SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/30/2019 10:01 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “The Helmet of Salvation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
6:17a
Message of the
verses: “and
take the helmet of salvation,”
In today’s SD we will be looking at
the last part of John MacArthur’s sermon from 2008 on the helmet of
salvation. I truly hope and pray that
this will be a help to all those who read it.
It will probably be good to look at the end of the last SD again to
understand how this one begins.
“But if that’s
in question, you’ve got some serious
problems. You’ll be so busy battling your own emotions that you can rarely
engage the real struggle. But when you know the end, “Beloved brethren, be
steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that
your toil is not in vain in the Lord.” And you have all promises all through
the New Testament, don’t you?
About reward, reward, reward, a crown of life, a crown of
rejoicing, a crown of righteousness.
That’s what moved the Apostle Paul to be able to say in
the middle of all the suffering that he went through which just never let up, “We’re
inflicted in every way but not crushed. Perplexed but not despairing.” (Second
Corinthians 4.) “Persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed,
always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus that the life of Jesus may
be manifest in our body.” We take it all because we know what’s ahead of us.
And then he sums it up. “We do not lose heart.” Why? “Though our outer man is decaying, our inner man is being renewed day by day. And momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparisons. So we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. The things that are seen are temporal; the things which are not seen are eternal.”
Let it come, he said. My vision is on that which is eternal. In fact, the message is this, that whatever you suffer in this life will be the cause of your reward in the next life. So the suffering is a plus. You bear it now; you’re rewarded for it then. Admittedly the activities of Satan are relentless, they never stop. But we labor and toil and fight and war for the cause of the Kingdom and against sin because we know in the end we will triumph, and the helmet of salvation is that absolute confidence in the saving, keeping power of God’s sovereign grace.
I just want to show you a couple of passages that will
help seal this in your mind. And two of them are in John’s gospel, chapter 6, a
beloved and familiar text of Scripture, as well as extremely important. John 6:37,
“All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me and the one who comes to Me I
will certainly not reject, or cast out. For I’ve come down from heaven not to
do My own will but the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who
sent Me that of all that
He is given Me, I lose none, but raise him up on the last day. For this
is the will of My Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him
may have eternal life and I
Myself will raise him up on the last day.” That is a great promise...a
great promise.
The
Father has given us to the Son. The Son receives us. The Son keeps us. The Son
raises us. This, I think, is one of the greatest, most comforting doctrines in
all Holy Scripture. We have a calling that cannot be revoked. We have an
inheritance that cannot be defiled. We have a foundation that cannot be shaken.
We have a seal that cannot be broken. We have a life that cannot perish. John
10:27, “My sheep hear My voice and I know them and they follow Me and I give
eternal life to them and they shall never perish. And no one shall snatch them
out of My hand, My father who has given them to Me is greater than all and no
one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” Now there is some security.
There are a number of strands in this divine rope that
binds us to God. We are Christ’s sheep and it is His duty as the divine
Shepherd to care for us and to protect us. And to suggest that any of Christ’s
sheep may be lost is to blaspheme the Great Shepherd. Furthermore, those who are Christ’s sheep,
according to this passage, follow Christ. And they do not listen to strangers.
They hear His voice. And furthermore, to the sheep who belong to Christ and who
follow Christ is given eternal life. To speak of it as ending is a
contradiction in terms. How could eternal anything end?
Furthermore,
this eternal life is given to them. “I give eternal life to them,” verse 28.
They didn’t invent it. They didn’t merit it. They didn’t earn it. Consequently
they can’t do anything to forfeit it.
Furthermore, they shall never perish. That’s the negative
side of saying I give them eternal life. That’s obvious. They shall never
perish. If one person who is Christ’s sheep goes to hell, Christ is a liar.
Furthermore, from the Shepherd’s hand, no one is able to
pluck them. Not even the devil. Furthermore, Christ and God together hold on to
His sheep. And that is why... (you can turn to Romans 8)....Romans 8
says what it says. “If God is for us, who’s against us?” Verse 35, “Who will
separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword.” In fact, no. In
verse 37 he says, “And all things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who
loved us. We conquer not
because of our own merit. We conquer through the one who sovereignly loved us.
Not death, not life, not angels, not principalities, things present, things to
come, powers, height, depth, and any other created thing shall be able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Or, in the language of Philippians 1:6, “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ.” God finishes what He begins, or in the language of Paul to the Ephesians, “To the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession to the praise of His glory.”
