Guarding Your Souls

Introduction

Mystery songs. It’s me again. Well, we don’t usually try to keep who’s speaking a secret unless I’m preaching. So we are glad you’re here. We’re especially thankful again for our visitors. We’re grateful for all who are watching on the internet. We had such a good lesson a couple weeks ago, and you’re always trying to come up with a topic that’s going to be interesting. And when Tom did that lesson on the insurance and the money and all that, everybody said it was such a good job. So we’re going to talk about insurance some more. Yeah, get 30 minutes of that. Carrie asked me at the beginning, she said, can you please thank everybody for all that they’ve done for me and her illness? So the cards, the prayers, the thoughts, all the messages and food and things like that.

So thank you for that. But now I’ve said that, if I go over, you know whose fault it is. I wasn’t planning on that. Anyway, insurance. Why do we have insurance? We have different forms of insurance, of course. Home, life, auto, funeral insurance, health insurance, supplemental insurance, and we don’t really think about insurance on a daily basis, but when you watch television, half the commercials that come on seem to be about insurance. You think there’s the mayhem guy. He’s my favorite one because he’s always causing calamity wherever he goes. I like when he’s a the Christmas tree that rolls off the car. everybody knows who Flo is. Flo is your favorite insurance sales rep, I’m sure. the farmer’s guy, where we’ve seen it, we covered, or whatever that phrase is.

And I know if I said we are farmers, all your kids almost said it out loud, bump or bump. Because we’re so used to that little jingle that it’s it’s in our heads. And I know most of you parents have to worry when you’re trying to teach animal sounds to your kids. When you show them a picture of a white duck, do they say quack or do they say afflack? You don’t know. So you have to be careful about these kind of things. So we’ve we’ve got insurance for different things. You see the slide here, it’s talking about protection, confidence, safety, security, coverage, all those elements. These are part of why we have insurance. So we really do this because the we’re trying to hedge ourselves against loss.

The loss is too great. So I think the word that really best sums up insurance is protection. And the theme of our lesson this morning, the title is guarding your souls. Because we’re trying to do that same thing with our soul, kind of like we do with insurance in the day-to-day business. We want to keep things protected. So you know all those insurance figures. This is Ben Poppin, Turpin, Ben Turpin. Ben got an insurance company. He’s a silent movie actor from the 1920s, and he got an insurance policy with Lloyds of London for I think $25,000 in case his eyes straightened out. Because he was so famous for playing this character with the crossed eyes, that was a problem. Well, I think it was mostly done for publicity’s sake, because depending on what source you see, you know.

I went to the internet, which of course is the source of all things. most sides said that it was just a gimmick. Others said that it got stuck that way. And I know that was every parent’s thing that they told us back in the day. You know, you do that enough, your eyes are gonna get stuck that way, and then they would have this as an example for that. So I got kind of concerned, but the inner internet. Jimmy Durandy in the 1930s, his nose was insured for 140,000 dollars. And I don’t know what he insured it against if he was gonna somehow misplace his nose or somebody’s gonna steal it. But he was insured. Marlene Dietrich insured her voice for a million dollars.

Bruce Steens Springsteen, excuse me, insured his voice for three and a half million or four and a half million. So we insure things that we want to protect. So we protect what? The things that are precious to us, and of course, our soul is our most important thing. But the things that we want to protect, if it’s physical, we try to build a fortress around it. We try to do things you’re gonna keep people from stealing it. So this is Fort Knox. Fort Knox have gold, according to James Bond. They have gold in there, and the gold’s behind doors, which are locked, when they have guards, they have outer walls on this facility, they’ve got machine guns, they’ve got fences, they’ve got lights, and so all this to do what?

To protect what’s inside from somebody stealing it. I’ve heard now that they’ve actually got one of those doorbell cameras too. So if they’re away, they can still keep watch on the gold. This is Windsor Castle, something a little bit older, but for the same purpose. We want to protect what’s inside. I saw, according to a documentary I saw last week, they have a lot of secrets and treasures and things like that inside of here. And so it’s the only things for the royal family to go look at and touch and things. So, you know, I envision William and Harry reenacting Scooby Doo episodes with real mummies and things like that, but supposedly they’ve got a lot of stuff locked away inside of here, protected from other people, security set up so you can’t get in there and steal.

I’ve actually written read a book one time about this. I know my mom would be so proud. I actually read a book. read a book about castles in the medieval ages, and they had the same things, walls and parapets and things like that to keep people out. But they would have other people they called sappers. And apparently they’ve had sappers for a long time. sappers were these guys who were in charge of, or whose job it was to try to break through these fortress walls, get to what’s inside. And so they would dig tunnels to try to go underneath the wall. Sometimes they would dig a tunnel and they would set up wooden structures to hold up the wall till they could get a most enough of it dug out, then they would set fire to that wooden structure to make the wall collapse.

