SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/28/2019 10:05 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Helmet of Salvation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
6:17a
Message of the
verses: “And
take the helmet of salvation,”
In our last SD I stated that I would
take a few days to quote the sermon that John MacArthur brought to his church
on the helmet of salvation. He did this
in 2008 and so I was able to watch his sermon and then copy and paste it to my
computer in order to put it onto my SD.
Whenever you listen or watch MacArthur preach you are going to quickly
find out that he will give a good review from his former messages and so a part
of this sermon will have a little review of the earlier pieces of the spiritual
armor, as this series will give us all of the pieces of the Spiritual
Armor.
When I do my Spiritual Diaries I
desire to first of all bring glory to the Lord, and I can do this by studying
His Word and then after I write the SD and put it onto my blog I then desire
for those who read them to have them have a spiritual impact on their
lives. So at times when I do like I am
doing today, that is to quote an entire sermon it is to be so that I can better
understand the text and so those who read these SD’s can also better understand
them. I have a specific prayer as I look
each day at where the Spirit of God has taken these Spiritual Diaries. I desire that God bless all who read them,
that He will be blessed by those who read them.
I desire that the Holy Spirit will use them to bring glory to the Lord
by giving an effectual call to those whom the Lord chose in eternity past, for
those whom Christ died for, for the Holy Spirit to cause believers to grow, and
then to bring revival to those believers who are in need of revival, that the
Holy Spirit will continue to spread the Spiritual Diaries around the world,
which He is doing, and finally for the Holy Spirit to use these SD’s on the
last day of the church age to give many thousands of effectual calls along with
if is God’s will to have the last person in the church to receive an effectual
call after reading one of these Spiritual Diaries, again if it is the Lord’s
will.
“The Armor of God: The Helmet of Salvation
Ephesians chapter 6 is our text tonight and we’re
looking at the believer’s armor. There are so many things that have come and
gone in my life time in terms of Christian emphases. It’s good that some of
them are fading away and have almost disappeared. It’s sort of like the
offshoot of the Amish many years ago. It was a quirky kind of cult and they
believed that marriage was...and cohabitation sinful. It didn’t last very long.
They all died and there was nobody left to carry it on. That was a good thing.
There are other things that have come and tried to have a
life and sometimes lasted quite a while before they died. One of them,
basically, was inimitable to the Quaker Movement and I guess you could call it
sort of historic quietism. That’s a label that really does define the Quaker
approach to spiritual life which was to say what you need to do is surrender
yourself. They had phrases like “hand it over to the Lord,” “let Him do it.” Or
their most famous one, “Let go and let God.” Stop struggling. Stop striving.
Abide. Rest, and all that kind of benign quiet language. They said, one writer,
it’s like a man in a room, there’s brilliant sunshine outside but the room is
in darkness, that’s because the blinds are drawn and the man is fumbling around
in the darkness. All he needs to do is open the blind and the light will flood
him. This is the quietistic view. It took a firm footing in England and America
in a movement called Keswick. Keswick Movement was this kind of movement, die
to self, self-crucifixion. Books were written by people like Major Ian Thomas
and others. And the whole idea was that if you want to live a successful
Christian life, you simply surrender. They would say things like, “Holiness is
by faith in Jesus, not by any effort of my own.” We supply the surrender, God
supplies the power. Not I, but Christ. Another famous book along that line was
The Christian Secret to a Happy Life by Hannah Smith, a book that isn’t nearly
as popular as it once was, but shows up now and then.
But this Movement has died away, thankfully, because it does not reflect a biblical approach to spiritual life. It is not benign. It doesn’t call for you to surrender and to yield and to sit back and to rest and to abide and to feel you’re responsible for nothing but some kind of self-surrender. That is really opposite what Scripture teaches. Particularly what we’re learning in the passage before us which says, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.” Verse 10, “Put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil for our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything to stand firm.”
Hebrews chapter 12 tells us the Christian life is a race.
