(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Alright, the verse that I wanted to focus on in Proverbs 25 is verse 28, which reads, He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls. And I especially wanted to focus on the last two words there, without walls. And I want to preach about tonight having walls in our life and the importance of walls. Here the Bible compares a person who has no rule over their spirit to someone that's like a city without walls. And you say, well why would that be a bad thing? What's wrong with a city not having walls? Well if you would go to Nehemiah chapter 13. And the Bible has a whole book in it about walls, about building a wall, and that's the book of Nehemiah. But when we think about walls, some people today they look at walls as a bad thing. In fact, I was driving around and in Chandler I saw that there was a church that was called without walls. That was the name of the church, you know, without walls. And sure enough, underneath the roof I saw all kinds of walls, you know. So, you know, but they say without walls, like that's a good thing. We need to get rid of all walls. And I remember when I was a teenager I used to go to this really liberal rock and roll type church and they had this really popular song they would sing almost every week, let the walls fall down, you know, let's get rid of all the walls. And so a lot of people look at walls as being a bad thing, but really in the Bible, and we're going to talk about some bad walls a little bit later in the sermon, but in the Bible walls are a good thing. In fact, even when we get to heaven, you know, even when we're on the new heaven and the new earth in Revelation 21 and the Bible describes the heavenly Jerusalem, you know, the streets of gold and the gates of pearls, well guess what, in order to have gates of pearls you have what? A wall around the city. And the Bible even tells us that that wall is 144 cubits high. You say, well how high is that? A cubit is a foot and a half and the wall of the city is 144 cubits. That's a pretty high wall, okay? And so walls in the Bible have a function and a purpose and in the book of Nehemiah we read about a man who in chapter 1 is distraught when he hears about the condition of Jerusalem and how Jerusalem is broken down and how Jerusalem has no walls, just as the Bible compared a person who has no rule over their own spirit. What are the purposes of walls? I've thought of three purposes tonight that walls serve and the first purpose that they serve is the obvious purpose, they serve to protect the city. The main purpose of the wall around the city is to protect it. Now obviously it's there to physically protect from a foreign invader, you know, someone who would come in and want to do harm, but not only that, the wall is there to protect spiritually. You know, when the Bible talks about a man who doesn't have any rule over his own spirit being like a city without walls, basically what it's saying there is that this guy, just anything go, there's nothing to protect his spirit, there's nothing to protect his life. I mean think about it. A man that has no rule over his own spirit, what does that mean? It basically means a guy who just does whatever he wants, just feels, he just lets his feelings just guide him into whatever. I mean whatever he feels like doing, that's what he's going to do. Whatever comes naturally, he just does it, almost like an animal that just does what they want, just no reasoning of right and wrong and morals and obeying the Bible or anything like that. And he said, you know, if you're like that, you're like a city that's broken down without walls. Now here in Nehemiah 13, we're at the end of the book of Nehemiah, so Nehemiah's already gone there and he's rallied all the people to build this wall around the city. So when we're in chapter 13, the wall already exists. Watch how Nehemiah puts this wall into use in Nehemiah 13. It says in verse 15, in those days, saw I in Judah some treading wine presses on the Sabbath, and bringing in sheaves and lading asses, as also wine, grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I testified against them in the day wherein they sold vittles. Now this is a major law in the Old Testament, is that they were not supposed to be working on the Sabbath. Not only that, but this is something that the government was supposed to enforce. Nehemiah is the governor of the city of Jerusalem at this time. And he's the boss and he sees all these people selling on the Sabbath, running businesses on the Sabbath. He's seeing all these merchants coming in on the Sabbath and doing all kinds of business. It says in verse 16, there dwelt men of Tyre, also therein, that's a foreign city, which brought fish and all manner of ware, and sold on the Sabbath day unto the children of Judah and in Jerusalem. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing is this that ye do in profane the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God, bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? Yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath. And it came to pass, that when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the Sabbath, I commanded that the gates should be shut, and charged that they should not be open till after the Sabbath. And some of my servants said I at the gates, that there should no burden be brought in on the Sabbath day. So the merchants and sellers of all kind of ware lodged without Jerusalem once or twice. Then I testified against them, and said unto them, Why lodge ye about the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you. From that time forth came they no more on the Sabbath. So not only is the wall there to protect against a foreign invader, a military invasion, you know, Nehemiah is using the wall here to basically keep sin out, if you think about it. Because these guys are coming in from foreign cities and they want to sell stuff on the Sabbath, they want to work on the Sabbath, and they're corrupting the people and their wicked ways are rubbing off on the children of Israel and the children of Judah there. And so basically, Nehemiah shuts the gate and he uses that wall to lock out these people that are bringing sin in. And then it says that they're lodging outside the wall. They're basically just camping out outside the wall trying to get in. And he tells them, you know, don't even do that, you know, I'm going to lay hands on you. But look if you look at Hosea chapter number 5. Hosea chapter number 5, toward the end of the Old Testament, the book of Hosea, chapter