Sometimes sappers, and there seemed to be an endless supply of these kind of people in the Middle Ages, life was short, and people were like, Well, I may die of a fever next week anyway. Sure, I’ll do it. But they would go out here and volunteer to try to scale the walls on their own, or they would go up there at night and try to secretly pick away at weak points in the wall. They would find places where there’s a rock or a brick loose and start working at it. And they would go back and back and try to weaken the walls. But it’s all around getting through those defenses, getting to what’s inside. Even if we go back further to 547 BC, a famous story of the Persian king Cyrus, when he wanted to capture the city of Sardis.

You saw it means to conquer I’m reading this. Conquer a nearly impregnable city on its steep Acropolis. He was initially frustrated. So what did he do? He set up a or he basically said, I’m gonna offer a reward to my soldiers to anyone who can find a way to scale this mountain and get inside. So one day one of his soldiers observed a Lydian soldier, that’s the people on the inside, who accidentally dropped his helmet over the city wall. Not aware that he was being observed, the Lydian climbed over the wall and made his way down to retrieve his helmet. Under the cover of night, the Persian soldier who saw this led a group of his comrades up the same route the Lydian soldier had taken.

Since the soldiers and Sardis thought this part of the wall was inaccessible, the Persians successfully entered the city, and Cyrus was able to bring the Lydian kingdom to an end. So preachers have used this little story for a long time as a cautionary tale. Be careful, don’t make a slip of. Watch out for all these little small things. Because you don’t know what small little item that may be insignificant to you is going to wind up being what brings you down. I always think about this poor guy who dropped his helmet. You know, there’s always that guy. And I think in World War II, the term for that kind of guy was sadsack, you know, and they had a cartoon about sad sack, who was always messing things up.

I asked John a little bit, do they have a more current term for that kind of person in the military now? And he goes, Well, there’s not anything you can say from the pulpit. He said, But there is one, you know, they’ll call him a Gomer, too, I think, in reference to Gomer Pyle. But you may have this guy. We’ll call this guy Gomer. And you think about, you know, that guy Gomer, who every time he’s the guy who would mess things up. And I just think he’s probably that guy. They didn’t put him on the front wall, they didn’t put him at the gate. They probably said, Where are we gonna put Gomer? Oh, let’s put him on the back wall. No way anybody’s gonna come up that back wall.

We’ll put him out there. What can he do? And it turns out that Gomer, instead of just standing there and doing nothing, somehow, I guess he’s looking over the side or whatever he’s trying to do, drops his helmet. So if you had just done nothing, that would have been better than dropping the helmet. But not only does he drop his helmet, but he goes down to get it. And in that he’s given up the whole city to the enemy. And then I think about Gomer’s parents. How when they heard that somehow a soldier had dropped his helmet, led the enemy into the city by his accident, they probably thought, oh no, that’s probably Gomer. He’s like they just knew, you know. So I always kind of feel sorry for Gomer or whatever his name was.

1. Satan Is a Sapper: Rebuild the Wall

But you think about this, you know, 2,500 years later, we’re still talking about that guy. But Satan is a sapper. By sapper, he’s trying to pick his way in. He’s looking for any way in to you. He can. And this kind of ties into what Tony was talking about last week about Balaam and how he couldn’t get him to sin one way, so he tried another. And you think about it, you know, how does he get to us? How did he get to Adam and Eve? What did he use? Well, he used their pride. They wanted to be like God. So he said, Well, we got a way. How about this? What about Cain? Well, Cain was envious of his brother Abel, so he used envy.

Moses, it was anger. King David, it was lust. Demas, it was worldliness. Peter, he used prejudice. So he’s always looking for a way, finding a way. If this way doesn’t work, I’ll try another. If I can’t tunnel in, I’ll scale over the top. And so that’s what we have to watch out for. So the walls that we have, they could be in ruins, they can be in disrepair. We need to watch out for these kind of things because we can ourselves, through our own lack of maintenance, basically, have a shabby wall that Satan can easily get through. But we can also repair that wall. And that’s what I really want to get to. Satan picks away at that wall, and we can guard our souls by rebuilding that wall on a daily basis.

