Ephesians 6:10-18 August 17, 2008
The Whole Armor of God, Part 7
“The Helmet of Salvation –
Hard Headed and Soft Hearted”
Rev. Meagan Boozer
Lets turn together to Ephesians, Chapter 6:10-18: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.
We’re getting close to the end of our study of this amazing passage written by the Apostle Paul to believers in Ephesus – but we’re not finished yet! Today, we’re going to learn about the helmet of salvation, next week the sword of the Spirit, I will be away on the 31st, and then on September 7th, the Sunday we move back to the 11:00 hour for worship, we will conclude this series with a surprise piece of armor that mustn’t be forgotten!
A helmet is a hat or other head covering made of a hard material and worn to protect the head from injury. Most bicyclists or motorcyclists, race car drivers, ski jumpers, skateboarders wear helmets. When we were working at Krislund Camp several weeks ago, Steve Cort took the volunteers up to their climbing wall and zip line. If we wanted to do the activity, we had to wear a helmet. Helmets protect our heads from potential injury. On the PA motorcycle helmet law fact sheet, the following questions were asked and answered:
1. Will the helmet limit vision? Answer: No. All helmets provide a field of vision of at least 210 degrees, well above the 120 degrees required for licensure.
2. Will a helmet hamper my hearing? Answer: No. In fact, your ability to hear surrounding traffic may improve while wearing a helmet. Since wind and engine noise are reduced with the use of a helmet, it can help other street noise sound clearer.
Paul tells us we need to put on the helmet of salvation in order to protect our head, (our skull), which houses our brains, (our minds) (our thoughts). We’ll be able to see just fine – and we’ll be able to hear even more clearly what we need to know and do to protect our minds from the ferocious attacks of the devil – remembering that the mind is the main place where the war between good and evil rages.
Let us pray: O Lord, thank you for your provision for us every single day. Thank you for bringing us here today to be with you in sweet communion. Teach us your way, by teaching us your truth. Cover us, top to toe, as we lean in to hear from you – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
As we have studied this passage of Scripture, we have learned that a belt is not really a belt; that a breastplate is not really a breastplate; that shoes are not really shoes; that a shield is not really a shield; and today, we will learn that a helmet is not really, not literally, a helmet. The Apostle Paul is not asking us to literally put on pieces of armor. He is telling us that if we don’t just talk the Christian talk, but if we walk the walk by following in Christ’s footsteps, we will be protected against the wiles of the devil in the same way that the Roman soldier was protected against his enemy by wearing the whole suit of armor in warfare. For our sake, and for those who are unaware that they are being conquered, Paul wants us to learn how to live victoriously in the midst of the real battle we are in each day as committed believers of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
We are to put on the helmet of salvation.
• Salvation is a word we use when we’re talking about being saved.
• Being saved is what we say when we’re talking about the moment we accepted Jesus into our hearts as Savior and Lord. (If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9).
• When we accept Jesus as Savior and Lord, we are saved from the penalty of sin. (Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”)
• When we are saved from the penalty of sin (separation from God in death in eternal hell), we can have great peace in our lives.
• However, many people who have been saved from the penalty of sin do not have peace in their lives, because they do not claim the reality that they have also been saved from the power of sin in their lives. May I repeat that please? Many people who have been saved from the penalty of sin do not have peace in their lives, because they do not claim the reality that they have also been saved from the power of sin in their lives.
The day I was saved, I was justified before God. One way to say it is to say that God now looks at me “just as if I’d never sinned” because I have on that righteous robe of Jesus. Jesus justified me before God. I couldn’t do it myself. I remember teaching my kids how to make things in the kitchen. They would do the best they could, but there would still be egg shells or flour lumps in the batter. So, I would let them do all they could, then I’d give it a few good stirs to finish the job. We can try and try to get justified before God on our own, but Jesus has to come to complete the work of justification. There is no other way to get to the Father except through the Son. Once, you’ve got Jesus in your life, being justified is a past tense event. (Read Ephesians 1, and you’ll learn more about being saved from the penalty of sin.)
