Ephesians 6 The Helmet of Salvation

The Helmet of Salvation

Do you notice the ridge to protect the ears and neck from blows of a sword.  You want the helmet to deflect the blow, but not deflect it your neck or shoulders. 

Now, this series has brought us to some realisations about our spiritual warfare.  Satan's darts are aimed at us!  How do we best take the armour  up to deflect his darts. What do these darts look like anyway? One of those darts is depression. 

Now I am not a psychologist.  I am not a medical doctor or a counsellor. I am a preacher of God's Word.  So what I want to do is bring God's Word to you that will help you with this dart of depression. 

The DSM 5

Some symptom domains, such as depression and anxiety, involve multiple diagnostic categories and may reflect common underlying vulnerabilities for a larger group of disorders.

Loss of pleasure in all, or almost all, activities.   Lack of reactivity to usually pleasurable stimuli (does not feel much better, even temporarily, when something good happens).

A distinct quality of depressed mood characterized by profound despondency, despair, and/or moroseness or by so-called empty mood.      Depression that is regularly worse in the morning.

The sense of worthlessness or guilt associated with a major depressive episode may include unrealistic negative evaluations of one's worth or guilty preoccupations or ruminations over minor past failings.  Thoughts of death, suicidal ideation, or suicide attempts (Criterion A9) are common.

They may range from a passive wish not to awaken in the morning or a belief that others would be better off if the individual were dead, to transient but recurrent thoughts of committing suicide, to a specific suicide plan. Individuals frequently present with tearfulness, irritability, brooding, obsessive rumination, anxiety, phobias, excessive worry over physical health, and complaints of pain (e.g., headaches; joint, abdominal, or other pains).

Twelve-month prevalence of major depressive disorder is approximately 7%, with marked differences by age group such that the prevalence in 18- to 29-year-old individuals is threefold higher than the prevalence in individuals age 60 years or older. Females experience 1.5- to 3-fold higher rates than males beginning in early adolescence.

Well, how do we quench through this dart of depression?  Satan wants you to be discouraged and depressed. He knows that is probably one of the best tools he has in his tool chest.  Hit them with a dart  of discouragement or distress and they will fold.

ADMIT THE POSSIBILITY OF DARK DEPRESSION.     Darkness Has Been Ordained of God

It is not unusual.            It is not unfruitful.              It is not unending.

ACQUIRE THE PROCEDURES IN DARK DEPRESSION.

Look to the Lord         Lean on the Lord           Leave It with the Lord 

I want you to pay attention to this one because this message is going to deal with something that is going to happen to you if it has not already happened to you. One of these days you are going to find yourself plunged into dark, dark, dark despair. You're going to be perplexed. You're going to have problems, and confusion, and all of your little formulas, and all of your little outlines, and all of the little things that you've counted on before are not going to work. And, you're not going to understand what God is up to. It will be so dark in your life, you won't even be able to see your hand before your face. The old theologians use to call a dark night of the soul. And, you'll wonder what has happened. You wonder if God died, or if you've lost your mind, or if maybe the whole things is just a fairy tale. Maybe there's nothing to it, you'll say what on earth happened.

You'll think that God has forsaken you.

It is the devil's dart of depression that particularly afflicts our minds. The gospel itself is the remedy. That is why it is called the helmet of salvation. And in 1 Thessalonians 5 it is called the helmet of the hope of salvation,

"⁸ But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.⁹ For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,¹⁰ who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.¹¹ Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing."

We can know we are destined to obtain salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the One who makes the gospel covenant promises ours forever. It is by the Lord being our salvation and Him binding Himself to us, that we can have confidence and assurance and a strong irreversible confidence in our salvation.  He is our Saviour.  And so He is the One who can bring these Old Testament promises of Hope to us in times of deepest despair.

 "Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God. 11 Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled! This you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment." (Isaiah 50:10–11).

1. ADMIT THE POSSIBILITY OF DARK DEPRESSION.

There is a whole book in the bible that is called depression!  Lamentations of Jeremiah! 

Lamentations 3:17 my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is;

18 so I say, "My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the LORD."

19 Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!

20 My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.

I want to speak to you first of all about the possibility of darkness in the life of a Christian.

Darkness is not unusual in the life of a Christian. It is not unusual and I'm not talking about people who are living in sin. I'm talking about people who fear God. I'm not talking about people who are disobedient. I'm talking about people who obey the voice of God's servants. And, they have no light. They walk in darkness. You read Biographies of Saints and almost every one of them will tell about some dark night of the soul when they were so perplexed. 

And, in such despair they almost wondered if God had forsaken them. You can read it in the Bible, in the book of Job, the same thing happened to Job. Job was in darkness and Job said in Job 19: "…he hath set darkness in my paths" (Job 19:8). I just don't seem to be able to understand and Job would just ask Him, "Why oh God? God, you owe me some answers."

