A Hiding Place

Have you ever heard the term “beginner's luck?” It refers to this uncanny ability people often have when they are attempting something new for the first time. Whether that is baking a macaroon or building a wooden bench, there seems to be some strange phenomenon where people can nail it the first time they try it. If I had to guess where something like that comes from it is that beginners know that they are beginners. They understand that they are weak in this and need to listen carefully to instruction. They assume that everything that they are told is important and needs to be followed to the letter. And what do you know, when you follow expert guidance to the letter, you often find that you complete the task with surprising skill. However, as you go for additional attempts, beginner's luck begins to wear off. You stop paying as close attention as you used to, or as you have started to refine your craft with those little extra techniques, you’ve begun to ignore the basics. 
What we have here today is a very easily forgotten basic in the Christian life: Faith. After we have been walking with Jesus for a while, there can be (not always) a tendency to forget how dependant we are on Him. This is particularly true if you have spent a lot of time reading and studying without prayer . When you do that you can quickly turn Jesus into a philosophical interest rather than your Savior. Perhaps this is why Paul talks about the shield of faith in such prominent terms. We will also be looking at the helmet of salvation today, but as you will see, these two pieces of armor function in very similar ways. We are going to be answering two questions today: What is faith and How does it work? 
Paul notably begins by saying that “in all circumstances” we should take up the shield of faith. This is explicitly defined as a defensive weapon with which we will extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. The helmet of salvation also is a defensive part of the armor. With the helmet, you protect the most vital (and vulnerable) part of your body, and with the shield, you protect everything else.
The shield that is in Paul’s mind here would have been a roughly body-length shield. It would have been made of wood or metal and often wrapped in a water-soaked piece of leather. With this shield, you would be able to place yourself behind it and any flaming arrows flung at you would simply stick into the soaked shield and extinguish. This would allow you to either hold your ground or advance on the enemy without fear of their arrows. This would mean the enemy could basically do nothing to you until you got much closer. This means it is important to keep your shield up! Every part of your body is going to have to be stuffed behind that shield at all times! Even the smallest part of the exposed body can lower your effectiveness in the field. An arrow to the foot is not going to kill you, but it is going to hobble you. 
So how does faith really work? In our culture, faith is often seen as a power in and of itself. People talk about the power of faith or the power of believing as if the power to get through your life comes from the fact that you believe you can. It makes for a great coffee mug but a terrible way to live life. That’s just whistling in the dark, pretending. The power of belief doesn’t work on your credit card bill (trust me, I’ve tried). You can believe all you want that it’ll just go away, but that doesn’t change anything.
Faith doesn’t get its power from believing but whom you are believing in. Look at Luke 7:1-10. The Centurion wasn’t putting faith in faith. He was putting faith in Jesus. The same is said for the woman in Matthew 9:21. She knew that even the smallest faith in Jesus’ hands is a faith with the firmest foundation. It is not trust in trust. It is trust in Jesus. Putting your faith in yourself is going to fail, but putting your faith in Christ never will ultimately. Will you still suffer? Yes, but trusting in Jesus will keep you going in the battle.
This is the picture that Paul has of faith. It is a supreme trust in God Who keeps the flaming arrows from landing. That’s an important distinction. It isn’t your faith that keeps these arrows from landing, but rather it is faith that connects you to the One who keeps the arrows from landing (Duguid, 66-7). 
So what does this look like, practically? This is something that the Bible answers for us: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." - Hebrews 11:1. Let’s break these things down.
“Assurance of things hoped for.” How do you know that something is going to happen? Well, the future is always uncertain in our lives, isn’t it? I had originally planned to deliver this sermon last week, only to get the stomach bug the night before! The only way that we can be sure that something will happen is if we can look back on it. You will be sure that you will make the team only after you make the team. You will be sure you will ace the test only after you get your grade back. You will only know that you will work at the same job until you retire if you retire from that job. That is how everything in our lives work! That’s why we have the saying “hindsight is 20/20” meaning that we only see things clearly once they are past. We who are now post 2020 know this more personally than ever.
However, faith operates completely differently. Faith, Biblically defined, is the exact opposite of “hindsight is 20/20.” Faith looks forward to the future with hope and is absolutely assured that it is going to be good. It sounds counter-intuitive, but faith allows a person to look forward to the future and see the whole picture, the entire context of the universe and one’s place in it. Faith views the future with God’s perspective—a much clearer vision. With God’s perspective on things, the saying becomes, “foresight is 20/20.” Faith looks forward and sees what Paul says in Romans 8:18, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” That is faith that looks at things in context, an eternal context. I am able to endure a surgery if I know that on the other side of it, I will be healthier. Even if it means weeks of recovery, I am willing to endure the suffering because I know (or at least think that I know) I will feel better in the end. Faith is able to do that with the rest of our lives! Instead of a statistical likelihood that I will be healed after a surgery, I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I will be healed of all maladies in heaven because I am trusting God, not what has typically happened to people. And I know that that suffering is preparing me for more: 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
The conviction of things not seen. This is another way of talking about faith but in slightly different terms. If you are going to pull out of your driveway to head to a week-long vacation, and someone says, “Are you sure you locked the back door?” What are you going to do? If you’re like me, you’re going to think about it for a second, huff, get out of the car and go—what?--look at it! I need to see that the lock is engaged for me to know that it is locked and not have to think about it the entire time I am on vacation!