However, on the day I was saved, I wasn’t simply justified as a done deal. I also began the process of sanctification. Santification is present tense work, happening in me right now, that demonstrates God’s continuing power at work within me over sin. I’ve been saved from the penalty of sin – I’m being saved from the power of sin. Have you ever watched “This Old House” on TV? Justification is like when you purchase the old house, you’ve got the deed in hand. It’s a done deal. Sanctification is what the show is really about, though. It’s the ripping out the old, and making it new again. There’s a lot of scraping, sanding, rebuilding, refining, and beautifying work to be done.
This past Wednesday, I had a meeting in Carlisle from 10:30 to 2:30. Then I drove to Camp Hill to the Presbytery office to deliver a few things there, then I drove up beyond Harrisburg to the Cokesbury store to return a few things from Sunday school and Bible school that had been sitting in the office for over a month. I was so proud of myself that I was finally getting these things returned! So, I cheerfully walked into the store, and placed my items on the counter. Without looking at me, a woman standing in front of a computer on the counter, asked, “How can I help you?” Well, she didn’t look like she wanted to help me. She didn’t even look at me, and see my cheery face at all. “How can I help you?” “I have a couple of things to return from my church,” I said cheerfully. “Do you have the receipts?” she asked, still without looking at me. “No,” I said, “I didn’t realize I needed to bring them with me.” She replied, “If you don’t have receipts we can’t take it back. No receipt. No return.” She looked at my items, but she still did not look at me. “I bought these items here,” I said, “and so I thought you could pull up the sales receipts from your computer.” I was still trying to be positive and cheerful. “Our computer system is not that sophisticated,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to do that.” Well folks, may I tell you that if I call Cokesbury on the phone, they can most likely pull anything up on their sophisticated computer system that I have ever needed to know? I began to fume. I’m beginning a conversation with myself about how far I had come, blah, blah, blah, grumble, grumble, grumble. At that moment, I had a choice.
On Tuesday night at our H20 Bible study, the following quote was shared:
Two natures beat within my chest.
One I love. One I hate.
But the one I feed will dominate.
On Wednesday, standing at that counter, I recognized the reality of those two natures with great clarity. I had a choice. Which one would I feed? My sin nature wanted to take this clerk down a few notches. My sin nature wanted to remind her that if pastors and churches didn’t do business with Cokesbury, she wouldn’t have a job. My sin nature wanted to take her face between my hands and make her look at me while she delivered the bad news about my returns. My sin nature wanted to act like a spoiled child who didn’t get her way – which is sort of like we all act from time to time when we’re eating the devil’s food.
But the spirit within me, the part that is hungry for holiness, yearns for the power to rise above what I might have done or said 10 or 5 or 3 or even 1 year ago. Jesus would have looked into that woman and known how to minister to her. That’s what he would have cared most about – her – not himself and the measly items on the counter. I want to be like that. If we’ve put on the helmet of salvation, then we have a constant snugness around our minds to remind us that we’re in a battle, and that we can overcome the obstacles Satan throws at us. We don’t have to act like spoiled children when things don’t go our way. And when, by the power of the Holy Spirit, I simply say “thank you,” to the woman at the counter and walk away, the devil is defeated. He wanted me to put that woman down. He wanted me to dim my light. He wanted me to do it so that she would be hurt, and so that I would walk away feeling proud of how right I was in the moment, but then feel guilty later for what I said.
Listen please to these verses from Romans 6:6-23. I’m reading from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Scripture, The Message: Our old way of life was nailed to the Cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.
That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves whole-heartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.
So, since we’re out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!
I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?
As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end. But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin telling you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.”
Don’t listen to the devil talking in your ear, telling you to speak unkindly about others. Don’t listen to the devil talking in your ear, telling you that a small compromise at work isn’t a big deal. Don’t listen to the devil talking in your ear, telling you that you just can’t help it - you’ve always been this way, and you’re never going to change. Don’t listen to the devil talking in your ear, telling you how much better you are than others. Don’t listen to the devil, because if you do, you will begin to feel condemned, or superior, or hopeless, or just downright justified by your own actions. Don’t listen to the devil who tells you that anything is more important than your relationship with God and with the people God has put in your life. When you have on that helmet, you can hear ever more clearly God’s life-giving truths that remind you that you have the power to overcome the nature within you that you hate. Feed what you love. Feed the freedom Christ died to give you. We have been saved from addiction to sin. Let’s come to the table together now with grateful hearts. Let’s come for nourishment, to keep up our strength, and to tighten the straps under our chins of the helmet of salvation. Amen.
