The Believer's Armor
The Helmet of Salvation
Part 2
Ephesians 6:17
We're looking at Ephesians 6 verses 13 through 17 and as we wrap up the Book of Ephesians we're examining the warfare of the believer and the resources that he has for victory.
So far, we’ve determined we are in a battle, and the battle to be won demands our greatest output and our greatest effort and so we must first have the belt of truthfulness (commitment without hypocrisy, dedicated to the task at hand) and then the breastplate of righteousness (practical, daily holiness to protect our mind and emotions) and then the shoes of the gospel of peace (our standing before the Lord) and then the shield of faith (trust in God when tempted), and then in verse 17 we must "take the helmet of salvation." And that's where we stopped last time.
And remember, we discovered last time, it doesn't mean getting saved, but seems to be referencing the other end of salvation. Not the beginning of salvation, but the fullness of when we are ultimately delivered from this earth.
The helmet of salvation is not something dealing with the past, it's not something even dealing with the present in a sense, it is something dealing with the future. And this is what he is saying, you can be sure of your salvation in the future and that becomes a protection against the broad sword that Satan wields.
Now I told you last time that he has a big, broad, double-edged sword. It has two edges; one edge is discouragement and the other edge is doubt. And Satan wants to clobber you with discouragement and doubt and the protection you have is the helmet of salvation.
When you get discouraged remember there's coming a great glorious day. When you get discouraged remember there's coming a victory celebration. When you get discouraged and you want to be weary in well doing remember you reap if you faint not, remember that someday there's going to be a reward, someday there's going to be a crowning day, someday Jesus is going to face you and say, "Well done good and faithful servant.
Remember that day is coming and when Satan wants to belt you with discouragement and the battle wears you out, and you get tired, and the struggle is endless, remember there's coming a victory day. There is a finish line, there is a final gun, the clock will run out and we'll stand face to face with Jesus Christ in that glorious moment.
So the helmet of salvation equips us to deal with discouragement. But there is another edge on the sword from which we need protection, and that is doubt.
Do you know that Satan wants you to doubt your salvation? And he’s really good at this method of attack. Most people suffer from that at some point in their Christian life, and very often it is one of the first lines of attack we experience. It often happens very early on in our walk with the Lord.
Now hopefully you'll grow in the Lord and get to the place where you perhaps don't doubt. But none of us are ever totally invulnerable to Satan's temptations along that line.
Satan wills come just after you've done something that's sinful, and say, “You couldn't be a Christian. Why would the Lord ever save you? You'll never make it, you're not good enough, you don't deserve to be saved, how do you know you meant it when you did it? Better try it again, see if it works any better.”
Satan really comes after people in that area. And there are people you know who go to certain churches that teach you can lose your salvation. They live in constant fear. And they want to argue with you about the eternal security of the believer.
But you’ve got to work hard to miss eternal security in the Bible. In a sense that's what these verses are all about. But there are some people who live in that all the time, they just live in a constant state of insecurity. And some people are told you'll never know whether you've made it until you face the Lord.
Can you imagine living that way? All your life worried about whether or not you’re going to make it? What a horrible existence. In fact, that is the farthest thing away from what John wrote that I could imagine. He said, "These things are written unto you that your joy may be full.” You'd have to say the New Testament would say, these things are written unto you that you might be miserable. You could never be happy knowing that eternal life is a guessing game.
Then there are other people who think every time you sin you lose your salvation. And if you sin a sin and you're a Christian and you forget to confess it before the rapture, you'll go to hell.
Now can you imagine living under that kind of fear? Satan wants us to be afraid we don't have salvation, and he wants us to doubt that we can keep our salvation. You know why?
Because he wants us to doubt the promise of God, he wants us to believe God doesn't keep His Word, he wants us to believe that salvation isn't forever, that God can't hold onto us. He wants us to deny God's power, to deny God's resource, to deny that God can hold us, to deny that God speaks the truth.
And all of these things are simply denials of that. And so Satan comes against us making us doubt.
So how do we react to that? We put our helmet of salvation on and it reminds us if you have a past salvation, then you also have a present one and a future one.
Listen: there's no other kind of salvation seen in the Bible. A proper understanding of salvation must include all three elements. Listen to how Pual said it to the Romans in Romans 8:28-30 . "Whom he called, He justified; whom He justified, He glorified." And there is nobody who ever fell through the gaps.
So let me just walk you through some Scriptures with which you can pad you r helmet, and they will help you if you ever doubt, and maybe help you help someone else to see the truth.
John 6:37
Now what the Lord says is if you come to Him He will in no wise cast you out. “In no wise” means under no circumstances. In other words, there are no circumstances in existence in the universe whereby Christ would cast out somebody who came to Him.
If you come to Him in the manner that He requires, under no circumstance, under no condition, in no case, in no wise would He cast you out. Why?
Because the only ones who come are the ones the Father gives. And if God gives you to Christ then you have the decree of God to eternal salvation and you have the response of Christ to eternal salvation and there is no way to lose.
And the way that is illustrated is in terms of the Father, God, rewarding His Son, Jesus. The Son has done well in going to the cross and accomplishing redemption, so the Father gives Him gifts. And the gifts are the souls of men.
You and I, who know Christ, are gifts from the Father to the Son, tokens of the Father's love, and the Father loves the Son so much He gives these kinds of gifts, and conversely the Son loves the Father so much that He holds tightly to such precious gifts.
See what is said about that? All that the Father gives shall come and when they come under no circumstance would I turn them away. Why not? Why wouldn’t Jesus ever turn us loose? After all, sometimes we act like we don’t love Him and we don’t obey and honor Him.