You know, people feel like they can do almost anything if they can just understand why.

Logos Therapy by Viktor Frankl says a person can bear almost anyhow as long as he has a reason why.  But, what if you don't? And, interesting thing, when you read the book of Job, you read it all the way through God never did tell Job. I mean, at the end, Job never did understand what it was all about. God just didn't reveal it to him.

Read in the New Testament about John the Baptist. Jesus said, "…Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist…" (Luke 7:28). John the Baptist was a mighty preacher. He stood on the banks of Jordan, and preached with a rippling brook for a choir, and a pulpit for a rock. He ate honey, but he didn't preach it. And, yet that same John the Baptist was taken and put in prison and in a dark, dismal, damp prison. This outdoors man, rotting away there in that jail. He got into such darkness, such perplexity, such despair, that he sent some of his disciples and said, "…Art thou he that should come?" (Luke 7:19). I mean, he's the one who said, "…Behold the Lamb of God…" (John 1:29). Said, "Go ask Him if He's really the Messiah." John couldn't understand it. "What has gone wrong? If Jesus Christ can work miracles why can't He get me out of this jail?" John had preached the victorious Christ, now here is John following Jesus in jail. Even the Apostle Paul, I suppose, the mightiest theologian, the grandest Apostle, the finest missionary that ever lived. He wrote there in the book of Corinthians that he was perplexed. Do you know what that word "perplexed" means? "I just don't understand." Didn't you always like to think of Paul as always knowing everything? I mean, you know, just, he said, "…we are perplexed …" (2 Corinthians 4:8). "I am literally perplexed." So, folks, what I'm trying to tell you is that if you get perplexed, if you get in trouble, if you get in darkness, you are in pretty good company. And, it doesn't mean that there's necessarily sin in your life because our verse of Scripture talks about someone who fears the Lord, and who is obeying the voice of God's servant, and yet he has no light and he walks in darkness. It is not unusual.

It is not unfruitful. God knows what He's doing. There's a purpose in it. The fruit of the Spirit ripens in the darkness. You're going to find out that God is up to something in your life. Did you know that there are some things that you can only see in the dark? I want to tell you something about darkness. It is not unfruitful.  Now, there are some things you can only see in the light, but there are some things you can only see in the dark. You can only see the stars in the dark. We say, "The stars come out at night." Not so, they're there all the time, but you don't see them until it gets dark. You see those stars. And, you see the moon. But, you wouldn't see all of that unless it was dark. I've never experimented to see if this is true, but I've read somewhere that if you get in a deep well and look up even in daytime, you can see the stars shining because you're in the darkness. And, if you get down deep enough and dark enough even in the daytime you can see the stars shining.

There's some things that you will see better after you've been in the darkness when you get in the light. There's something about the darkness that sharpens your spiritual eyesight. I was used to sitting in unnatural light in an office most of the days.  And when I wasn;t I was rushing around frantically. And then my PhD lecturer took me into his garden for half an hour and made me smell the flowers and look at them and look at their beauty. 

2 O let me feel Thee near me, the world is ever near; I see the sights that dazzle, the tempting sounds I hear;
my foes are ever near me, around me and within; but, Jesus, draw Thou nearer, and shield my soul from sin.

I wonder if there's some of us who have not been dazzled with so much by this world, and the glitter of this world, and the glare of this world, and the brightness of this world that sometimes God just puts in darkness and let's us sit in darkness so when the light comes again we can appreciate the beautiful mix of colours of God's grace.

The Darkness: It is not unusual.  It is not unfruitful.

It is not unending. You will come out of it. You will come out of it and you'll come out of it a better person. "…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" (Psalm 30:5). The same sun that sets is the sun that rises again. And, God will indeed lighten the paths of His saints and God one of these days. And, I'm talking to somebody right now, there's somebody listening and watching on our streaming service somewhere in the world, somebody in a hospital room right now, somebody in a home that is filled with sorrow, somebody listening here now, and there's such darkness in your life. I want to tell you my dear friend, you do what this verse of Scripture tells you. In just a moment and our God, our dear Lord Jesus Christ, one of these days is going to take the shades of darkness and pin them back with a star, and open the door of the morning, and flood your world with His glory and with His life. Not now, perhaps, in the later years, perhaps in a better land, we'll know the meaning of our tears and some day we'll understand.

Just because it doesn't make sense to you now, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. And, just because it doesn't make sense to you now, doesn't mean it will not make sense someday. I am telling you, dear friend, there's the possibility of darkness in you and when you understand Isaiah chapter 50, verses 10 and 11. You can understand that it is not unusual, it is not unfruitful, it is not unending,

2. ACQUIRE THE PROCEDURES IN DARK DEPRESSION.

Now, literally, what he wrote these two verses for was to tell you what to do when darkness comes and if you're a child of God I'm just going to assume it's going to come to you. He tells you the procedure. What should you do when the lights go out? That's what we're talking about. What should you do when the lights go out?

