The Helmet of Salvation | Dr. David Jeremiah | Ephesians 6:17

What is the Armor of God?

Message Description:

Most of us wouldn’t ride a motorcycle or play football without a protective helmet. Why would spiritual warfare be any different? Follow along as Dr. David Jeremiah takes us to Ephesians 6 for a study of the final piece of defensive armor, the helmet of salvation.

We have to make sure we’re clothed with the wisdom of God.
Thirdly, the helmet of salvation is the power of God in your life.
Listen to what Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.
He said, I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my speech and my preaching were not the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
Paul said, I did not come to you with my own concepts and my own thinking and my own program and my own methods.
I came to you equipped with the helmet, which is the protection of the mind and the illustration and the personification of God’s wisdom.
Paul’s ministry was in the power of God. What he explained to them did not make sense humanly.
The Bible says it was foolishness to those who did not know Christ.
Satan’s purpose as we have learned is to try to corrupt or confuse our minds through false teaching or through the world system, to entangle us in practices and make it impossible for us to think clearly about God and his purposes.
We have learned already that we are well protected in Christ when we put Christ on, for he is our truth, and as the girdle of truth, he provides for us our integrity.
He is our righteousness protecting our heart from the attacks of the adversary.
He is the peace of our life, the shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace, giving us our standing in the war.
He is our shield of faith, our hope.
And now we learn that in Christ, we can also have victory in the arena of our mind, where Satan fights so many of his battles.
Now when the Bible speaks of the helmet of salvation, it’s helpful for us to understand what the readers of this were thinking about when they first read it, the Ephesians.
They would have been very familiar with the Roman armor.
The helmet worn by the Roman soldier was a kind of cap, which was made of leather.
Somebody I read this week said that it began with bowls.
To protect their head, they would put a bowl on their head.
That’s why some of the old helmets looked like bowls with straps underneath to hold them around your head.
But this leather helmet was strengthened and ornamented with plates of metal to give it protection.
Surmounting all of this were a kind of crest or a plume which stood up on the top of the helmet.
You remember seeing those in the pictures of the Roman soldiers.
Their helmet reminds us that Jesus Christ wants to equip us with Himself, with His purposes.
He wants us to be equipped with His plans, with His thoughts, with His concepts, with his truth, with his revelation.
And with him, we can stand victorious in the midst of the fury of attacks that are leveled against us.
For you see, Satan knows that the very nature of an idea, or the very nature of a thought, has the potential to be more powerful than the most destructive military weapon that can be conceived.
Literally, the helmet of salvation is more than simply knowing for sure that you’re a Christian.
Some authors have written on the armor of the believer, and they say that the helmet of salvation is simply the assurance of your salvation.
And surely, we must know that we’re saved, that’s important.
But the helmet of salvation reaches far beyond the simple terms of salvation.
And it encompasses the whole scope of salvation, past, present, and future.
The helmet of salvation is we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved.
When we put on the helmet, we are literally equipping ourselves with the wisdom of God, which is radiant in the person of Jesus Christ.
The Bible says we’re to take to ourselves God’s helmet, God’s wisdom.
So I want to explore the helmet of salvation in 2 ways.
First of all, I want us to understand it.
And second, I want us to figure out how to use it.
Let me remind you again that the helmet of salvation is personified in Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is our armor. He is our helmet in so many words.
First Corinthians 12430 says it this way, but to those who are called both Jews and Gentiles, or Greeks, Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Christ is the wisdom of God.
And of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
Now notice carefully the progression in those verses.
Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God, and we are the wisdom of Jesus Christ.
There is a 3 fold progression. He is God’s wisdom to us, as God’s wisdom is to him.
And so as we put on Jesus Christ, he becomes to us our wisdom.
We become to Jesus what Jesus is to the Father, and Jesus becomes to us what the Father is to him.
He is our wisdom. John Phillips reminds us that in the life of Jesus are hidden all the treasures of wisdom.
Paul told the Colossians this very thing.
When he lived on earth, the Lord was constantly opening that treasure chest to give men glimpses of the extraordinary wisdom that he had.
When men saw Jesus, they looked at him in astonishment. How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?
They said. In other words, how does this man know as much as he did? He never went to school.
He doesn’t have a degree. The word letters is the plural of the Greek word grama, a word which by extension refers to literature in general, and the Talmudic writings in particular.
Those who were sent to arrest Jesus returned empty handed. Their explanation was this, never man spake like this man.