The Whole Armor of God, Part 7
“The Helmet of Salvation –
Hard Headed and Soft Hearted”
Rev. Meagan Boozer
Lets turn together to Ephesians, Chapter 6:10-18: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.
We’re getting close to the end of our study of this amazing passage written by the Apostle Paul to believers in Ephesus – but we’re not finished yet! Today, we’re going to learn about the helmet of salvation, next week the sword of the Spirit, I will be away on the 31st, and then on September 7th, the Sunday we move back to the 11:00 hour for worship, we will conclude this series with a surprise piece of armor that mustn’t be forgotten!
A helmet is a hat or other head covering made of a hard material and worn to protect the head from injury. Most bicyclists or motorcyclists, race car drivers, ski jumpers, skateboarders wear helmets. When we were working at Krislund Camp several weeks ago, Steve Cort took the volunteers up to their climbing wall and zip line. If we wanted to do the activity, we had to wear a helmet. Helmets protect our heads from potential injury. On the PA motorcycle helmet law fact sheet, the following questions were asked and answered:
1. Will the helmet limit vision? Answer: No. All helmets provide a field of vision of at least 210 degrees, well above the 120 degrees required for licensure.
2. Will a helmet hamper my hearing? Answer: No. In fact, your ability to hear surrounding traffic may improve while wearing a helmet. Since wind and engine noise are reduced with the use of a helmet, it can help other street noise sound clearer.
Paul tells us we need to put on the helmet of salvation in order to protect our head, (our skull), which houses our brains, (our minds) (our thoughts). We’ll be able to see just fine – and we’ll be able to hear even more clearly what we need to know and do to protect our minds from the ferocious attacks of the devil – remembering that the mind is the main place where the war between good and evil rages.
Let us pray: O Lord, thank you for your provision for us every single day. Thank you for bringing us here today to be with you in sweet communion. Teach us your way, by teaching us your truth. Cover us, top to toe, as we lean in to hear from you – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
As we have studied this passage of Scripture, we have learned that a belt is not really a belt; that a breastplate is not really a breastplate; that shoes are not really shoes; that a shield is not really a shield; and today, we will learn that a helmet is not really, not literally, a helmet. The Apostle Paul is not asking us to literally put on pieces of armor. He is telling us that if we don’t just talk the Christian talk, but if we walk the walk by following in Christ’s footsteps, we will be protected against the wiles of the devil in the same way that the Roman soldier was protected against his enemy by wearing the whole suit of armor in warfare. For our sake, and for those who are unaware that they are being conquered, Paul wants us to learn how to live victoriously in the midst of the real battle we are in each day as committed believers of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
We are to put on the helmet of salvation.
• Salvation is a word we use when we’re talking about being saved.
• Being saved is what we say when we’re talking about the moment we accepted Jesus into our hearts as Savior and Lord. (If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9).
• When we accept Jesus as Savior and Lord, we are saved from the penalty of sin. (Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”)
• When we are saved from the penalty of sin (separation from God in death in eternal hell), we can have great peace in our lives.
• However, many people who have been saved from the penalty of sin do not have peace in their lives, because they do not claim the reality that they have also been saved from the power of sin in their lives. May I repeat that please? Many people who have been saved from the penalty of sin do not have peace in their lives, because they do not claim the reality that they have also been saved from the power of sin in their lives.
The day I was saved, I was justified before God. One way to say it is to say that God now looks at me “just as if I’d never sinned” because I have on that righteous robe of Jesus. Jesus justified me before God. I couldn’t do it myself. I remember teaching my kids how to make things in the kitchen. They would do the best they could, but there would still be egg shells or flour lumps in the batter. So, I would let them do all they could, then I’d give it a few good stirs to finish the job. We can try and try to get justified before God on our own, but Jesus has to come to complete the work of justification. There is no other way to get to the Father except through the Son. Once, you’ve got Jesus in your life, being justified is a past tense event. (Read Ephesians 1, and you’ll learn more about being saved from the penalty of sin.)
However, on the day I was saved, I wasn’t simply justified as a done deal. I also began the process of sanctification. Santification is present tense work, happening in me right now, that demonstrates God’s continuing power at work within me over sin. I’ve been saved from the penalty of sin – I’m being saved from the power of sin. Have you ever watched “This Old House” on TV? Justification is like when you purchase the old house, you’ve got the deed in hand. It’s a done deal. Sanctification is what the show is really about, though. It’s the ripping out the old, and making it new again. There’s a lot of scraping, sanding, rebuilding, refining, and beautifying work to be done.