First Corinthians 9 tells us the Christian life is a boxing match. And
Ephesians 6 tells us the
Christian life is a war. In Titus we are told in chapter 3 and verse 8
to apply ourselves to good deeds, in fact, to be diligent to do that.
We are told by James and by Peter that we are to resist
our enemy, the devil, to be sober and vigilant. In fact, in 1
Corinthians 9 we are told by Paul’s example to beat our bodies into
subjection. We are told here in the
epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 5 and verse 15, to be careful how we walk.
We’re told in Philippians 3:14 to press on. He said in 2
Corinthians 7:1 we are told that we are to cleanse ourselves
from all filthiness of the flesh, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
Peter tells us that while we have been given, (2
Peter 1:4), precious and magnificent promises, we must apply
all diligence in your faith supply moral excellence; in your moral excellence,
knowledge; in your knowledge, self-control; in your self-control, perseverance;
in your perseverance, godliness; in your godliness, brotherly kindness; in your
brotherly kindness, love. Peter reminds us that we are to be diligent because
we don’t know how long we’re going to be here. In his first epistle, chapter 1,
he says, “Gird your minds for action,” verse 13, “Keep sober in spirit. Fix
your hope completely on the grace to be brought you at the revelation of Jesus
Christ as obedient children.” We are called to obedience. Philippians and 13
says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” God has put it in you,
work it out, and make it visible, demonstrative.
Ephesians chapter 4 to the end is all about this. Back in chapter 4 verse 1, “I therefore the prisoner of the Lord entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling which you’ve been called.” And then he goes on, chapter 4, chapter 5, and chapter 6 to tell you how to walk. It demands aggression. It demands wisdom. It demands obedience. It demands perseverance. It demands faithfulness. It demands holiness, purity. And it recognizes that we’re engaged in a war.
The
Christian life is anything but passive. Yes God is our strength, and as
Jehoshaphat said, “The battle is the Lord’s and we must be wary of trusting in
our own strength.” But even though the strength is His and the battle is His,
we are called to obedience, to commitment, to diligence, to self-discipline in
order to be victorious. Certainly the
Apostle Paul understood how hard it was to be a Christian. You could never
accuse him of some kind of benign surrender. He was a warrior. His life is
lived in lists like this: endurance, affliction, hardship, distress, beatings,
imprisonment, tumults, labors, sleeplessness, and hunger. He says to the
Colossians that “It is his commitment to admonish every man, teach every man
with all wisdom to present every man complete in Christ and for this purpose I
work to the point of exhaustion, striving according to His power which mightily
works within me.” That’s the perfect parallel, His power working in Me and my
total commitment. You depend on God, and
you give your all. It is a war.
I’m so glad that wrong notion has faded away. I don’t
hear people talk about it at all anymore. When I was young, it was a dominating
paradigm for spiritual life.
Now that we’re in
Ephesians chapter 6, let’s return to Paul’s discussion of how you arm yourself
for this aggression, for this battle, for this effort. And you will notice that
there are six pieces of armor that are mentioned, beginning in verse 14. And
the first three are introduced by the verb having...having girded your loins, having
put on the breastplate, having shod your feet. It presupposes that those are
the permanent things. You have your belt on, you have your breastplate on, and you
have your shoes on. And
even if you’re not engaging in the battle at the moment, those remain in place
because at all times you must be marked by readiness.
But in addition to that, or on top of that, verse 16
says, “In addition to that,” the verb changes, “taking up the shield of faith.”
Verse 17, “Take the helmet of salvation and, implied, take the sword of the
Spirit which is the Word of God.” So at all times commitment, at all times holiness, at all times
confidence in the presence and power of God. That’s what those first three mean
as we already know.
We
live then committed to victory, pulling in the loose ends of our life as
indicated by the belt of truth, truthfulness. We live in purity and
sanctification and godliness and holiness with our breastplate on at all times.