He himself declared that he was greater than Solomon, whose wisdom was proverbial, supposedly the wisest man who ever lived.
Jesus said his wisdom was greater than Solomon. And listen to me, Jesus Christ is our wisdom.
He is our wisdom. He longs to be the wisdom that controls our life.
He is our helmet of salvation. The helmet of salvation is personified in Jesus Christ.
Number 2, the helmet of salvation is a prerequisite to any kind of ministry.
Several years ago, after we had first moved here, Donna and I visited the country of the Dominican Republic.
And I hate to tell you this because this doesn’t sound very smart on our part, but we rode motor scooters all over that place.
We toured Porta Plata on motor scooters.
Donna and myself and our oldest daughter Jan, we rode all over the place.
I never saw one helmet all the time I was down there. It is not required.
And I remember that night, after having done this all day, we were talking to one of the natives of the Dominican Republic, and he happened to just mention over dinner that it was not uncommon for there to be 20 or 25 deaths per day in Santo Domingo from motorcycle accidents.
And here we were, touring all around that whole place with no helmets on.
Now, obviously, we weren’t using the thing our helmet was supposed to protect.
Let me suggest to you that when it comes to spiritual warfare, helmets are not optional.
This is especially true if you plan to enter the spiritual battle as a minister of Jesus Christ.
As a minister of Jesus Christ, to serve Jesus Christ, and I’m talking here about serving in some kind of vocational ministry.
Wisdom is one of the prerequisites for leadership.
We read in Acts chapter 6 in verse 3, therefore, brethren, seek out from among you 7 men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and full of wisdom, men who have on their helmets, that we may appoint them over this business.
Oh, men and women, how we need people in the church today, both on the paid staff and on the unpaid working staff, who are men and women of wisdom.
We don’t know what to do if God does not give us the wisdom to deal with the kind of challenges we face in the world today.
If we aren’t equipped with the helmet of salvation, and God is not he’s not clothing us with himself, we’re gonna make a lot of mistakes.
We’re gonna do the wrong thing.
And I don’t know if you understand how critical that is, but you should pray for your leaders for lots of things.
But you should pray for us that God would give us wisdom, because we’re facing things that are unprecedented in the Church of Jesus Christ, things that we have never heard of before.
If I gave you a list of the top 5, it would, can I use this term, it would blow your mind?
Just things that have happened in the last month that I’ve never heard of before in the history of the church.
New things, things that just present themselves because of where our culture is going.
How does the church respond to all of that? Well, we have to put on our helmets.
We have to make sure we are clothed with the wisdom of God.
Thirdly, the helmet of salvation is the power of God in your life.
Listen to what Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.
He said, I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my speech and my preaching were not the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
Paul said, I did not come to you with my own concepts and my own thinking and my own program and my own methods.
I came to you equipped with the helmet, which is the protection of the mind and the illustration and the personification of God’s wisdom.
Paul’s ministry was in the power of God. What he explained to them did not make sense humanly.
The Bible says it was foolishness to those who did not know Christ.
But in the hands of a skilled teacher like Paul, the wisdom of God became God’s power in the lives of those who heard it and allowed it to go to work in them each day.
So the helmet of salvation is personified in Jesus Christ. It’s a prerequisite to any kind of ministry.
It is the power of God in your life.
And number 4, it is produced by the reading of God’s Word.
And here we are back again where we’ve been almost this entire series, we have been teaching on the mind.
Paul wrote to Timothy, and he reminded young Timothy of the source of his wisdom.
Do you remember what he said to Timothy?
He said, Timothy, from childhood, you have known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation.
You know why Timothy was prepared to be a servant of God?
Because his grandmother and his mother had taught him the Scriptures, And so by the time he was ready to enter the ministry, Paul was able to write to him and he said, Timothy, let me tell you what you have.
Let me tell you about your heritage. You have known the Holy Scriptures from your childhood.
The Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation.
That’s what it takes to do the work of God.
To do the work of God without that is to go into battle without your armor and to be vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy.
The helmet of salvation is possible through prayer.
The last thing we learn about the helmet of salvation, which is the wisdom of God in the Christian life, is that it is possible through prayer.
You say, how do I get this wisdom which God has promised?
How do I get this wisdom that’s just my helmet, it’s part of my armor?
Well, let me just tell you, it’s real easy. Ask for it. That’s all you have to do.
Ask for it. I’m praying this prayer that I don’t know that I’ve ever prayed this prayer as much as I pray it now.
Do you know what the prayer is?
It’s James 1:5, if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
Have you prayed that prayer recently? Lord, I don’t know what to do with this situation.
