The Helmet of Salvation (Part 1 of 2)

Oftentimes, the fears and doubts that plague us are actually lies from the devil that we have to do battle with. So how do we deal with Satan's attacks that target our thoughts? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg considers three ways that the helmet of salvation protects our minds. Well, we're still in our studies in Ephesians chapter 6, and I invite you to turn there and to the phrase which is the focus of our study for today. You'll find it there in verse 17, and take the helmet of salvation.

Take the helmet of salvation. Of all the things that people think about God, you'll seldom have somebody suggest that he is a warrior. But in fact, God is depicted as a warrior. And in Isaiah chapter 59, he strides out when men are looking for salvation and looking for victory, and the warrior comes out wearing the helmet of salvation as the worker and the bringer of salvation. Now, what we know as New Testament readers is something that Isaiah and the people who lived in Isaiah's day six hundred years before Christ did not know—namely, that the fulfillment of that Old Testament picture of the warrior who brings salvation is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And you will perhaps remember that of all the things that are said about why Jesus came, one that stands out in this context most helpfully is in 1 John chapter 3 and verse 8, where John says, And the reason Jesus came was to destroy the works of the devil. And the question is inevitably raised, Well, has he done so?

And the answer to that is, Yes, he has. That at the cross the battle has been fought and won on behalf of all who believe. You say, Well, there seems to be a lot of activity going on if the battle has been fought and won.

Well, that's one of the reasons that we need to put on the helmet of salvation so that we can think properly about these things. The picture that I've used throughout is a simple picture from chess, about which I know relatively little, and if you played me you would understand quickly. But in chess, checkmate finishes it up. And you can produce checkmate very quickly if you're very good and if you're playing somebody like me who's very poor.

And the poor person will say, Oh, but can't I make a few more moves? And you may say, Well, you can make some moves if you want, but you cannot alter the outcome, because checkmate is inevitable. And so that's what we have in the cross—more moves being played out, more antagonism, more enemy warfare, without being able to affect the outcome. So, to put on the helmet of salvation, which is the exhortation here, is then to trust in all that Christ has accomplished. It's no surprise that we would be given protection for our heads, and therefore protection for our minds. The Roman soldier's helmet was a combination of decoration and protection.

You've seen pictures of it with a plume on the top, often made of brass or of bronze, filled with felt or with sponge in order to make it possible to wear a bit like a crash helmet or a military helmet even today. And it was of such significance that only an axe or a hammer would really be able to penetrate it. And it is this picture that he now gives to us for those who are facing the challenges in Ephesus, and each of us facing the challenges where we live. He reminds us that we've been provided with the protection for our heads and therefore for our minds. Now, what I'd like to do is to consider this along three lines. First of all, to think very particularly about the importance of the Christian mind. And then secondly, the importance about thinking properly about salvation itself. And then finally, a call to believe in Jesus himself.

First of all, then, the importance of the Christian mind. I recalled this week that I had heard a lecture some time ago when I went across into Pittsburgh to Sewickley, because the late John Stott was there, and he was giving two addresses that day in St. Stephen's Sewickley. And he gave a talk along the lines of one of his books, Your Mind Matters. And it was very good.

I took comprehensive notes. But he pointed out that the twentieth century, he said, had spawned ugly twins—one, mindlessness, and two, meaninglessness. Now, if you think about it, that's quite a helpful picture. Let's not bother for the moment with the notion of nihilism and meaninglessness and futility. But let's think just about mindlessness. And let's be honest enough to recognize that it is one of the charges that is leveled against the Christian soldier—the man or the woman who says that they are men and women of faith. And if they're bold enough to say that, they're actually men and women of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Because, of course, it is not unusual—in fact, it is quite common—for faith to be regarded as a kind of illogical belief in the improbable happening. And for people essentially to say, you know, the real thinking people are those who think along these very rational lines. And therefore, we feel sorry for you that you've had to come up with this as a crutch or as a walking stick just to help you navigate your way through life.

Well, what is the answer to that? The answer to that is to retreat or advance, if you like, to the Scriptures. And to say to ourselves, first of all, well, is that how the Bible is presented to me? When I read the Bible, do I discover that it invites me just to feel things? When I read the Bible, does it try and sweep me up in an emotional surge? When I read the Bible, does it ask me to disengage my thinking processes in order that I might then become this person of faith?