number 5, and the Bible reads in verse 4, They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God, for the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them, and they have not known the Lord. The Bible talks about the importance of framing our doings. What does that mean? Having boundaries by which we live. So the first purpose of a wall is to protect the city. And if we're going to be one that rules our own spirit, basically we need walls in our life in order to protect ourselves from sin, to keep sin out of our life. Look, we need to live a life with boundaries. We need to have rules that we live by. And it seems like in church today that's like a bad word, rules. Now look, I'm not for a church having a bunch of rules and trying to rule over the people. I'm definitely not for the government trying to rule over every aspect of my life. But you know what? When it comes to myself, I need to have rules for myself. And when it comes to my family, I need to have rules for my family. And when it comes to God, He definitely has rules for us that are found in the Bible. And we need to live our life by rules. Now a lot of people think that freedom is a life that has no boundaries, no walls, and no rules. And they think, wow, to really live the free life, I'd have no walls. I'd have no boundaries. I'd have no restrictions. I would just do whatever I felt like doing. But here's the thing. If you live your life that way, you will soon find that there's no freedom in that life. And here's why. The Bible says that whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. So the person who is truly free is the one who's making their own decisions, right? They're doing what they want to do. They're living a life by their own rules that they've chosen and adopted. You know, whether that be the laws of God or whatever rules they adopt. You know, in order to be free, you're choosing your own destiny and making your own rules or choosing to follow God's rules, which is what we should be doing. But you see, the person who has no walls, no rule over their own spirit, no boundaries, they do not frame their doings whatsoever, they become a slave unto their own sin nature and they become a slave unto their own lust. That's not freedom. You see, if I were to live a life that was just completely without walls and completely without any rule over my spirit, and let's say I were to go out and just, you know, just drink and party and fornicate or commit adultery or whatever, okay, you'll find that people who live their life that way, they don't live a free life because they become enslaved to addictions. Many times people become alcoholic or drunkards. You know, people become addicted to cigarettes, they become addicted to drugs. You know, and then you say, oh, we're just going to have free love. You know, forget marriage, that's too much like walls. You know, marriage is too much like a boundary or a wall. I just want to be free, right? Well, you know what, is it free when you talk to these guys who fathered children with three different women and it's all being deducted from their paycheck? Is that freedom? I mean, I talked to a guy, he had like 800 bucks coming out of his paycheck every month or whatever it was. I mean, you know, that's not freedom. You know, you're enslaved by the stupid decisions you're making. You know, when you go out and you just live a life, okay, think about this. What about your alarm clock? That slave master that is your alarm clock, that task master that cracks the whip on you every day. You say, man, I just want freedom, I'm going to throw out my alarm clock. Yeah, but how free are you going to be when you don't have money to pay the bills? You say, man, I don't want to have any authority, I don't want to have any boundaries, I don't want to have any rules. Okay, well, here's the thing, in order to make money, you have to have a job. And when you get a job, guess what that job's going to have? Rules, boundaries. And they're going to tell you, you need to be here at this time. And you need to show up and you need to be dressed a certain way and you need to behave yourself a certain way. And you know, as soon as you start living the free life, okay, and you don't want to set the alarm clock and you don't want to dress the way they tell you to dress, you're going to find yourself not having any money. And guess what? When you don't have the money to pay your own way, you're not free. Now you're relying on other people. And some of these people that are so free as a bird, yet you see them always having to live with other people, live off other people. You know, it's like they never have their own thing going. That's not really freedom, you know, when they're having to always rely on other people all the time. Think about that, okay? And, you know, if we wanted to find somebody who just really has no boundaries and say, wow, this is the model of freedom, you know, we can find homeless people. I mean, they don't have to get up, they don't have anybody breathing down their neck, any deadlines. But you know what, they're not really living a life of freedom, are they? Because they have a lot of other things that are enslaving them, you know, addictions or sin. And the Bible says that whosoever committed sin is the servant of sin. So you kind of have a choice in your life. Are you going to choose to frame your doings? Are you going to choose to erect the walls in your life of God's commandments and say, you know, these are the boundaries, this is how far I'm going to go and no further. I'm going to keep myself within the framework of God's rules. Or you can choose to, you know, go without walls and, you know what, sin will begin to erect walls around you. And they won't be the walls that you choose. And you'll become enslaved to sin, okay? So you're going to live a much freer life when you build the wall of your own choosing than to just have no walls and then the devil's going to build the walls around you. You know, sin is going to enslave you. And so we need in our life boundaries, rules, structure. You know, you see people today raising their children with no rules, no boundaries, no structure. And the children, they grow up miserable. And they grow up and they don't know how to live their life. They don't know how to succeed. But go, if you would, to Romans 13. Romans 13, we need walls around our life. We need rules and structure and boundaries in order to protect us from sin. The Bible says in Romans 13 verse 14, "...but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof." You know what