I’ve never experienced this before. This is unprecedented in my life. I need your wisdom.
And Lord, you promised me in James 1:5 that I would ask for your wisdom, you would give it to me, and you would give me not just a little bit of it, you’d give me as much as I need, and you wouldn’t scold me for coming and asking for it.
You get the wisdom of God by asking for it.
Isn’t it interesting how simple these things are and how easily we just we just soar right over the top of them?
Somebody comes and says, pastor, I don’t know what to do about this.
I don’t know what to do about it.
And my first question ought to be, well have you ask God?
That’s why I’m asking you pastor.
Why would you ask me if you can ask the one to whom I report?
Why don’t you just skip the middle man and go right to the top and ask God for the wisdom that you need?
I do not have the wisdom you need, but God does.
And if you ask me, all I’m gonna probably say to you is well I don’t know, I’ve never thought about that before.
I’ll try to ask God about it, but then I’ll have to come back and tell you what God told me, and you can go straight and ask Him.
Believe it or not, I don’t have any more place of priority or preference with God than you do.
Think of the most holy, righteous person you know, and I promise you, you are on the same level as they are before God.
You come boldly before the throne of grace to ask for what you need.
And frankly, today we ought to be praying this prayer for wisdom just about every day, and sometimes every hour, because we really don’t know what to do about some of the things that are happening.
The helmet of salvation is the wisdom of God in Christ. It’s available to every believer.
It’s a prerequisite to anyone who will do ministry. It is possible through prayer and the reading of God’s Word.
And here’s one more thought about the helmet, it is the promise of hope.
First Thessalonians 5:8 says this, but let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.
As far as I know, this is the only other time in the Bible where the helmet is mentioned in relationship to the armor.
Here it’s mentioned with the breastplate.
Knowing that there is an end to spiritual warfare provides motivation for persevering in the battle.
What is the hope? It’s the hope that we have, that Christ is ultimately going to resolve all of this.
That one day he’s going to come back and set everything straight, and that we’re skirmishing in this war right now, but we’re fighting in a war whose end we already know.
We’re fighting in a war that in essence, we have already won.
And we don’t have to skirmish around in a fear of defeat because we know victory is ours in Christ.
So we put on this helmet of salvation, and the helmet of salvation is our hope in Christ.
Living without hope is like running a race without a finish line.
It’s ridiculous for someone to say start running for the rest of your life, there’s no finish, but give it everything you have.
No, no, no. We have a finish line, don’t we? We know who wins this war.
And my wife who likes to read the last chapter of all of her mysteries before she’s read the rest of them, The only thing I recommend you do, if that’s not your habit, is read the last chapter of this book.
Read the last chapter in this book and you find out we win. We win this war.
We are victors in Jesus Christ.
And while we have some ground to cover, and we’re gonna talk about that in a moment, we cover that ground only with the realization that the ultimate the ultimate victory is already in our hands.
So that’s how to understand the helmet of salvation, all of the nuances of it.
Now let’s talk about using the helmet of salvation. How do we use the helmet of salvation?
In this book that I’ve been reading on Bonhoeffer, I told you that he said ideas have consequences, and it was the power of an idea that birthed communism.
It was an idea that empowered Hitler and Stalin.
We have never been in a place before as we are today, when we need men and women who are equipped in their minds to do battle in the spiritual arena, because this is where the war is being won or lost.
It’s being won or lost quite often in the realm of apologetics, in the realm of defending the faith.
So first of all, the helmet of salvation is useful for defending ourselves in a hostile world.
We don’t talk much about that.
But you know there are some experts that we have had here over the years.
We don’t need to be all of us apologist, by that I mean people who are specialists in defending our faith, but we need to know some of the answers, don’t we?
What do you say when somebody says to you, the Bible’s full of contradictions?
Let me tell you one that’s a that’s a show stopper. You ready for it? Show me one.
That’ll cut out about 90% of any action you’ll ever have right there.
They don’t know generation from revolution, and they’re liable to look it up in the palms, you know.
That’s what I’m saying. Why are we so intimidated by all this? We don’t need to be intimidated.
We need to put on the whole armor of God, learn some of the answers to the questions that people ask.
And there’s all kinds of resources you can get to do that if you’re interested and if God motivates you to do it.
The helmet of salvation is useful for defending ourselves in a hostile world.
But number 2, the helmet of salvation is useful for demolishing the strongholds of the mind and heart.
Listen to what Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians chapter 10.
