The Helmet Of Salvation Series

The Helmet of Salvation

[Read Ephesians 6:10-18]

How many of you are bothered by the demons in Hell this morning? The rest of you need to get saved.

· The moment you turn to Christ, Hell has your name on a bulletin board, and the more you serve your Savior, the bigger your name gets on that bulletin board.

· The more like Christ you become, the harder it becomes to continue. The more help you need.

The truth of the matter is that the devil will bother you and fight you, and oppose everything you do for the rest of your life.

Christians don’t realize that the longer they serve the Lord, the more they need Him:

· The more they need other Christians

· The more they need to pray

· The more they need to read the Bible

· The closer they need to be to the things of Jesus

This happens when Christians grow and are tested with personal trials and sufferings, pass the tests, and then get sent to the next level.

· It takes a thoroughly trained, experienced, and purposefully armored soldier to see the battle all the way through.

I wonder how many combat veterans would be able to tell you stories of comrades they remember who got complacent after they had been around the battle a while, let down their guard, and get killed because they thought that since they had made it this far, the rest of the way would be “as easy as the first part.”

The reason that many Christians fail to live the way they should… the reason so many Christians go back to the way they were… the reason so many Christians end up separating their church lives from their family, friends, and co-workers… the reason many Christians are disappointed with their newly found faith in Christ because they are not expecting a lifelong battle.

When a person becomes a Christian, the last thing they need to be thinking is that the battle is over. The truth of the matter is – when a person gets saved, the battle is NOT over. What has happened, is that you have merely switched sides. The war that the new Christian has just become aware of has been going on for centuries. The reason we don’t realize that we’ve been in a universal war until now is because before we were saved, we were the good guys. In the eyes of the world, we were friends. Now we are enemies. And the forces of darkness do not like that one little bit.

It began when Satan wanted to become like the “most high God.” Isaiah tells us what the Archangel, then called Lucifer (which means “Son of the Morning”), spoke (Isa. 14:13ff) “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon; I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High.’”

Immediately following that incident, the Bible tells us that Satan lost his name and his position, then talked a third of the other angels in heaven into following him into the creation that God had made, and they all were banished from their eternal destiny with God, and have been deceiving mankind ever since, trying to get God’s creation to turn against Him. And the rest is history.

Then you were born. One day you realized that you were being deceived, and that you had been living your life apart from your Creator, and without any intentions of living your life for God, or to ask your Creator what you should do to serve him. You were living your life for yourself, and going along with the rest of the world thinking that you were being a good citizen.

But the day you realized that you were a sinner in need of a savior, and on your way to that place prepared for Satan and His angels, you repented – you changed directions – and you became a child of God, saved to serve the living God of all creation. At that moment in space and time; your life’s drive, determination, direction, and destiny changed forever. Permanently. The good news is that there is no going back. Once you are saved, you couldn’t go to hell if you wanted to – and don’t let anybody ever try to tell you that God will go back of His promise to you(John 3:16). The problem we have is there are too many Christians who think that once they get saved that the victory for them has been won the moment they get saved. It is true that you have won an individual victory, and you will never have to worry about going to hell. The bad news is, however, that you have by no means won THE victory.