Once again, faith doesn’t work like that. Faith works without seeing. Going back to the door lock example, let’s imagine that Jesus is going with us on vacation, and I say, “Did I lock the back door?” and Jesus responds, “Don’t worry about it; I’ve got it all under control.” My functional response is often, “Lord, that wasn’t the question I asked. I asked if I locked the door.” I want to see the lock. I can understand a lock. But what I don’t see is Jesus has secured the door with something way more powerful.
That’s how it often works in our lives, isn’t it? We know that Jesus provides for us. But we feel better when we can see the bank account numbers reflecting that. We know that Jesus is watching over our children. But we feel better when we can see that they are behaving themselves. We know that God works all things together for our good, but we would sure like to see exactly how that is going to shake out. When Granger was even younger, he, for whatever reason, never trusted us to feed him. We fed him constantly, but he would not stop squalling until the food was in front of him on a plate! He could see us preparing the food, getting the bowl out, grabbing the spoon, but no matter what, he would not be assured until he was holding the food in his hands. I’m like that. That is not the response of faith. Faith looks to a future we can’t see and is completely comfortable. 
Satan’s whole goal in this is to get you to doubt God. Either God hasn’t been good to you, or God could have been better to you. Those are his two messages. It is only when we put our faith in Christ, our trust, down do those arrows land. You aren’t going to fight very well for a general whom you think doesn’t have your best in mind. If you trust in Christ’s love for you and His power to accomplish the purposes of His love, then you are pretty well impervious to Satan’s arrows.
Now, this works as long as you keep that shield up over every area of your body, your life. Sometimes we try to apply our faith just to Sunday morning or only what we think in our heads without it changing how we live. This we must not do. This is why we have to take up the shield of faith in “all circumstances.” There is not a moment in your life in which you do not need to take up your shield. In fact, it is precisely when you think you don’t need to take it is when you need to take it up the most.
Maybe you’ve heard the story of the Union Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick from the Civil War. He was warned not to go near the road as Confederate sharpshooters had been racking up Union casualties all morning. However, he soon forgot about the warning, and went out into the road to do something. When his soldiers shouted their warnings about the sharpshooters, he responded, “They couldn’t shoot an elephant at this distance,” at which point he was immediately shot in the face and killed instantly by those sharpshooters, forever cementing his reputation as speaking the most ironic words ever uttered in battle (link).We always need to be ready, and with God’s armor on, we are. 
As we come to a close, let’s look at the helmet of salvation. This one is a distinct piece of armor, but it serves a similar purpose. In 1 Thessalonians 5:8, Paul calls this piece of armor the hope of salvation, and this would work similarly here. Ian Duguid gives us an illustration of how this would work. Let’s suppose that you receive two pieces of mail one day. The first envelope contains the true news that an uncle you didn’t know you had has passed away and left you ten million dollars as an inheritance. It is official, correct, and assured that this money is yours.Then, after a deep breath, and once your hands stop shaking, you open the next envelope which is a parking ticket—costing you the grand sum of fifty dollars. Now, in light of the first letter informing you of your new multi-millionaire status, how much is that second letter going to impact your day? Probably not all that much. It would seem very silly to be bent out of shape over something so little in comparison to so much. The same is true of our salvation (The Whole Armor of God, 83). As we said earlier, Paul points out in Romans that our present trials are not worth comparing to the glory that awaits us, and it is that knowledge, that certainty of heaven is what gives us protection from discouragement. This is one effect of this piece of armor similar to the shield of faith. 
But there is something else that the helmet of salvation does: gives us motivation for obedience. Ian Duguid again points out that the helmet of salvation, the knowledge that we get to heaven by Jesus’ work and not our own, also gives us the boldness to do risky (or repetitive) things for the Lord (84-85). It is hard to be a bold witness to your coworkers when you think you have a lot to lose. But when you know that you have the smile of God even as Man frowns, you can be bold. The same is true for the mundane grinding faithfulness. Both take great courage! There is one amount of courage that it takes to pack a backpack and walk into the jungles looking for a tribe who has never heard the gospel before! But there is another kind of courage that gives up a career, gives up everything that one has worked for to raise children, battling for their obedience, raising them to love Jesus, working for decades with no clear indication for how it is going to turn out. The helmet of salvation allows both of those Christians in their respective callings to stick it out. 
So how do we apply this to our lives? How do we strengthen the effects of the shield and helmet? To borrow one last time from Duguid, he illustrates a young lady dreaming of her wedding day. She surrounds herself with all of the beautiful things, flowers, table settings, dresses, and just loses herself in the beauty of that day imagining what it will be like. It is fun to prepare a wedding in your mind you don’t have to budget for. You can just let the joy of the possible wash over you. That’s what we need to do with our salvation (87). Spend time thinking about what your life is going to be like in heaven, and then strive to live that kind of life now (86)! You can enjoy heaven today! You can start imagining that wedding of the lamb! Think about this, dream about this, surround yourself with things that remind you and educate you about heaven, and you will enjoy those benefits (87). 
And when all else fails, when it seems impossible to lift up your shield or take comfort from your helmet, remember the Old Testament words from Psalm 28:7. Ultimately, God is your shield (67). He will not let you fall away completely. Yes, you can make life harder on yourself with that shield down. Yes, you can make yourself less effective on the battlefield, but God is not going to let you fall away completely, just like Jesus did for Peter (75).        
You are His, and He will never let you go. 

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