Stand and Fight: Don’t Lose Your Head
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
Beartown Road Alliance Church
Now that summer is already half over, and softball season is done, I’ve begun to look forward to our basketball league that starts up every fall. We host the league out in our gym and have shown some very good improvement in the last 2 years. We’ve got about 10 guys that consistently show up for each of the games. Every guy is different and brings a different skill set to the games. If I told all of the guys to grab a ball and go out and shoot from the spots that they are most likely to find themselves during a game, they would spread out all over. Dan Nelson would head to about 6 feet behind the three point line and start to hoist up shots from there. Craig Herberger would start taking shots at the foul line because every team that we play seems to want a piece of him and he ends up on that line an awful lot. T.J. would be shooting mid-range jumpers, Adam would be driving in for lay-ups, Woody and Paul would be shooting from the foul line extended. The guys that play the most, all have their place on the floor where they are most comfortable and most effective. If I were to go and shoot from where I am most likely to find myself in a game, it would be a tough shot from the end of the bench! I have taken a very passive approach to our basketball team. I would like to play, I played all through high school and college, but at this point in my career, I feel that the team is better off if I just watch. I go to every game, I cheer enthusiastically, I get in every once in a while, but for the most part, I leave it to the guys who seem to be better suited to have some success out there.
As we continue on in our look at Spiritual Warfare, I think that there are far too many Christians who take this kind of view when it comes to building God’s Kingdom and standing our ground against the enemy. We want to be a part of things, we come to church each week, we support and cheer for the people who are involved in the ministry, but in the end, we decide to let someone else carry the load because we’re convinced that they have more time or are better equipped. Having this attitude in a church league basketball game is one thing, but when it comes to the spiritual battles of everyday life, we have to be willing to be more than a cheerleader. The armor that Paul has laid out is not for pastors or missionaries alone. It’s not for the well-trained, the gifted communicators, and the Bible scholars alone. This armor of God is available to all who believe and it is expected that those who truly understand the reality of the spiritual realm will not just be aware of the armor but will put it on and will get involved in the battle wherever God calls them to be. The arena of Spiritual Warfare and the playing field of advancing God’s Kingdom here on Earth, does not have a bench area. Everyone is expected to join in no matter how unqualified we feel. The command is to stand, not sit and watch, and God has given us and will give us what we need to stand.
Read the Armor
This morning, we move on to the helmet. The helmet of the Roman soldier protected his head from swords, arrows, battle-axes, clubs, and anything else that the opposing army could think of to come at him with. It was made of reinforced iron and was polished with oil to make it slick so that any blows would slide right off of it. No soldier would enter battle with his head exposed. The helmet, like the breastplate and shield, gave him confidence to fight. It protected his most important asset, his brain.
For Christians, we have to understand what this helmet that Paul talks about, protects. It guards and protects our minds, our intellect. Satan will attack our minds. He is going to twist and bend the truth any way that he can to confuse us and to convince us in our minds that God didn’t really say what He said, or mean what he said. You see it in Genesis with Adam and Eve. He plays on the weakness of mind that Adam and Eve show, twisting the words of God into something that was close to accurate but not the truth. Satan is the master of mind games, he wants to gain control of our minds. When he tempted Christ in the desert, he attacked him mentally, trying to bend His mind so that His will would follow. But Jesus answered each lie with the unchanging Truth of God’s Word.
During the Vietnam War, one of the most effective weapons of the enemy was to attack the minds of the men who had been captured. All day, the Vietnamese would pump propaganda into their cells telling the soldiers that the U. S. government was corrupt and had abandoned them, their friends and family had forgotten about them or considered them dead, and their wives had divorced them – all lies designed to get these men to crack and give up vital information. Many of these men developed ways to shield themselves from the lies. One was a pianist who played concerts in his mind over and over. One was an architect who designed hundreds of buildings in his mind. One was a golfer who replayed every hole he had ever played. These men blocked the lies of the enemy by concentrating on things that they knew were real and true, that wouldn’t change. When Satan attacks our minds, we need to do the same thing as those soldiers. We need to focus on what we know to be true and unchanging. Paul tells us that we need to guard our minds with Salvation.
Salvation is a term that has a broader meaning than most of us think it does. When we think of salvation, we immediately think of a Savior and Christ’s death upon the cross for our sins. Good, that’s what we should think of! But there is more to this idea of salvation. The Salvation that Scripture teaches is the deliverance from the power of sin and its effects. The Bible is very clear that this is the work of God alone.
PS 62:1 My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. PS 62:2 He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.