And the honest answer has to be, no, it does not. In many cases, what it does is it causes us to think so deeply that we cannot quite unravel the jigsaw puzzle, that it introduces us to complexities that are metaphysical in their dimensions. And through it, there runs a line, and that line is running—historically, yes, and rationally. I've always been intrigued by the way in which Luke begins chapter 3. Now, he's writing a gospel. He's not writing a history book. He's not writing a biography, although there's biographical material. He's writing a gospel. He's writing good news. And this is how he starts his third chapter.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Itteraea and Trachonitis, and Lasannius the tetrarch of Abelion, I won't read any further on. What in the world are you doing here, Luke? He's setting the reality and the truth of the gospel within the historical context of the time. He's reminding the reader, the thinking reader, that this is not something that has been scrabbled together out of the air.

These are real events in real time involving real people. So the apostles, when they begin their preaching after the resurrection of Jesus, they do the exact same thing. In fact, there would never be a New Testament without the resurrection of Jesus.

It's questionable whether any one of us would even have heard the name of Jesus of Nazareth without the resurrection. And therefore, they then lunge into the then-known world with this amazing story proclaiming the need to think. Paul, when he addresses the Ephesians, you can read it in Acts. It says that he reasoned and he persuaded them in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. And he used to do this every day.

The people would come in and listen. And he wasn't just singing songs to them. He wasn't just trying to get them to have an emotional experience.

No, he said, I want you to think with me today. When he did the same with the Thessalonica people, it says that he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving. So for those of you who want to come at this on a very rational basis, here you are. Consider the evidence.

Apply your minds to it. But don't come with this nonsense about science deals in the realm of rationality and faith deals in the realm of mindlessness. It is not so. Christianity is by definition involved in events in history that are unique and unrepeatable. Now, when we begin to bow underneath the thinking of this, we have to do so in the awareness of the fact that the context in which we go back out into a Monday is largely one that affirms the independent validity of every notion of religion, the independent validity of every spiritual experience. That is immediately a problem for the Christian soldier. Because the Christian soldier who is wearing the helmet of salvation is unable to embrace that pluralism.

The Christian soldier is unable to affirm that relativism. The Christian soldier is stuck, if you like, with the exclusive claims of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian soldier inevitably is confronted with the responsibility of affirming truth as it is revealed to us in Jesus and seeking to establish or affirm not the uniqueness of Christianity, per se, but the uniqueness of Jesus. That we are prepared to say to our world that God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to himself—that is, the incarnation. That there was no other good enough to pay the price of sin, he only, Jesus, could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in—that is, the atonement. That it was in triumphing over sin and death and the grave that he arose triumphant—that is, the resurrection. That he is ascended to the right hand of the Father, from which he will come to rule in power and in great glory one day.

In other words, the Christian mind is brought under the framework of revealed truth in the Scriptures. The good, the bad, the new, the perfect. God made the world beautifully and always good. Man rebels, and sin enters into the world, and through sin, death.

The bad. The new, in the person of the Lord Jesus. In him you will have life, and life in all of its fullness. Yeah, but life is still full of sin and disappointment and darkness, yes, because this is the new, but it is not yet the perfect.

This is where we live. Now, my dear friends, unless we're putting on the helmet of salvation on the average Monday morning, we will be suckers for all of this that comes against us. And it is too bad when the people, myself included, in trying to teach the Bible, do such a poor job that it causes the listener to switch off. It causes the listener to say, Well, there's no reason for me to continue thinking.

There's no logical progression at all in what this character is on about. But Paul again, you see, is very concerned on this respect. He says to Timothy as a young pastor in Ephesus, God did not give you a spirit of fear but a spirit of power and of love and notice and a sound mind. When he exhorts him to stand against the tide that pushes against him, he says, And as for you, Timothy, keep your head in all situations. When he writes to the Corinthians, he says, I do not want you to be children in your thinking.

When he warns the church at Rome about being absorbed into an alien culture, he says, Let me tell you how you're gonna manage this, by being transformed and transformed by the renewing of your mind. Well, that's as much as I will take time to say concerning that—the importance of the Christian mind. But we need to go on from there and consider the importance not only of thinking but of thinking correctly about salvation. Thinking correctly about salvation. That's why it is called here the helmet of salvation. Because our protection from the enemy of our souls and all of his evil schemes is once again grounded not in how I feel but in what I know.

That's why one of my favorite verses is Isaiah 26 3. You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind has stayed on you because he trusts in you, whose mind has stayed on you. How do I deal with the thoughts of my mind, many and various as they are? How do I bring them under control?

