Think about how much time and effort you put into caring for your body, which is temporary. Is it more than you've put into caring for your eternal soul? Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah explains the value of enriching your soul, especially in this age of increased attacks by the enemy. From his new series on spiritual warfare, here's David to conclude his message: the battle for your soul.
And today we continue what we started yesterday, as we look at the war zone for this battle. The war zone is your soul. Your soul is the target of the enemy. He wants to destroy your soul. The Bible says Satan goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
He wants to devour your soul. He wants to keep you from the joy of the Lord. He wants to keep you from strength and and from victory. And the Bible tells us about that. It teaches us what to do in response to it.
And this series is all about the battle for your soul. Today is part two. Of the introductory message, which deals with what your soul is, why it's important, what God says about it, how the Word of God emphasizes it, and.
Sort of sets the stage for what we're going to talk about in the next few weeks. If you don't already have a copy of it, because it was sent to you, maybe you're a club member and you got one already. But you can get a copy of this book, The Battle for Your Soul, by simply sending a gift of any size to Turning Point and asking for your copy. When you get the book, we'll send you a special bookmark that will be a blessing to you as well. And now here is part two of the battle for your soul.
Your soul completes your body. Your soul connects you to God, and thirdly, your soul continues for eternity. Here's some good news or bad news, depending on who you are. You're sitting in this room today. You all have one thing in common: you have a soul that is going to live forever.
It's not true what some people teach that if you're not a Christian, when you die, you just die and that's it. You are going to be alive somewhere forever. You're either going to be alive in the presence of God in heaven, or alive in eternal hell. But you will live forever. Your soul will never die.
Your body will die one day. It will return to dust, just as Scripture says, to await the resurrection and redemption. But your soul will continue on without dying, awareness of its surroundings. Let me give you a clear-cut illustration to help you understand what I'm saying. When Rachel gave birth to her son Benjamin, the Scripture tells us she experienced hard labor and she died.
With a quiet but profound phrase, the Bible describes what happened, and so it was as her soul was departing. She called his name Ben Oni. The Bible describes Rachel's death as the time when her soul was departing. Her body remained, but Rachel was gone. Even the death of Jesus is described in similar terms.
On the cross, after bearing the weight of the world's sin, we are told that Jesus yielded up his spirit. Even more personally, he said, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." And James explains, "The body without the spirit is dead. You can't have life without the soul." This is one of the central truths of the gospel. Your life on earth is temporary, but your soul is eternal. That's why.
I'm so intentional to help you understand what it means to know God, because when you open up the part of you that God created, you open up your soul to God, and you become a Christian. You not only have gained this life, but you've escaped death in the future and gained eternal life with Jesus Christ. It also means that our decisions that we make here, especially our response to Jesus Christ, will echo throughout eternity. Jesus made this unmistakably clear. Matthew 25:46 says, "These will go away unto everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." There's only two ways, two avenues, two destinies.
You either get your soul right with God and go to heaven, or you just keep on putting it off and neglect your soul, and then you die before you get it right, and you are doomed forever. Death seals every decision. The Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon, imagined the horror of neglecting the soul. He says, "What will be the very cry of a man when dying? He looks back on his whole life and says, 'I was busy here and there.
I did nothing for Christ. My life is gone.' And then he looks into the dim future and he sees no brightness there, and he says, 'Woe is me! My soul is lost.'" I tried to gain the whole world, and I've lost my soul. Everything that I did was so much toil and effort; now it turns out to be mere trifling. For my soul is lost for ever, and all is lost for ever.
And then Spurgeon, in the next paragraph, gave me a sentence to give you. Here it is: May this dreadful ruin of soul and life and everything never happen to any one of you. Your soul is incredibly and inconceivably valuable, and just like everything else, when something is valuable, others want to take it, to claim it for their own. Satan is on a war campaign against your soul and mind. That's why you are currently involved in a war, whether you like it or not.
It's true.
So that's your soul. But what about the battle for your soul? Most people don't wake up thinking I'm stepping into a battlefield today. We wake up thinking about emails and appointments and errands and problems and obligations. But beneath all of that, behind every conversation, every decision, every temptation, there's another reality.