The salvation that Paul is referring to here is bigger than just the forgiveness of sins, it has aspects that deal with the past, present, and future, and when we understand each of them, we will be focused, we will be protected, and we will have the confidence that we need in the battle for the mind.
I want to give you the three W’s of Salvation this morning.
I. Salvation Won
This is the past. It has already been done. The primary aspect of Salvation is the work of Jesus Christ upon the cross. When He was dying and said the words, “It is finished.” Our sins were paid off and our salvation was won. This is the first and most important aspect of this helmet. We have to be convinced in our minds that Salvation has been won for us.
This makes sense. Salvation is the deliverance from the power of sin and its effects. Romans 6:23 tells us one of the effects of sin in our lives when we read that the wages of sin is death. The work of Salvation on the cross delivered us from death and secured for us eternal life with God. To wear the helmet into battle, the logical place to start is with an understanding of this sacrifice and what it means in our lives. You cannot wear the helmet of Salvation without having accepted God’s free gift of eternal life and victory over sin’s curse of death. The battle that Paul is talking about is a spiritual one and to wear the armor involves a spiritual authority that is only given to believers. This goes back to the very first sermon in this series where we talked about knowing where our strength comes from. If we fight in our strength, we cannot stand. But if we fight in the power and authority of Jesus Christ and with the confidence that comes from the knowledge that our salvation is already won, then we can stand. – Dylan and Chloe!
2 cor 10:3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
Satan will try to convince you that you have to earn your salvation.
But we know that even though the wages of sin is death, the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Salvation is a gift to us, it is not based on anything other than God’s love and our acceptance of that gift.
Satan will try to convince you that with each new sin you run the risk of losing your salvation.
Romans 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He will even try to convince you that you’re already too far gone for salvation.
Romans 10:13 "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
Salvation has already been won for us and we can rest in that. We can know that our eternity is secure and that our names are written in the Book of Life. We can have that peace and assurance of protection when we understand that Salvation has been won. It is already accomplished, we know that Christ has already paid the price.
The next aspect, the next W of salvation, does not come to mind as often as the first. It is:
II. Salvation Work
Now, I want to be very clear here. The gift of Salvation, the forgiveness of sins, is nothing that we can earn.
Eph 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
We could not win salvation, it’s been won by Christ. That’s the past. There is, however, an aspect of salvation that requires work on our part. The present, the life we live now, is to be one in which we are striving to look more and more like Christ. Remember, salvation is the deliverance from the power of sin and its effects. What Christ accomplished for us was the deliverance from the power of sin unto death. Now, we are promised the deliverance from our slavery to sin, while on Earth. But, some of this is up to us to work at, to partner with God, to make sure that we are growing. We need to understand that God wants to work in us but He will not do it without us putting in the effort to discover where He wants to take us and then begin to move in that direction, trusting that He will accomplish the changes He wants in us.
In Philippians, Paul highlights this partnership.
PHP 2:12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed--not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence--continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
In the past, this passage was such a tough one for me to understand. If salvation is God’s free gift, what on Earth does Paul mean when he says we should work it out? Well, in the original language, Paul used a term that people would have understood to be a “mining” term. When people “worked a mine,” they extracted everything that they could out of it. They worked it until they had uncovered all of the wealth and beauty that mine could offer. They weren’t responsible to put the diamonds in the mine, but they were to do everything that they could to uncover them so that they could be polished to a gleaming shine and realize their full worth and value. That is the aspect of salvation that Paul is getting at here. We are responsible to uncover all that God has created us to be. Paul makes sure to point out that it is ultimately God who works in our lives to bring about the good that He created us for, but what he is telling us is the Christian faith is an active faith. You can accept the gift of salvation, you can reap the eternal benefits of eternal life, but unless you work at salvation, deliverance from sin on a daily basis, you will never uncover and “mine” the true beauty of Christianity and everything that God makes available to us through Jesus. There is wealth that is beyond anything that money can offer that we are meant to experience in a relationship with Christ.
The Christian walk is a lifetime of learning and growing. Early on in my youth ministry, I would offer complete scholarships to kids for the different camps, retreats, and events that we went to. I would give them freely, the kids didn’t have to do anything. What I found out eventually was that if the kids had nothing invested, they got much less out of the event. If I asked them to work for the money, it changed their entire outlook about the event and their behavior at the event. Once they had something personally invested, it meant so much more to them. God does not simply make us like Christ the moment that we accept Him as our Savior. He asks that we make a personal investment in our growth, in overcoming sin in our lives. This is what Paul was getting at in Philippians 2.