You know, yeah, he’s torn something down. Go back and fix it. Don’t let your wall become in disrepair. Make it like new again. What are some of the ways we can do that? Well, three that we’ll talk about at the moment. The first one is prayer. You think about Jesus when he was in a moment of crisis or trouble or just needed to, he would turn to prayer. And this is God in the flesh still needing the avenue of prayer, still turning to prayer in moments like this. We also have Bible study. You think about Bible study. Well, what converted you to Christ in the first place? Well, I learned about Jesus. I studied the Bible. It made me want to be a better person. It made me want to take and possess that Christian livelihood and become that.

Excuse me again. that same word that converted you can also be the same word that helps you repair if you’ve let things fall into disrepair. And of course, the third way is fellowship. You can use fellowship to help rebuild that wall. You know, iron sharpens irres. We’re iron sharpens iron, excuse me, as we’re fond of saying around here, Proverbs 27 17, but don’t let Satan convince you when you’re here among the brethren that it’s a contest. Because I’ve seen congregations like that where I can’t confess any fault, I can’t show any weakness. I’ve got to make sure that everybody sees me as perfect. And so we all, you know, congregations like that can get into this little perfection war, and nobody’s real with each other.

2. Protect Your Soul Because It's Valuable

Excuse me. Well, I’m telling you no, protect your soul because it’s valuable. So, what is the value of your soul? Well, first of all, the value of your soul is because you’re made in God’s image. You see here on the slide. Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Again, he’s not talking about our physical characteristics. Pardon me. Because we see that we’re all different physically. There’s some tall, some short, some wider than others. Variations of all kinds among the human physical condition. But how are we made in God’s image? Not of the hand, but our souls. So the characteristics that we have of our souls, we have intellect, we have emotions, we have will and conscience, we have desires, wisdom, and things like that.

These are all the things that comprise your soul, and that’s what we need to protect. Again, the physical is going to go away at some point. So protect your soul. Also, the value of your soul is reflected in what Jesus has said about it. He valued your soul. Excuse me.

Well, what will a man give in exchange for a soul in Matthew 16, 26? Why? Because it’s more precious than anything there is in the world. So Jesus draws that comparison. You can have all the riches in the world, everything in Windsor Castle, everything in Fort Knox, but is that worth as much as your soul? Well, no, it up by saying this God demands, I’m sorry, God demonstrates his own love towards us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So again, comparing that whole value of the world versus your soul, he said it’s worth more than your more than the entire world’s wealth. What is it worth? It’s worth Christ dying on the cross for your soul. So keep that in mind.

3. Satan Sees How Precious Your Soul Is

Keep that in perspective of how precious your soul is. Sorry. So your pr your soul is precious. You should see how precious it is. Christ sees how precious it is. And also God, I mean, sorry, Satan sees how precious your soul is, and he wants it. This is the whole reason for the barriers and the walls. Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, walks about you like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. So he’s looking out for your soul. He’s trying to come after your soul. The next verse says, resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. So notice a couple things. You need to resist him. It’s not going to work on its own.

4. Add to Your Faith Virtue

You can’t just say, okay, I’ve got a soul. Not my problem now. No, it is your problem. You need to be active in the defense of your soul. And notice the other point. It says the sufferings you’re experienced or experiencing are experienced by the brotherhood in the world. So we’re all facing the same trials. We’re all facing the same temptations. Satan’s trying to get to all of us. And so we have this in common. And we can support each other and we can help each other out. So how can we rebuild that wall? Well, 2 Peter 1 10 and 11. Here’s some other things. We also mentioned we mentioned earlier faith. I’m sorry, prayer and brotherhood, and excuse me. And Bible study. And also, 2 Peter 1 10 and 11 says we can use faith.

We can add to our faith virtue. Well, faith is what? Faith is the basic foundation for the rest of these things. The foundation we can add to that virtue. So putting that faith to work. James 2 says faith without works is dead, and virtue is that activity. Knowledge. So we need to be ever learning, ever studying, like we talked about before, to put that into practice. We can use temperance. Excuse me. What is temperance? Temperance, like we said before, is that use of your will, that willpower to do what’s right. Use your patience. So you add to it patience, the ability to endure, the ability to not only endure suffering and the temptations of Satan, but also being patient with others. And then finally, godliness and brotherly kindness and charity.

See that godliness is the desire to do and be what’s right, hating evil. I think God hates evil, and I need to take that disposition on myself. Be like God in that regard. Brotherly kindness is your attitude towards everyone else. Do you see yourself as a servant? Do you see your role as helping other people who are struggling? That’s who we are. That’s what we’re here for. Oftentimes people try to say, Well, there’s everybody, and it’s my job to kind of elevate myself. I want to rise up above. I’ll climb up above and be above everybody else so I can get the glory. I can get that spotlight. And that’s not how we’re supposed to be as Christians. Instead of looking at it that way, see, well, here’s everybody, and look down and notice, you know, there’s some people below who’d like to get to that level.