This is the promise of Scripture. O my, what a promise it
is. Turn to Jude for a moment, the
little letter of Jude, the first and the last verse. Verse 1 and verse 25 sum
it up. “Jude, a slave, literally, doulos, a slave of Jesus Christ and brother
of James, to those who are the called, beloved in God the Father” and...what’s
the next word?...kept...kept,
preserved in Jesus Christ, or preserved for Jesus Christ, tereo, to watch, stand guard over, keep, preserve, protect.” The
word “stress” is watchful care, vigil which
never lets up. The passive voice indicates the agent is Christ, literally.
That’s why by is best, use of votive in the Greek is dative. Christ never relaxes His care,
never relaxes His hold. He and the Father holding us in, as it were, in their
divine omnipotent hands. One use
of this verb tereo was ancient times
as a way to express a guarantee. When a guarantee was made, this would be the
verb that was used. So it could read this way: Guaranteed by Jesus Christ. Our future salvation is
secure.
It’s a perfect tense, tereo,
meaning past action with permanent results. Every Christian then has been permanently
established in the keeping of Jesus who never lets go. By the way, that’s the
whole theme of Jude: Survival
in the days of apostasy. Tough times, toughest of times. And we’re
facing the highest degree of satanic impact that the world has ever known because it’s cumulative.
And yet we are kept, we are protected, we are secure. It reminds me of John 17 where Jesus
prays to the Father, Father, keep them.” And the Father hears and answers that
prayer. Jude closes this way, “To the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ
our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority before all time and now and
forever, amen.” That is a great doxology. But why is that doxology there? Why
does this little book end with such praise? Because of verse 24, “Now to Him who is able to keep
you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of His glory,
blameless with great joy, to that God, to that Savior be glory, majesty,
dominion and authority forever.”
In between those two great statements about our protection
and preservation is the reality that the world is full of very dangerous
persons. Verse 3 talks about persons who come into the church, turning the
grace of God into lasciviousness. It talks about them further as the false
teachers who are defiled, who reject authority, verse 8, revile angelic
majesties. It talks about them as if they were unreasoning animals in verse 10,
those that have gone the way of Cain, rushed into the error of Balaam, perished
in the rebellion of Korah. They’re hidden wreaths in your love feasts, caring
only for themselves. They’re clouds without water, carried along by winds.
Autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted wild waves of the sea casting
up their own shame like foam. Wandering stars for whom the black darkness has
been reserved forever, and so forth and so forth. Very dangerous and they’re all around you and
they’re among you. Verse 16 says they follow their own lusts, speak arrogantly,
flatter people for the sake of gaining an advantage. They cause divisions, verse
19, worldly minded, devoid of the Spirit.
So we are surrounded by this kind of danger and all of that is
reflective of the spiritual kingdom darkness that assaults and attacks us
against which we struggle. It would be a threatening, terrifying battle were it
not for our confidence in the security of our salvation. No wonder at the end
Jude praises God for His keeping power. He will present us faultless. In the words of the famous twenty-third
Psalm, our Good Shepherd will bring us to the banquet table which is the
picture of heaven.
In the battle then, we are protected from doubt,
discouragement, dread, fear, that engaging in the spiritual war we may be
overcome and forfeit our salvation by confidence in the hope of salvation given
us in Christ. Hebrews 6 says that we have two immutable things, the
promise and the pledge of Christ which anchor our eternal hope. And so, we can engage in this great struggle
without fear. The belt, commitment, the breastplate, purity, holiness, the
shoes, confidence in the presence and power of the One with whom we have made
peace. The shield, faith, trusting God, and the helmet, security, assurance,
the hope of victory and triumph. That leaves us with one more and then a second
message to wrap it up on the importance of prayer as Paul ends the passage. And
next time we’ll look at the Sword of the Spirit.
Father,
we thank You for the way in which the Scripture is consistent everywhere you
go, it comes through that there is only one author, there is only one stream of
truth, there are no deviating tributaries that go off into some strange and
irregular and inconsistent area. Stream flows in tact with pure truth and all
those truths are cohesive. And as we examine Scripture from front to back, as
we dig down into the intricacies of the text, and the details, the consistency
of what You teach us is always there. We’re never shocked because there’s some
aberration that’s inexplicable. Clearly this is Your Word and we see it as such
and we know it to be. Lord, give us the strength to battle effectively for the
cause of Christ, in His honor we pray. Amen.”
Today’s quotation from
“Love in Action” comes from Acts 13:13.
Now when Paul and his party set sail
from Paphos,
they came to Perga in Pamphylia:
and John [Mark], departing
from them, returned
to Jerusalem.
10/30/2019 10:31 AM
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