This is the aspect of salvation that pushes us to maturity. This is sanctification, striving for the deeper life and to truly see God’s power at work in us. It is working towards that point where our minds are sensitive to and controlled by the Spirit. We have to work at changing the way that we think and what our focus and priorities are in life. How do we do that? We do that with a conscious effort to guard our minds from those things that will hinder growth. We are called to: Col 3:2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
What is your mind focused on today? What we are focused on will be revealed in how we spend our time and on what we’re feeding into our minds. Are the things that you feed your mind with pleasing to God? Will they move you towards the work of salvation that God wants to accomplish in your life?
Are the things that you read pleasing to God? Are the things that you talk about and think about pleasing to God? Is how you spend your time pleasing to God? Is your relationship with your spouse or children pleasing to God? These are all reflections of where our focus is.
Are the things that you watch pleasing to God? This is one of the biggest areas in which Satan is winning the battle for our minds. Christians love to talk about the evils of society and the sin that is so prevalent. Most of us would never live lives of blatant sin but we will sit for hours and watch others with no morals live out every kind of sin imaginable and call it entertainment. Movies are not evil in and of themselves, television is not evil in and of itself, but part of working out your salvation is making the right choices when it comes to what we set before our eyes. The entertainment choices of Christians should be different. I used to have my teens argue that if they didn’t watch stuff with sex and bad language they couldn’t watch anything! Or they would go to a certain movie because all of the movies out were bad so they chose the least offensive! If all of our options are bad, we are better off finding something else to do with our time!
Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
When we change the things we put into our minds, when we allow God to transform the way we think, we will begin to understand what God’s will is for us! If you feel that you don’t know what God’s will is for you, chances are there is some junk that needs to be cleared out before that will is going to come in to focus and for that to happen, we have to actively pursue those things in our lives that please God. God’s word tells us what we need to be filling our minds with in order to grow.
PHP 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.
How does that compare to what you fill your mind with?
Just like the Winning of salvation, Working on salvation brings us confidence for the battle. We can be confident as we work that God will guide us and that He has a plan and a purpose for everything that happens in our lives. We can also be confident that: Phil 1: 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
As we work towards deliverance of sin’s daily influence in our lives, God is working to transform us into His image! Which will reach completion with the last W of salvation.
III. Salvation Wait
We have been delivered from the curse of death, we have been delivered from the grip of sin in our daily lives, and the day is coming when we will be delivered fully from this life into the next where sin and sorrow are no more. The last aspect of this helmet of salvation has to do with the future it is eagerly waiting and anticipating what the Bible tells us is coming.
Paul uses the helmet in another passage in 1 Thes 5:8 but there is a little twist on it. He says: 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.
Hope in the Scriptures is never used as wishful thinking. We say things like, “I hope it doesn’t rain.” We use hope to describe something we wish would happen but may not. Biblical hope is always waiting for a sure thing, something that has been promised. It speaks of something coming, something anticipated and longed for. As Christians, we have hope that goes beyond this life.
Our salvation means that we have:
1) Hope of Christ’s Return:
Heb 9:28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
Jesus Christ will return and our salvation, our deliverance will be complete.
2) Hope of Satan’s Defeat
The unique thing about this spiritual battle is that the outcome is already decided. Jesus Christ wins and we have victory over Satan. That is our hope for the future.
REV 12:10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:"Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.
REV 12:11 They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.
We will overcome, Satan will be defeated, it’s the fullness of God’s promised salvation for those who love Him.
3) Hope of Eternity:
1 Thes 4:16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
That is the hope of salvation that we are to be waiting for. It’s the hope of Christ’s appearing, the hope of Satan’s defeat, and the hope of eternity. The believer whose mind is fixed on the imminent return of Christ and all that that means for us, will not so easily walk into the traps and lies of Satan. Their minds will be made up and the hope of salvation will guard and protect them.
The helmet is about confidence. When we understand the full spectrum of salvation, we can fight, knowing that we are protected. I can remember when we were little, my brother played football for one year. We used to play in the backyard and he was always the smallest in the neighborhood and when we would get close to him to tackle him, he would fall down before we could hit him. That changed when he brought home his helmet. He put that thing on and all of a sudden he was fearless. He would charge right at us and not be afraid to be hit because he knew that he was protected and was going to be able to take what we gave him and stand. The helmet of salvation gives us this kind of confidence to engage the enemy head on.
We know that we have been delivered from death, from bondage, and from the limitations and sin of this life. We are confident in what has already taken place, in the winning of salvation. We are confident in what God is doing in our lives now as He works His plan in us while we work out our salvation. And we are confident in what God promises for the future.