Maybe I can reach down instead of trying to reach up and exalt yourself, reach down and try to help somebody else up to that level. That’s brotherly kindness. And of course, charity, loving action, doing those things. Don’t just say, Oh, yeah, I acknowledge that God is king. I acknowledge that there’s a duty to be performed. But actually, go out there and do it. Love your fellow man and be active in that. And it says later on about these Christian virtues says, therefore, brethren, be even more diligent. Oh, thank you very much. Make your call and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never stumble. So for an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Even if you do something small, like give a choking man water, you know. It’s thankful.

Oh, thank you. I always have this problem in the fall. Like if I need to talk any amount of time at all. But it’s little things like that. That’s a great example. You know, you can find what other people need and do it for them. I think Mike said it the other day. He says, you know, instead of asking, can I help you? Just say, I’m gonna help you. I’m gonna bring this over, I’m gonna help you with this, I’m gonna help you with that. And people are much more likely to say, sure, I really do need that. Thank you. Wednesday night, we got cookies from the old Linux. I don’t know why, I still haven’t. But thank you. It was very sweet. Carrie appreciated it.

5. Don't Get Complacent

We appreciated it. It was very nice. But those little things, you know, helping each other out in times of struggle are very nice. So, another thing we need to look out for is complacency. Don’t get complacent. So, what if you’ve been doing this for a long time? It says, and let us not grow weary doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. So, growing weary and losing heart, that’s a problem that can happen when you’ve been a Christian for a long time. It’s like, oh, I’ve just done this for so long. You know, you don’t have that initial buzz that you had when you were a new Christian. And you’ve got to come up with the motivation yourself a lot of times.

And a lot of times people are just like worn down and they don’t want to keep going. Well, we can get tired, we can get careless or sloppy. We can get like Gomer and drop our helmet over the side. You don’t want to be that. So, Carl Rick, a University of Mission psychologist who studies disaster. he was studying some disasters where the Navy ships had actually run into each other and was trying to see what was the root cause of all that. He says in his article, he says, Many accidents have been triggered by very experienced workers who grew overconfident and complacent. He says, Wilderness firefighters, for example, are most likely to be killed or injured in their tenth year on the job. That’s just about the time they start to see to think that they’ve seen it all.

You think about that, it’s not the rookies who get injured the most, it’s guys who have been doing that for 10 years. You think about Christianity, you know, people early on can be so excited that they’re watching out for everything, but after a while, it doesn’t really matter if I let this slip in. So be careful about that. In another article, the same another author named James Megus, he was talking about the little mess that they had with the Oscar Awards one year. He says staying focused while doing simple repetitive tasks is a challenge for most people, but there is evidence to suggest that less senior workers and sometimes more attentive are sometimes more attentive. The anxiety that comes from being somewhat new to a job appears to help keep people alert.

So they mix them up because the new people are nervous and they’re watching things. In mountaineering, the majority of accidents happen on the descent, not on the way up. This is an understandable human tendency. After working hard to achieve a certain goal, it is only natural to relax a bit when you think you’re over the hump. So that’s what we have to watch out for. Complacency. You can get complacent about your Christianity and think, I’ve got this thing figured out. Nothing’s gonna happen bad. I’m not in any trouble at all. In another or another article on Slade, they were comparing the deep water horizon accident with the earlier space shuttle or space shuttle challenger disaster. Speaking of another disaster, investigator says over the years they have systematically diluted themselves through a process called normalization of deviance.

Normalization of deviance. And so what this is this here’s how the normalization of deviance works, and he’s gonna talk about the space shuttle.

NASA assigned a working group which dutifully studied the issue and determined that leaks would be manageable as long as they didn’t exceed a certain threshold. They redefined evidence that deviated from an acceptable standard so that it became the standard. So you see, every time something didn’t go wrong, that redefined the standard form and it became acceptable. So it wasn’t acceptable at first. Now it is. You see where this is going. Sure enough, small booster leaks were soon seen as routine during shuttle launches. The problem had been normalized. But as shuttle missions continued, the leaks kept getting bigger. Each time NASA repeated the process and again determined that the SEAL failures were acceptable as long as it didn’t exceed certain even higher thresholds. NASA had crept right to the edge of what would cause a mission failure, all the while convinced that it was operating safely.

So you see, nothing’s gone wrong. Let’s keep launching them like this. So what finally happened? Then came something NASA had not anticipated. A launch day so cold that it made the rubber seals hard and brittle. The huge resulting lake burned a hole in the shuttle’s external fuel tank, as you see in the slide. Of course, you know the rest of the story. So we have to guard ourselves against the same thing, this normalization of deviance. We let things creep in. We let our standards slip over time if we’re not careful. If I wear something I shouldn’t, but nobody says anything, nobody calls me on it, nobody you know, lightning didn’t strike me, or I say something, or I do something. Hey, that wasn’t so bad.