There is an invisible conflict shaping visible outcomes. What if we could see the invisible world? What if we had some kind of goggles, and we put these glasses on? They would enable us to see spiritual conflict encased in the world. The Bible often talks about the invisible world and the unseen realm.
Colossians says, "For by him all things were created that are in heaven, that are in earth, visible and invisible." I wish I could pass out some lenses or night vision goggles to all of us today that would allow you to see the spiritual conflict that is raging around us. One man in the Bible actually got that privilege. I don't know if you remember this story or not, but in Second Kings chapter six, the prophet Elisha was trapped in the city of Dothan by a surrounding army of Syrian soldiers who were intent on capturing him. Elisha was. With the king, and so many soldiers were coming against them.
Elijah told his servant, "Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." And I can see the servant saying, "Are you kidding me? There ain't nobody with us." Then Elijah prayed, "Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he might see." And suddenly, the servant saw the mountains full. Of angelic forces appearing as horses and chariots of fire all around, he saw what was there that before had been invisible. I can't hand out special goggles to you today, but we do have a set of biblical binoculars made up of the Old Testament and the New Testament, and both of these lenses help us to see those things that are invisible. To evade the dangers and to remember that we need not fear, because those who are for us are more than those who are against us, whether we see it or not.
What I want you to do in this sermon series is to help yourself by more clearly seeing spiritual warfare through the lens of Scripture. Whether you see it physically or not, or feel it personally or not, I'm telling you we are in a war. And Satan is trying to destroy our soul. Stu Weber wrote it this way. He said, "Every Christian is a walking battlefield.
Every believer carries deep within himself a terrible conflict. It's a flat-out knock-down, drag-out war. And when it's over, you want to be counted among those who are still standing." The Bible teaches us that we are up against an axis of evil. Made up of three things: something that's around us, something that's within us, something that's above us. The Bible calls these three things the world, the flesh, and the devil.
It was spoken of way back in the third century when Origen talked about it. Augustine of Hippo, a great church father, warned against it. Thomas Aquinas understood it better than most. And theologians were drawing together what Scripture already teaches. And one of the most repeated military maxims of all time is, "Know your enemy." Ladies and gentlemen, I am identifying the enemy today.
Here is our enemy: it's the world, the flesh, and the devil. These three things come against Christians, whether you like it or not, whether you believe it or not, whether you understand it or not. You are in a battle against those three things. Let's talk first of all about the battle around you. We are told in Romans twelve, do not let the world conform you.
Do not be conformed by the world. Philip's translation says, "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold." What is the world? It's not a globe, not a map. The world in the Scripture is the corrupted culture we live in. It's the system that drives society.
It values priorities, demands, and expectations. It's the stream that flows downhill and pressures us to follow the crowd rather than obey the will and word of God. If we are not careful, that current will pull us far away from where God intends us to be. Think of it as a magnetic field. In physical sense, the Earth acts like a giant magnet because deep inside, far beneath our feet, there is a core made mostly of molten iron and nickel that is constantly moving.
And this liquid metal swirls and flows. It creates electrical currents, and those currents generate a magnetic field that surrounds the entire planet. This is what makes compasses point north. In a cultural and spiritual sense, the world creates a magnetic field for us. The world system that pulls us toward evil.
We feel this tug whenever we review our children's textbooks, when we monitor the social media of our young people, when we visit college campuses with our students and hear their anti-Christian bias. We also feel the world's gravitational tug when we feel pressured at work to keep our Christian convictions to ourselves, or when laws are passed that threaten our freedom to live out our beliefs, and we just say nothing. We are living in a world system that is fundamentally out of step with Jesus Christ. And every week that goes by, as I study what's happening in the world, I see another evidence. Of the build-up against Christians, if you say you're a Christian, you will have many friends, but you will have at least a few enemies too.
The Bible says, "Be not conformed to the world." Don't let the world system and all its materialism and everything else pour you into its mold. Number two, we battle that which is around us, and we battle that which is inside of us. We battle the world and the flesh. What in the world is the flesh? It's not your skin on bones.