Look to the Lord

Now, Isaiah tells us there are three things that you ought to do when the lights go out. All right number one, you are to look to the Lord. Now, look again in verse 10 here in this passage of Scripture. "Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.

." Let him trust in the name of the Lord. Just look to the Lord. You see, you don't have to know why. "Why?" Is not your question. "Why?" Is God's question. "How?" Is your question. "Why?" Is why it happened. "How?" Is how you're going to react to it. That's your question, you just trust God. Warren Wiersbe said this, "We don't live by explanation, we live by promises." I like that. We don't live by explanation. We live by promises. You see, God is under no obligation to explain Himself to us. And, even if He did, many times we wouldn't' be able to understand it, wouldn't we because He says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8–9). So, God doesn't have to explain Himself to us. We do not live by explanation, we live by promises. And, so what you do, you just simply trust in the Lord. It's just that simple, you look to Him. It doesn't have to make sense. Thomas Watson, an old Puritan, said, "Where reason cannot wade, faith must swim."

Where reason cannot wade, then faith must swim. Just trust God. I mean, just get a promise of God, and stand on it. Friend, you don't have to understand it to stand on it. You don't have to understand it. Just trust God. You find yourself in darkness, you don't know what to do, trust God. Let him trust the name of the Lord. This is the highest pinnacle of faith. Faith doesn't come when you can see away clear. Faith comes when you don't see your way clear, when you don't understand, where it doesn't make sense. And, you finally come to the place that Job came to. Job came to the place where he said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him…" (Job 13:15). See, look to the Lord. Just look to the Lord. Don't look to any experience, don't look to any explanation, we do not live on explanations, we live on promises.

So how do we live on the promises? Remember the covenant promise God has made to you of salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus. The helmet of salvation.  The assurance that in the Lord Jesus you have a complete and free forgiveness andpardon and assurance of eternal life. This is to hold our minds fast. This is where our trust lies.

Look to the Lord Jesus who has completely acquired salvation for you at the price of His precious blood.

When Satan tempts me to despair And tells me of the guilt within, Upward I look and see Him there Who made an end of all my sin. Because the sinless Saviour died My sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied To look on Him and pardon me.

                                                             

Lean on the Lord

Number one, then you look to the Lord. Number two, you lean on the Lord. Look again if you will in verse 10. "Let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God." Do you see that? "And, stay upon his God."

"Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God. (Isaiah 50:10–11).  Now, that word "stay" is an interesting word. It is the root of the word for "staff," as in Psalm 23: "…thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." Now, what was a staff? A staff was something that the shepherd leaned on. It supported him. Can you imagine a shepherd in a dark valley leaning on his staff to keep him from falling? "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me" (Psalm 23:4). A staff is something to lean on to give you comfort in a dark valley. When the Scripture says, "Let him stay upon his God" what it literally means is "let him lean upon that God for support." Let him lean upon that God. Lean on the Lord. Look to the Lord and lean on the Lord.

I was reading in Isaiah 37 -39 through the week.. It always encourages me that when King Hezekiah was confronted by the whole huge army of the Assyrians under Sennacherib, instead of panicking and hoping for help from other nearby powers, like Egypt, or trusting in big high walls surrounding the city of Jerusalem, Hezekiah chose to lean hard on the Lord.

Even when Sennacherib's officials said things like  " We came up because the Lord told us to come up and defeat you" or God isn't as big as you hope, He didn't save other nations, nor did other nations' gods save them!"  He refused to listen to human methods and went straight to leaning on the Lord.  Several times this week people have wanted me to help them find a solicitor to help defend their names.  I think the first place anyone should go to is the Lord.  He can defend your name better than any solicitor can. He can deal with those who oppose you better than anyone else.

Sometimes God puts you in darkness that you might learn to lean. God is not in the business of giving you a reason, it is not reason, it is relationship. God is bringing you to Himself. And, there are times when He'll take everything else away from you so that the only thing that you'll have is Him. God wants you to learn to lean upon Him. That's what it's all about. So, you're to lean on the Lord, not lean on some sermon, not lean on some truth, not lean on some formula, not lean on some procedure, not lean on your health, not lean on your bank account, not lean on anything. All you've got is the Lord. Satan was the one who afflicted Job. But Satan could only afflict Job by God's permission and direction. That's what God did with Job.  God just took it all away; money, health, family, reputation, everything!  God took it away, all of it, and yet, Job still had the Lord and he trusted in the Lord. And, he said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust Him…" and he saw the Lord Jesus by the eye of faith. Now, God sometimes brings us to the place where he brought Job, not only to show us that God is necessary, but that God is enough and we learn to lean on the Lord. Just simply lean on the Lord.