This past Wednesday, I had a meeting in Carlisle from 10:30 to 2:30. Then I drove to Camp Hill to the Presbytery office to deliver a few things there, then I drove up beyond Harrisburg to the Cokesbury store to return a few things from Sunday school and Bible school that had been sitting in the office for over a month. I was so proud of myself that I was finally getting these things returned! So, I cheerfully walked into the store, and placed my items on the counter. Without looking at me, a woman standing in front of a computer on the counter, asked, “How can I help you?” Well, she didn’t look like she wanted to help me. She didn’t even look at me, and see my cheery face at all. “How can I help you?” “I have a couple of things to return from my church,” I said cheerfully. “Do you have the receipts?” she asked, still without looking at me. “No,” I said, “I didn’t realize I needed to bring them with me.” She replied, “If you don’t have receipts we can’t take it back. No receipt. No return.” She looked at my items, but she still did not look at me. “I bought these items here,” I said, “and so I thought you could pull up the sales receipts from your computer.” I was still trying to be positive and cheerful. “Our computer system is not that sophisticated,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to do that.” Well folks, may I tell you that if I call Cokesbury on the phone, they can most likely pull anything up on their sophisticated computer system that I have ever needed to know? I began to fume. I’m beginning a conversation with myself about how far I had come, blah, blah, blah, grumble, grumble, grumble. At that moment, I had a choice.
On Tuesday night at our H20 Bible study, the following quote was shared:
Two natures beat within my chest.
One I love. One I hate.
But the one I feed will dominate.
On Wednesday, standing at that counter, I recognized the reality of those two natures with great clarity. I had a choice. Which one would I feed? My sin nature wanted to take this clerk down a few notches. My sin nature wanted to remind her that if pastors and churches didn’t do business with Cokesbury, she wouldn’t have a job. My sin nature wanted to take her face between my hands and make her look at me while she delivered the bad news about my returns. My sin nature wanted to act like a spoiled child who didn’t get her way – which is sort of like we all act from time to time when we’re eating the devil’s food.
But the spirit within me, the part that is hungry for holiness, yearns for the power to rise above what I might have done or said 10 or 5 or 3 or even 1 year ago. Jesus would have looked into that woman and known how to minister to her. That’s what he would have cared most about – her – not himself and the measly items on the counter. I want to be like that. If we’ve put on the helmet of salvation, then we have a constant snugness around our minds to remind us that we’re in a battle, and that we can overcome the obstacles Satan throws at us. We don’t have to act like spoiled children when things don’t go our way. And when, by the power of the Holy Spirit, I simply say “thank you,” to the woman at the counter and walk away, the devil is defeated. He wanted me to put that woman down. He wanted me to dim my light. He wanted me to do it so that she would be hurt, and so that I would walk away feeling proud of how right I was in the moment, but then feel guilty later for what I said.
Listen please to these verses from Romans 6:6-23. I’m reading from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Scripture, The Message: Our old way of life was nailed to the Cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.
That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves whole-heartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.
So, since we’re out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!
I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?
As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end. But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin telling you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.”
Don’t listen to the devil talking in your ear, telling you to speak unkindly about others. Don’t listen to the devil talking in your ear, telling you that a small compromise at work isn’t a big deal. Don’t listen to the devil talking in your ear, telling you that you just can’t help it - you’ve always been this way, and you’re never going to change. Don’t listen to the devil talking in your ear, telling you how much better you are than others. Don’t listen to the devil, because if you do, you will begin to feel condemned, or superior, or hopeless, or just downright justified by your own actions. Don’t listen to the devil who tells you that anything is more important than your relationship with God and with the people God has put in your life. When you have on that helmet, you can hear ever more clearly God’s life-giving truths that remind you that you have the power to overcome the nature within you that you hate. Feed what you love. Feed the freedom Christ died to give you. We have been saved from addiction to sin. Let’s come to the table together now with grateful hearts. Let’s come for nourishment, to keep up our strength, and to tighten the straps under our chins of the helmet of salvation. Amen.