The word "flesh" is a word that speaks of your inward desires. And someone has said, "The flesh is everything you were before you met Christ." And the Bible says, "Everything you were before you met Christ is still there and still trying to bring you back to where you were before you became a Christian." And through the lusts of the flesh. We can be taunted into doing that which is evil. You say, "Well, maybe that's for some people." I don't know that I ever have the lust of the flesh. I want to tell you a story about a man who is, in my estimation, the most godly man who ever walked on this earth, apart from Jesus Christ.
His name was Paul, and I want you to listen to what he confesses about himself. We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. For what I hate, that's what I do.
And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but sin that's living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me; that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out, for I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, and this I keep on doing. Have you ever felt that way?
Yeah, of course you do. And you know how you pray when that happens? Lord, it's me again. I know we talked about this before. The most godly man I know about in the world's history is Paul.
He gave us over a third of the New Testament in his writings. But here's Paul saying, "I can't do what I want to do. What I want to do, I don't do. And the things I don't want to do, I end up doing. Woe is me." And it's not till you get to the eighth chapter where he gives us the whole ministry of the Holy Spirit that we realize none of us can withstand this if we don't depend on the Holy Spirit and ask Him to give us His strength, watch over us.
I know you've experienced that struggle. That's the struggle you have within you, because there's an enemy out there who wants to destroy you. We are fighting both the world and the flesh. God has given us bodies with real, legitimate needs, but our desires can become distorted. Even the apostle Paul spoke of disciplining his body.
He said, "On one occasion, I keep my body under." In other words, I stay in control of my body. I don't let my body destroy me.
So there's the battle around you. That's the world, and the battle within you. That's the flesh. Flesh is really the self of you. And if you want to remember that, take the word "flesh," take the H off the end, and spell it backwards, and it's the word "self." The flesh is yourself, apart from God.
And then there's the battle above you, the devil who is trying to destroy your soul. This is the battle above you. Jesus warned us about it. He said that Satan does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. He said, "I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly." Peter gave us the most serious warning, in my estimation, concerning the devil.
He said, "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." We're Christians. Sins are forgiven. We're on our way to heaven, and Satan is out to devour us. You say, "What does that mean?" We're not talking about physical devouring. What Satan wants to do is devour the person you are for any valuable ministry in the kingdom.
Devour your testimony. Devour your courage. Devour your prayer. Devour everything that's about you. That he's not about, and the Bible says he walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
He's been with you occasionally, as he has been with me. Not long after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, an artist named John McGee created a striking lithograph. It showed that John Wilkes Booth. Was holding a pistol, standing outside the balcony where Lincoln sat in Ford's Theater. Behind him in this drawing is a dark, sinister figure, whispering in Booth's ear and pointing him toward his victim.
The catastrophic effects of that one act of evil seem to come from more than just mere human wickedness. Satan was involved in that. We see the devil's footprints a lot these days. And things that happen from here and there—something just too evil for a man to come up with by himself—it's got to be of the enemy, Satan. Satan's primary goal is to keep people from receiving the free gift of eternal life, made possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
And as soon as they become Christians, you get on his hit list. Why is it that sometimes you end up doing stuff you know you shouldn't do, and you don't even want to do it, but you just do it? Because you let the old nature take control. You let the old nature, the flesh that lives in you, that didn't leave when you became a Christian, and you revert to old things. I've said this to you more and more over the years because I believe it more and more.
You have a choice. You have a choice about your natures. You remember this poem: "Two natures beat within my breast. The one is foul; the one is blessed. The one I love, the one I hate, the one I feed will dominate." Is it any wonder that Christians don't have moral strength and courage?
Or the discipline to live the Christian life. If you never feed your new nature, your soul, you're going to be weak as you can be. There's a story about a famous painting that hung in a European gallery for many years. It showed a chessboard between two figures. On one side sat the devil with a look of confident triumph, and across from him sat a young man.
Slumped and discouraged, staring at the board as though he had no moves left. One day, the great chess master Paul Morphy visited that gallery, and as he studied the painting, he became intensely focused. Finally, he said, "Bring me a chessboard," and he took the chessboard on a table and recreated the position of every piece. After a moment, he said, "There is one move." Only one move, but there is one move that can save him. And, ladies and gentlemen, that is the picture of us apart from Christ.