For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
Now the Scripture’s not talking about defending ourselves against a hostile world, but about demolishing the strongholds in our minds and in our hearts.
Did you know that every one of us have a stronghold in our mind?
And we know what that stronghold is.
We know what our weaknesses were, where Satan is likely to get us more often than not.
The Bible says that it is in the power of the believer to cast down those strongholds, That through the weapons of Christ, the weapons of our warfare, the mighty weapons through God, we can pull those strongholds down, level them, defeat the entrance of that into our life by the enemy, and literally destroy his fortress in our life so that he no longer has a beachhead there within us.
A stronghold or a fortress is an established pattern or an established habit or an established concept or area?
It is not the Lord, it is the adversary.
It is not really true to say, as some people say, that if he’s not Lord of all, he is not Lord at all.
Because for him to be Lord of all, we have to allow him to take control of our lives.
When we become Christians, we give him the lordship of our lives as we know it.
But then as we begin to walk with Christ, he identifies things in our lives that we have not yet given over to him.
I remember one time hearing a man say you may not have but a very small section in your life that still belongs to the Devil.
It may be in a property of 100 of acres and it’s only a half an acre, but he said it is probably in the middle of your property, and Satan will walk all over God’s territory to get to it, and he does.
Now the Bible says that as we equip ourselves with the mind of Christ, we can pull these strongholds down, we can level them, we can get them out of our lives.
How many of us here today in our own heart can say, amen, I would really like to do that?
This this is one area of my life that’s driving me crazy.
I want God to have it, but it just never seems to go away.
The Bible tells us that the Word of God is the rhema of God.
It is God’s written word for us. It is God’s specific truth for a specific situation in our lives.
And when we allow the helmet of salvation to sit at the top of our armor, and we seek the wisdom of God, we ask for His direction and His help, and we use His word as our source, God will give us the victory through the Holy Spirit to begin tearing down these fortresses in our lives.
It’s the renovation of our mind.
It is moving out the old stuff that doesn’t belong there and replacing it with the new stuff that God gives us from his Word.
It is the cleansing of our mind through the Word of God, so that the things that God gives us begin to push out the things that have control over us, even sometimes as Christians.
You know, we’re always victimized. We’re always taking the blows. We’re always talking about how hard it is.
Well you know what folks, it’s supposed to be hard. We’re in a war. War is not for wimps.
It’s not for people who want to be comfortable and sit on the couch.
War is for people who are involved in in battling for the things that are important.
How many of you know the faith that we have been given by the Lord Jesus Christ is worth fighting for?
Amen? So why don’t we just every morning get up and say, Lord, I’ve joined the army.
I’m gonna get up today and fight the war. I’m gonna put on the whole armor of God.
I’m gonna take the Word of God in one hand and the shield of faith in the other, and I’m gonna go forward and meet this day.
Whatever comes my way, here’s what I know. I may not be sufficient for it myself, but I’ve put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is better than anything that I will face throughout this whole day.
Amen? Then you start singing the war cry, you start singing the war cry.
That’s what the armor of the believer is meant to do for us.
It’s meant to equip us, and encourage us, and strengthen us not to let life happen to us, but to take the initiative and go forward to do battle for Christ.
There’s so much that this means in a practical application, but perhaps this motivational speech from the Book of Ephesians will help us face the week ahead with courage and strength.
We already know we’ve won the war, but now God wants us to live like victors and not like victims.
We are victorious in Christ, we are more than conquerors through him. Praise his name.
And now, with one last word for today’s program, here is doctor Jeremiah.
Even if you have never been a soldier, you are familiar with helmets.
Athletes, cyclists, construction workers, they all wear them for the same good reason protection.
And that is the same reason we need the helmet of salvation that comes when we accept God’s offer of salvation through faith in Christ.
The primary way to win the battle when Satan attacks our mind is by having a mind full of the word of God.
I have 2 Turning Point resources that will help your mind stay focused on God’s truth.
One is our booklet called Your Greatest Turning Point and the other is our monthly devotional magazine called Turning Points.
We will gladly send both of these resources to you free and without any obligation if you will will contact us here at Turning Point.
Next time on Turning Point.
This book is the armory.
This is the Lagos, and in the logos are 100 of 1000 of rhema sayings of God.
And when you find those sayings and you put them together with the temptation in your life, you can do what Jesus did.
You can say, it is written, and nail him with the sword.
Thank you for being with us today. Join Doctor.
Jeremiah next time for his message, The Sword of the Spirit, here on Turning Point.