to Arkansas .

In Arkansas I pastored Palestine Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist church in the Little Red River association.

Since this was the first Southern Baptist Church I actually pastored that was part of the southern Baptist Association I asked if the church would ordain me as a southern baptist.

I brought in a Pastor from Kansas to officiate who had helped mentor me and he, the deacons and several pastors from the association participated in a wonderful ceremony.

I pastored there for 5 years.

Now I am presenting myself to you because I believe that God has called me to this church.

I have come to know and love many of you and look forward to knowing more of you and more about you.

When we first visited East End we both loved the worship and I was impressed that the church was carrying on with ministry and even starting new ministries while looking for a pastor.

My wife and I wanted to be a part of the church and so we joined as members and after extensive interviews with the search committee they have presented me to the church as a prospective pastor.

I feel called by God to this position and I would be honored to serve here as your pastor.

After the service you will have the chance to make your desires known and I wanted to give any and all of you a chance to ask any questions that might be weighing on your mind or anything you want to know about me.

So here we go, does anyone have any questions?