But Jesus stepped into our position and made the one move that could save us at the cross and through the empty tomb. He defeated sin. He defeated the world. He defeated the devil. And Scripture says he disarmed the powers and authorities, triumphing over them by the cross.
And because of Him, we are now more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. We don't have to be victims; we can be victors, we can be champions. If we trust Jesus, He will help us in these wars that we have within us, where we sometimes think we can never win. Yes, the battle is real, but the outcome is not in question. You've already won the war.
But you got some battles to fight between now and when you get to heaven. And God doesn't mean for you to lose those battles, or just go along and say, "Well, I got the main thing taken care of. I'm just going to do whatever I want." The Bible says we're to stand firm against the flesh, the world, and the devil. You have a body which will live probably somewhere in the 80s to the hundreds. And you have a soul that's going to live forever.
Now let me ask you this question: Which of two entities is the best investment? And yet, if you discover what I have discovered, you see that in our world we pour everything into the human side and almost nothing into the soul. Do you know that 2024, when we have the last Numbers: Americans spent 16.5 billion dollars on cosmetic surgery. I'm not saying we shouldn't take care of our body. What I'm trying to show you is how out of perspective things are.
We pour everything we have into something that's going to last less than a hundred years, and we can barely find time to put anything into the part of us that's going to last for eternity.
Now, here's the second part of my admonition today. We all who have children, whether we want to accept it or not, we are soul keepers. God wants us to be concerned about their soul. And today, the enemy has stacked up odds against us that are almost impossible. You want your children to come to Sunday school on Sunday and hear the word of God.
Don't put them on a softball team or a baseball team. Because as soon as you do, you're going to be in conflict. We had that conflict, and I'm not saying we didn't let our kids play on Sunday. I'm just saying, look around at all the stuff in your lifetime and mine that has been moved to a Sunday. After Sunday was protected, it just stacked the odds against us.
But those of us who are Christian parents have to learn the skill of walking uphill. We don't get to go with the flow. We want our children to have a different life, a different perspective, and there are the things we do to help that. Last year, the average parent spent five hundred dollars a month on kids' club sports, which are sports outside of the school system where you travel all over the country and play with good teams. And I know people that have quit their job.
To make sure the child has a good opportunity in hoping he becomes famous and good, we have to take responsibility for this. The world is not going to help you. The flesh is not on your side. You got to put on the whole armor of God and stand against the evil one. I hope you understand how precious your soul is.
Your soul is not an afterthought. You are not a body with a soul. You are a soul with a body. Men and women, I have been changed myself by doing this study. I have to admit, I did not realize how very vital and important the soul is in the Bible.
It is a powerful message, and I think Satan kind of blinds us to its truth until we just discover it and determine to make something good happen because we now understand how important our soul is. Are you making deposits to your soul every day that are good, and godly, and moral, motivational? Or is your soul being diluted by all the things the world wants to do to keep it from being the strong? I love it when somebody says he's a strong soul. I want to be a strong soul.
I know you do too. We're going to learn how we can do that as we go through this series together. Let me remind you again: don't forget to get your copy of the book, The Battle for Your Soul, which is available now in bookstores and from Turning Point. From Turning Point for a gift of any size. This is our opportunity to be an encouragement to you as we send this book your way.
Ask for it when you send your gift. We'll see you tomorrow. Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Senior Pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. Drop us a note to let us know how God is using this ministry in your life.
Write to Turning Point, P. O. Box thirty eight thirty eight, San Diego, California nine two one six three. Visit our website at davidjeremiah dot org slash radio, or call eight hundred nine four seven nineteen ninety three. Ask for your copy of David's new book, "The Battle for Your Soul," and learn to be victorious in spiritual warfare.
It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also stream more than 1,200 of Dr. Jeremiah's messages on demand on any screen on our streaming service, Turning Point Plus. For a monthly gift of any amount, visit turningpointplus.org for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah.
Join us tomorrow as we continue the battle for your soul on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