Leave It with the Lord

"Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD  and rely on his God. 11 Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled! This you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment." (Isaiah 50:10–11).

Look to the Lord. Trust in Him;  lean on the Lord. Now leave it with the Lord.  Leave it with the Lord. Don't light your own fire. Don't light your own fire. If you light your own fire, you're going to lie down in sorrow.  Do you ever feel like  "Well let's do something even if it's wrong."  Remember the disciples after Jesus' resurrection?  We got to do something!  Anxiety was driving them!  Let's go back to our jobs, let's go fishing!    And, so they launch out in the strength and the energy of the flesh not waiting upon God.

Have you ever done that?  The Lord rebukes them and gives the disciples the job He wants them to do. And it isn't fishing, its shepherding.  Feed my sheep! 

Often our anxiety drives us and we blow the whole thing. We light our own fire ! If you're not careful you'll try to help God out and you'll light your own fire. I want to tell you something about lighting your own fire. A lot of folks today are just walking in the spark of the fire that they kindled. And, they go off to some worldly philosophy or some idea, some strategy, something that's not of God because they're in darkness. And, rather than looking to the Lord, and rather than leaning on the Lord, they just go out and light their own fire. And, they're going to find themselves in difficulty.

You can see in the Bible people who did that same thing, for example, Abraham. Abraham was a friend of God, a man of faith. He loved God, he feared God, obeyed God. God gave Abraham a promise and God said, "Abraham, I'm going to make a covenant with you. And, Abraham, I'm going to bless all of the world through your descendants. I'm going to give you a son while you're an old man. A son of promise, a son a covenant, blessing son, I'm going to give you." And, Abraham was in the light when God gave him that promise. And, then God Himself put Abraham in darkness. That is, God didn't seem to be in any hurry about it. Abraham couldn't understand. "Why doesn't God do something?" Abraham was plunged into darkness and into despair. And, that darkness and that despair were of God because God was testing Abraham. God was proving Abraham and God was working on His own timetables, and remember what I said. That with God timing is more important that time. But, now Abraham decides he's going to take things in his own hands and Abraham decides he's going to light his own fire. And, so he produces a son—not with his wife Sarah—but with his handmaiden, Hagar. And, he produced an Ishmael. Rather than waiting on God he lit his own fire and made himself to lie down in sorrow. He could not trust God, he could not wait on God. He could not look to the Lord, and lean on the Lord, and leave it with the Lord. What about Moses? God said to Moses, "Moses, I want you deliver My people from the land of bondage, from the land of Egypt. You are going to be My commander in chief and you're go obey Me." And, then Moses got a little antsy about it, got a little nervous about it, couldn't understand why God was so slow, and Moses took things into his own hands. He lit his own fire. What he did if you remember the story, he killed an Egyptian, murdered him. Moses, who was meant to be a missionary ended up a murderer, spent forty years in a back side of the desert after that, every night lying down in sorrow because he couldn't leave things with God, couldn't leave it with the Lord. He had to take it into his own hands. He had to try to make it happen before God. You can read the same thing about Simon Peter, cut off the ear of the high priest. Jesus had told Simon Peter that He was going to the cross, He was going to suffer, He was going to bleed, die, be buried, rise again the third day. He had told people all of this, but now here's Jesus. It looks like the tide has turned. Peter can't understand everything. There the soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane and so Peter pulls out his sword, cuts off the ear of the high priest, trying to light his own fire. What a mess he made. What a mess he made. Friend, listen to me, when the darkness comes it is not unusual, it is not unfruitful, it is not unending, when it comes look to the Lord, when it comes lean on the Lord, when it comes, leave it with the Lord. Have faith in God, He'll answer you.

Who are you listening to?          The devil? He is a liar. His solutions never work.

Yourself?  Psalm 13 How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

2 How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

The worldly people around you?   Ephesians 4:17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!-

Lamentations 3: Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! 20 My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. 21 But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: 22 The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." 25 The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. 26 It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

Have you got on the Helmet of your Salvation? Are you trusting in the Lord?

Charles Spurgeon "I know, perhaps as well as anyone, what depression means, and what it is to feel myself sinking lower and lower. Yet at the worst, when I reach the lowest depths, I have an inward peace which no pain or depression can in the least disturb. Trusting in Jesus Christ my Saviour, there is still a blessed quietness in the deep caverns of my soul, though upon the surface, a rough tempest may be raging, and there may be little apparent calm."

 

Acknowledging that the general outline comes from Dr. Adrian Rogers.