Why shouldn’t He just throw us away? Because it’s not about you and me. Listen: He’s not hanging on to us because we’re the greatest gift He’s ever receivced. He’s hanging on to us because He loves His Father Who gave us to Him way too much to ever lose anybody that was a love gift from the Father to the Son.
Now look at the next verse, 38
Here was God’s plan all along. The whole plan of the Father was to redeem some people, give them to the Son and have the Son keep them.
"And this is the Father's will who hath sent me," What is His will? "that of all that He hath given me I should lose none, but should raise him up again at the last day." How many does Jesus lose? None!
There is no loss between the decree of the Father, the gift to the Son and the resurrection of the last day. So that you have justification, sanctification, glorification, past, present, future without loss.
Now with that background in mind, move over to John 10. There are seven strands in the rope that bind us eternally to Christ listed here.
Notice verse 27
Notice the first two words of the verse: “My sheep”
1. We belong to Christ
Whose sheep are you? You're Christ's sheep.
Now listen, if you are Christ's sheep it is His duty as Shepherd to care for you and protect you. If He loses you that is in effect a terrible reflection against His own ability as a Shepherd. If you are His sheep, and the Shepherd is to care for the sheep then for someone to be lost reflects upon the character and quality of the Shepherd.
There's a second strand that binds us to Christ,
2. We Follow Christ
"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me."
Listen, Christ’s sheep follow Christ. There are no exceptions. They will not listen to strangers, they listen only to Him.
So true Christians are kept by the power of the great Shepherd, they will follow the Shepherd’s voice.
Third strand: verse 28
3. He gives us eternal life
Now eternal life lasts how long? Forever, it is eternal life. To speak of it as ending is a contradiction in terms. Eternal life is eternal. So we are bound by the character of the Shepherd, we are bound by the character of the sheep as they follow, we are bound by the very definition of the gift of eternal life, it is forever.
Further,
4. Eternal Life is a Gift
It is a gift, "I give unto them eternal life." You didn't do anything to earn it, you can't do anything to keep it.
Fifthly, another strand that binds us to Christ is
5. We will never perish
If one Christian ever did then Christ didn't tell the truth. If Christ didn't tell the truth, throw away your Bible, forget Christianity, it's all wrong.
Further, it says
6. We cannot be taken from God’s hand
"No man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." There is no power in the universe stronger than God, and if God wants to hold on that's the way it's going to be. Nobody can take us out of the Father's hand.
And further He adds, verse 29,
7. We are safe in the Father’s hand.
"My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." Notice in verse 28 He says, My hand, in verse 29 My Father's hand. Double protection.
Now what I'm trying to show you in these two passages, John is simply that Jesus Himself by His own words confirms the fact that a past salvation includes a future one as well, that eternal life is just that, they never perish, they never fail, that He never loses any of them.
That's the way Jesus spoke of it.
One final thing, kind of the icing on the cake, from the little book of Jude.
Now we don’t spend much time in Jude, so let me remind you that the Book of Jude is written to deal with apostasy or a departure from the faith. It is primarily concerned with false prophets and false teachers.
Notice verse 4
Then verse 8
verse 11-12
These are the apostates. And here's a little group of Christians as it were sort of in the midst of an apostate age, not unlike us today, who might be saying to themselves, “What's going to happen to us?”
They see everything going down the drain, like in our society, liberalism and all of the garbage that coming along in the name of Christianity, seems to be selling us right down the river and we say, well what about us, are, are we going to fall by the wayside in this deal?
And so at the beginning of Jude verse 1, at the end of Jude verses 24 and 25 Jude reiterates the fact that we don't have to fear, no matter how bad the day gets, no matter how vile the world around us, we're okay.
Verse 1
He says in the midst of all the rot around you, you will be “sanctified and preserved” by Jesus Christ.
Listen: when you were saved you were given a gild edge guarantee. The Bible talks about the fact that we've been given the earnest of the Spirit, and the earnest is a down payment. When you were saved God gave you the Holy Spirit as a guarantee that someday you'd be glorified in the presence of God, even in the toughest times.
And that's the helmet of salvation. You don't need to listen to Satan's doubts.
Then go to verse 24 of Jude
The word “able” there is is dunameo, dynamite, power. He is powerful enough to keep you from falling. It isn't just that Christ doesn't want you to fall; it's that He's able to prevent it.
"And he's able to present you," without a spot, without a blemish, faultless. By the way the same word us here to describe us is used by Peter to describe Christ.
He is able to keep you from stumbling, keep you from falling and present you as pure as Christ is pure, someday in the presence of God the Father. That's the keeping power of Christ.
And the word here “keep you” is not the same word as the earlier one of watch, guard, keep, but it's a word which means to secure in the midst of an attack.
So no matter what all the hosts of hell throw against you Christ is powerful enough to keep you from falling and present you as spotless as Jesus Christ in the presence of God.
No wonder the Psalmist said, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;" he knew it, and ultimately, "I will dwell (where?) in the house of the Lord forever."
See he knew that the salvation God gave him was a past, present, future salvation. "Surely," he said, goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life;" and ultimately, "I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
And so it is that confidence that makes us defend ourselves against Satan's blows.
When Satan comes with discouragement, when he comes with doubt be assured there's a glory day coming, there's a victory day coming, fight the good fight, have confidence in the salvation God gave you and know that you'll be there for that crowning day.
I love the words of “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”.
"Stand up, stand up for Jesus, the strife will not be long, this day the noise of battle but next the victor's song. To him that overcometh a crown of life shall be, he with the King of glory shall reign eternally."
Don't give up, don't let Satan victimize you with discouragement and doubt, because you're going to win in the end. Keep the helmet.
Let's pray.
