Have you ever thought about how many occupations
require helmets?
Lots of sports do, of course--there are baseball helmets,
football helmets, hockey helmets, cricket helmets, cycling helmets. You
even see rodeo helmets. But there are lots of jobs that require helmets,
too. Construction workers where helmets--we sometimes call them “hard
hats”, but they’re basically helmets. There are military helmets.
Some policemen where helmets. If you really thought about it, you could
probably come up with quite a list of people who wear helmets.
As we continue our look at the armor of God, we’ve come to
the helmet of salvation. Why would salvation be a helmet? Let’s
think about it.
What does a helmet do? Well, it protects your head,
right? And most of us consider our heads pretty important. Our head
is where our brain is. It’s where our thoughts come from. It’s
where we make decisions. Including our decision about whether to follow
Jesus Christ.
And that’s part of it. But you see, this is where we
need to remember that times have changed. Because now, we tend to think
of a helmet as something that protects the top of the head. But back two
thousand years ago or so, when the Apostle Paul was writing his letter to the
Ephesians, a helmet was something that covered your entire head. It did
not just protect the brain, as important as that is. It also protected
the eyes, the ears, and the entire face. There were openings for you to
be able to see, obviously, but the eyes were still protected. That’s the
kind of helmet Paul was familiar with, so that’s the kind of helmet Paul was
writing about.
And so, when we consider salvation as a helmet, we can see
that it protects us from a lot of things. And again, just as we’ve seen
with the other parts of God that we’ve talked about, this is purely a defensive
thing. And I don’t mean to beat that point into the ground, but I do
think it’s interesting that all of this armor of God is designed as defensive,
not offensive. It’s not something we can attack other people with, it’s
something that protects us from attacks. We’ve had the belt of truth, the
breastplate of righteousness, our feet fitted with the gospel of peace, the
shield of faith, and now the helmet of salvation. All for our protection,
not for us to go on the attack.
Now, a helmet protects us from blows, of obviously.
It protects us from someone hitting us on the head or throwing things at our
heads. And that’s clearly important. But there’s one other thing a
helmet does.
A helmet, at least a helmet like this, blocks out
distractions. You can still see, but you only see the things you focus
on. It’s like a horse wearing blinders--all the things off to the side,
all the things that can distract us, all the things that can get us off track,
all the things that, if we saw them, we’d be tempted to chase after them even
though they’re not important--you don’t see those things. You only see the
thing you’re focusing on. And it’s the same with hearing. You don’t
hear as well with a big helmet like this on. You have to focus on what’s
being said in order to hear it.
And that’s why salvation is a helmet. The helmet of
salvation helps us focus on God and God’s word.
The world throws a lot of distractions at us. And
when I say “the world”, again, remember what the armor of God is designed to
protect us from. I don’t mean to beat this point into the ground, either,
but it’s important to remember that Paul says the struggle we have is not
against flesh and blood. It’s against the powers of the dark world and
the spiritual forces of evil.
The reason that’s important is that those powers and forces
can be very subtle. The distractions we have thrown at us are not, for
the most part, the big, obvious sins--murder, assault, stealing, things like
that. Those things can be a problem, but when we choose to do those
things, we know we’re doing something wrong. We may try to justify it to
ourselves, we may try to make excuses, but deep down, we know that if we do
those things, we’re doing something wrong.
But the thing is that those dark powers and evil forces
know that. They know that’s not the way they’re going to get to most of
us. It works for some, but most of us don’t actively make a decision to
stop following God and turn to evil. And so the dark powers and evil
forces move against most of us a lot more subtly. They don’t try to make
us actively turn against God. They just, again, try to distract us.
They try to take our focus away from God and put it elsewhere.
The things they use to distract
us are quite often not things that are obviously and clearly bad. That’s
what makes it so tempting to become distracted, because we really don’t see
anything wrong with the things we’re distracted by. And in fact, there
may be nothing wrong with those things. Except for the fact that, if we
spend too much time on them, they keep us from focusing on God. They can
keep us from seeing God and from hearing God’s word.
It can be all kinds of
things. I’ll just give a couple of examples. Sports is one of
them. You all know that I’m a sports fan. And that’s not wrong--I
don’t think it’s sinful to like sports. But it can be easy for us--easy
for me--to make sports more important than they should be. It’s easy, as
a sports fan, to start spending too much time watching sports and thinking
about sports, and that keeps us from focusing on God. Right now, of
course, there are not very many sports going on. I don’t like that, but
it’s a good chance for those of us who are sports fans to regain some
perspective. It’s time for us to put on that helmet of salvation and
realize that sometimes we may have allowed our love of sports to distract us
from focusing on God and God’s word.
Politics is another one. And these days, it seems
like everything is political. Again, it’s not sinful to pay attention to
politics. We should be informed about what’s going on in the world.
But it can be a trap. It is easy--with the best of intentions--to start
thinking that our salvation can come from the political arena. We start
thinking that if we just elect the right politicians, and if we just enact the
right policies, we can solve all the problems of the world and create God’s
kingdom on earth. And in trying to do that, it’s very easy for us to
start using God and God’s word to support whatever policies we like and
whatever candidates we support. But remember what Jesus said--his kingdom
is not of this world. Again, we need to put on that helmet of salvation
and realize that we’re allowing the current political situation and our
opinions in regard to it to distract us from focusing on God and God’s word.
Another example is our work. For most of us, our work
is very important, and it should be. But can it become too
important? Yes, of course it can. And that’s especially true when
our work is something we enjoy. The book of Ecclesiastes says that to
enjoy your work is a gift from God, and it certainly is. But of course,
it’s possible for us to misuse or even abuse God’s gifts. If our work
becomes too important to us, if it distracts us from focusing on God, then we
need to do something about that. Again, we need to put on that helmet of
salvation and get our focus back on God and God’s word.
There are lots of other things, of course.
Hobbies. Entertainment. Pursuit of money or material
possessions. Even family. Family is very important, of course--I
would never say that someone should not love their family or do things for
their family. But even family came be a distraction if it keeps us from
focusing on God and God’s word.
What is it in your life?
What is there that’s distracting you? What is it that’s making you lose
focus? I need to ask those same questions of myself, of course.
Each of us needs to ask those questions. And then, we need to answer
them. And then, when we have those answers, we need to do something about
them. We need to put that helmet of salvation back on, so that those
distractions are no longer part of our lives.
The other parts of the armor of
God can help us with this. The belt of truth can help us see when we’ve
allowed distractions to get the better of us. The breastplate of
righteousness can help us get our lives back on the right track. Standing
firm in the gospel of peace can lead us back to God’s word and get focused back
on it. The shield of faith gives us confidence that God will forgive us
for allowing ourselves to get distracted, and will help us to clearly see God’s
will for our lives again.
The dark powers and evil forces
are not going to go away, at least not until Jesus comes again. But if we
put on the armor of God, we are protected from them. And with the helmet
of salvation, we can keep our focus on God and on God’s word. And that,
of course, will lead to our salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
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