You know, then suddenly my standards slip a little bit, and more and more and more each time. And finally, what? Disaster happens. So we can take that same approach. says things were sometimes well, see our next slide. It says now the spirit oops, hit the wrong button. Says, now the spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed deceiving to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with the hot iron. So this is how they chose to address it in the Bible. That it’s a searing of your conscience that represents that normalization of deviance being not deviant behavior, but deviating from your standard. So we let our conscience get seared.

We get used to things that are wrong.

6. Guard Your Soul with the Armor of God

Why not? Don’t let yourself get callous and seared. So finally, we have just a few minutes left. Guard your soul with the armor of God. We can’t get out of here about talking about the armor of God. And you remember Paul wrote in Ephesians 6 10 through 17, says, Finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God that you’ll be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Again, that whole point that the devil’s trying to break in and steal, trying to get to you. And his analogy is that you’ve got armor on instead of a castle wall. It says, For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers against the powers, against the world forces of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

So he says it’s not a physical battle we’re fighting, it’s a spiritual battle. Then verse 13 says, Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist any evil day, having done everything to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, having girded up your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. In addition to all, take up the shield of faith, which you’ll be able to extinguish, all the flaming arrows of evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. You see all these things that a soldier would have. And people have used this in lessons many times, BBS and all that.

But you see, all these things can be defensive. Even that sword can be used in defense in battle. And so he’s saying, Yeah, you’ve got to protect yourself. Satan’s trying to get to you. And from head to toe, the soldier is covered. Well, not his knees, apparently. But you see that these soldiers, they have protection, though, from all these different attacks that can be put into them. Who says, Do what? Use truth so you can spot these lies that Satan can use against you. Live in righteousness so you’re not already in the enemy territory. You’re already not in a bad spot where you can be taken. You’re in the right spot, so you’re fighting a home battle. Be prepared. Don’t be caught off guard. You know, you know there’s going to be things that happen.

Be ready for it. If you think nothing’s going to happen, well, you’re not prepared. use your faith, your loyalty to God. Be confident in the victory. Because that’s what most of the message of the Bible is trust me and you will win. Salvation. it’s a defensive fight. You’re already saved. He’s trying to take you from where you are. So understand that. He has to knock you off. And of course, the word, the answers of the attack. And again, the example of Christ, whenever he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, he spoke the word of truth to him as a response. So why is this here? God knows that you’re going to have attacks to fight off and be well equipped, well equipped in the day.

Conclusion

So the question you need to ask yourself I know that Satan is attacking me through blank, and this is something every one of you can answer for yourself in your own mind. Is he attacking me through greed or pride or prejudice, lust, anger, hatred, envy? These are all kind of like assertive type avenues, you might say, things that are about me where I want to get this or I want to gain that. But you can also have other types of attacks, introverted attacks. Maybe he’s gonna use fear. Are you afraid of things? There are a lot of people who live in a lot of fear. sadness and loneliness, depression. You know, we have enough issues with the other stuff, but we also don’t often recognize that depression and loneliness and fear and worry and things like that can also be an avenue for Satan to attack.

So be aware of that and work on these things. hurricanes. Hurricanes are gonna come. We know that. Can we just say, well, I’m just not gonna think about hurricanes, and therefore it’s not gonna be a problem. No, you have to be ready. You have to have some kind of plan. And we see this every spring. Hurricane season approaching, and they’ll have the whole list that they’ll publish. And they used to, when we were kids in the newspaper, they would give us a new hurricane map every year. We’d line it up every summer. So another thing about I remember the picture of the Roman soldiers. I chose that picture. You cannot believe how long it takes when you have slides to pick the right picture.

But I chose that picture of all the Roman soldiers because they had several of them. And I wanted to say that because we all had that same armor. Okay, so we’re one army, we’re all wearing the same armor. We have the same protection. And so just like I was talking about earlier, we can rely on each other. We can use each other in our defense to help rebuild our walls like they did in the Old Testament. We can do that thing today. So remember, your soul is precious. God knows it, you know it, Satan knows it. He’s trying to get it from you. You’ve got defenses, he’s trying to break through those defenses, but don’t let them. And God has provided you the means to defeat Satan in this.

So keep that all in mind as you go throughout your lives. if you have a need, if you have a desire to become a member of the church, you can do that. If you have some reason you want to come forward, please do that now as we stand and sing.