How do I wrestle them to the ground, as it were, when I am experiencing all of these insinuations and accusations? Now, you can go and find books on the power of positive thinking that will go much along these lines. What they all are missing, of course, is the enabling power of the Holy Spirit to subdue our rebel cries and to enable us to trust Christ. So the protection, then, in the helmet to counter the attacks of the enemy is salvation. It is his saving power, which is our only defense against the enemy of our souls. And Paul, throughout his letter, has been making this clear. He's grounding all that he's saying at the end in what he has reminded them of at the beginning. He has reminded them of the vastness of God's love. Back in chapter 2 and verse 4, he says to them, But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.

And he comes back and says it quickly again. And what was it that these folks in Ephesus had done to deserve this? The same thing that you or I, if you're a believer today, have done to deserve it. Absolutely nothing.

Absolutely nothing. Now, that's why we read from Romans chapter 5. And Paul, in giving to us the letter of Romans, spends from verse 1 of chapter 1 to verse 20 of chapter 3 establishing the need for salvation. He takes these first three chapters to explain man's predicament as a sinner before God. No one is righteous. No one actually seeks God.

So if that is the predicament, what is the solution? Well, that's when you get to verse 21 of chapter 3, and the great transition, But now, he says, the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. And so he makes it clear that although man as man could never enter into the presence of a holy God on the strength of who or what we are, God in Jesus has provided the means whereby we might have a right standing before God.

And that right standing before God in Jesus is for all who believe. And he uses three illustrations. I'll give you the first one.

You can do the second and third on your own. There in verse 24, there's no distinction. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, verse 23, and here we go, and are justified by his grace as a gift. That is the first of the three illustrations he uses. The second one you can find is from the slave market, redemption by the paying of a price.

The third one is from the sacrificial system, hence the propitiation. But the first one is from the law court and some of your lawyers here this morning. When the accused is brought before a judge, they are either justified or condemned. The accused is not made righteous or unrighteous but is declared either righteous or unrighteous.

So the accused is either acquitted and set free or is found guilty and punished. And what Paul is pointing out in this remarkable little section is the good news of the gospel—that the sinner who deserves condemnation is justified through faith alone, in Christ alone, not as a result of deserving but as the result of the receiving of a gift. Christ at Calvary has taken the sinner's place. He has kept the law in its entirety. He has fulfilled the plans and purposes of God. He is the Adam, the second Adam, who has fulfilled the law—unlike the first Adam in whom we find ourselves, who has rebelled and broken the law. And the good news of the gospel, the gospel of our salvation, is that all who believe may find rest in this. So what he does is he first of all proclaims the need of salvation, and then the means of salvation, and then from chapter 5, which gets us to where we wanted to be, then, if you like, the results of salvation. Well, let me tell you what they are, and then I'll stop.

They are at least these. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, number one, we have peace with God, whether you feel it or you don't feel it. We stand in grace, and we rejoice in hope. Monday's coming. All the onslaught comes again.

All the insinuations and all the accusations. If you really were a decent Christian, if you were a decent pastor, if you were whatever it is, what's the answer to this? To get up and say, Oh, no, you don't realize how wonderful I really am. I mean, I'm actually… I'm doing much better than last week.

I had a tremendous week. I read the Bible three times this week, and I only read it once or, like, half a time last week, and everything is going… No, no, no, no, no. That's… You will die. You will die.

You will be wounded mortally in warfare with that. Put your helmet on! Put your helmet on! Think!

Think! I can rejoice in hope. I can stand in grace. I have peace with God. Sometimes shaky, but nevertheless peace. Sometimes going on, sometimes hanging back.

But peace. I have access—the way my children have access into my home. Goodness gracious, half the time they're in there, I don't know they're in there. And the brood continues, Oh, you're here! Well… But I don't say, Hey, did you punch in the code?

Do you have a wristband? They have unlimited access. They're my children. That's what God says. Not because you're great, not because you're good, not because you're making progress, but because you've been justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, because of the immensity of God's love. There is more for us to learn about the helmet of salvation. We'll do that tomorrow in part two of this message on spiritual warfare.

You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. If you'd like to dive even deeper into this subject to understand more about putting on spiritual armor and defending ourselves against the evil one, we've got a special offer today that we want to encourage you to take advantage of. It's a classic book called The Christian in Complete Armor.

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I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Do you know what benefits are yours as a Christian? If not, you may find yourself vulnerable in the midst of spiritual battle. Listen tomorrow to find out more. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.