We live with our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace which is
to say that we’re confident God is on our side. And we live in that constant
preparedness...commitment, holiness, and confidences. We take up, when the
battle comes, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the
Spirit.
Now last time we talked about the shoes of the gospel of
peace and we talked about the shield of faith. We could say a lot about those
things. But I think we said enough last time to establish in your mind what
we’re talking about. Just a word or two
about the shield of faith which was the one we ended up with last Sunday night.
To say that the shield of faith is that which...with which you will be able to
extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one is to say that the shield of faith is what
protects you from devastating temptation. The arrows of Satan, the
flaming missiles of the evil one you extinguish, you extinguish by faith, and
it’s your protection.
What do you mean by that?
Trust in the Lord. It is faith that overcomes the world. It is faith that
overcomes Satan. Satan works through the world system. Your overcoming temptation has to do with you
believing God and not believing Satan. It comes down to that as we learned in
the Garden of Eden. Either you believe God or you believe Satan. Eve decided to
believe Satan. She fell. She told her husband. He decided to go along with her,
the whole human race fell. If you sin, you believed Satan. You have believed
his lie about where fulfillment lies, where satisfaction lies, where real joy
lies. If you deny sin and if you follow the path of holiness, you’re believing
God you’re saying I believe satisfaction, fulfillment, blessing, joy, all of
that is found in obedience to God so that what shields you from succumbing
to temptation, what extinguishes the arrows of Satan is simply your trust in
God.
Every
time you sin, mark it down. You have believed the lie. You have believed that
you can find real peace, that you can find real joy, real fulfillment, and real
satisfaction, something better than what you now have in sin. That’s the lie.
Satan is the father of lies and speaks only lies.
If
you reject the temptation and you follow the path of holiness, you have said I
believe God. I believe God, I trust Him. I trust Him that fulfillment,
satisfaction, joy, blessing is found in obeying Him. It’s that simple. Now that brings us to the fifth piece of
armor and it takes some time to kind of work through this because it opens up a
doctrine for us. “Take also...verse 17...the helmet of salvation,” the helmet
of salvation.
Now Roman soldiers wore helmets. They knew that blows to
the chest could be fatal because their vital organs are there, so they wore a
breastplate. They also knew that a blow in the head could be fatal. And so they
protected their heads with a helmet. Some helmets in ancient times were leather
with metal pieces fastened on to the leather. Others were solid cast metal,
very much like their breastplates so there were breastplates of leather with
metal riveted to it, as well as those that were molded, pounded metal. The
purpose was to protect the head. From
what? Really from the broad swords that were being wielded. In battles in
ancient times there were small little daggers called machaira, could be foot long, shorter. They were used in
hand-to-hand combat to inflict a fatal blow. But there were also rhomphaia, a massive sword that would be
as long as three feet or four feet, double edged. A handle would be gripped in
both hands. The soldier would raise his sword high over his head and endeavor
to bring down a crushing blow on the head of his enemy, splitting open his
skull. A soldier had to be alert because a blow like that if it found its place
in the right point of the head, even if you had a helmet, could be a crushing,
devastating blow. So you would have to be aware of that. But once you moved, it
would deflect that deadly blow. The
helmet, as far as our army is concerned, is the helmet of salvation. Now somebody
might think well that means you don’t want to go into this battle unless you’re
saved. But you wouldn’t even have this armor unless you were saved. This is not
talking about salvation in the sense that we immediately think of it, past
salvation. Not even talking about present salvation. To understand what it is
actually talking about, you go to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. First
Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 8. “But since we are of the day, not the night,
let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation...the
hope of salvation.’”
We will end here for today.
Quotation from “Love in
Action” is from Acts 9:27-28:
“But Barnabas took him and brought him
to the apostles.
And he declared to them how he had
seen the Lord
on the road, and that He had spoken to
him,
and how he had preached boldly at
Damascus in the name of Jesus.
So he was with them at
Jerusalem coming in
and going out.”
10/28/2019 10:48 AM
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