that's saying? Don't put yourself in a position where you have the ability to fulfill the lust of the flesh. Don't make provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof. You know, basically what this is saying is, you know, let's say you're a single guy, right? And you say, oh, I'm dating, you know, I want to get to know this girl. So we're going to do it at this apartment by ourselves. That's how we're going to date. We're going to have dinner at her apartment by ourselves. Now does that sound like a situation that could easily lead into sin? When you're just alone in an apartment somewhere and, you know, the bedroom's right there and you say, oh, I'd never commit that sin. Well the Bible says, "...let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." You know, and the wise single person, the wise young man, the wise young lady would set up boundaries in their life and say, you know what, I'm going to date and I'm going to get to know, you know, someone that I think about getting married to or someone that's a prospect, you know, in an area that's a safe environment where I can be around other people and be in public places and not be in an apartment somewhere, in a hotel room somewhere, you know, in some place that's secluded where sin is, you know, it's easy for sin to take place. And you say, well, you know, I can handle the temptation. You know what, greater people than you and I have given in to sin and given in to the lust of the flesh and therefore if we're smart we'll just build walls to protect ourselves and live our life in a way that protects us. You know, and even as an adult and even as a married man, you know, I don't go over to a woman's house alone and just go hang out at her house or spend time there because, you know, not because I think, oh, you just think you can't control yourself, you know. No, that's not it at all. It's just a smart person just has boundaries that keep them very far away from sin because I'm not trying to see how close I can get just to prove how righteous I can be in the face of all manner of temptations. You know, it's better to just set up boundaries and walls and rules to just protect and just keep the sin outside the gate and then when sin starts lodging outside your wall you go tell it to get out of here or you're going to lay hands on it, you know. You want to get sin as far away from you as you can and not see how close you can get to sin, okay. And even as a married man, you know, that's why I will protect, and not only that, let's say I do just have, you know, the ability to resist any and all temptation, okay. But wait a minute, people could still also lie about you, you know, when you're sitting there and spending a bunch of time alone with, you know, another woman. People are going to say, well, hey, what's going on with Pastor Anderson and so and so or whatever and you say, well, you're the pastor but you know what, even you should try to protect your testimony and your reputation in that way. So it's to protect your reputation and your testimony but it's also to not make provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof. You know, that means if you're trying to quit smoking, you know, you can't have a pack of cigarettes right there and say, well, I'm going to quit smoking and that's why, you know, if people are married and one of them tries to quit smoking and the other one keeps on smoking, it makes it almost impossible for them to quit smoking. Why? Because that provision to fulfill the lust of the flesh is always right there. They can't just get rid of all the cigarettes because their spouse always has a cigarette on hand and then they're constantly smelling it and thinking about it and seeing it and it's going to constantly lead them into temptation and make it easy for them to sin. You know, and that's another thing about the hellavision. You know, you have the TV in your house, basically the temptation is there to turn that thing on and watch all kinds of sinful things because it's just so easy to just turn that on and watch it and just, you know, there it is. All the sin and all the smoke and you know what, today there's a lot of filth and sin on the internet today. Now the thing about the internet, and people will sometimes call me a hypocrite because I'm against TV but I'm okay with the internet, but here's the colossal difference between the TV and the internet. With the internet, you choose where to go. It's like walking into the library. You know, if we walked into the library, I guarantee you we could find some pretty perverted books. What do you think? If we walked into a public library? But does that mean that the library is a place that we should never visit? It's a wicked place? No. But the thing is, we ought not go down that aisle at the library. You know, we should stay away from that and there are plenty of good things at the library but there are also bad things if we go down the wrong aisle. The difference with TV is that everything's the wrong aisle. You know, when it comes to TV, it's the devil's smut and the devil's filth and the devil's lies basically on every channel. I mean, and you can say, oh, there's all these good channels. You know, I don't know what cable or satellite is doing now or whatever but all I know is that back when I had a TV and when I watched TV, every channel was bad. I mean, yeah, the commercials. So even if you find a wholesome show, you know, you'll find a show that you say, oh, it's a good clean show. And then, you know, next thing you know, you know, it's the Victoria's Secret commercial comes on. You know what I mean? And you're just trying to watch some clean programming and then some filth comes on. So there's just a lot of temptation there. There's a lot of sin there. And I'll tell you something, people who watch TV a lot, they get really used to it. And I remember I was challenged before and this is, you know, I heard this challenge that said, you know, just stop watching TV for like one month, then come back to it. And when you do that, you'll be shocked. Because I remember in the, because I didn't just get rid of TV overnight cold turkey. I grew up watching a lot of TV. You know, you ever hear these statistics about how much TV people watch, you're like, no, that can't be true. Or it says they watch it for like seven hours a day. You know, in my life, it was true. Okay, growing up, I'm just telling you like, that statistic, they must have been checking me or something, you know, because I watched a lot of TV. And you know, as I got, when I got married was really when I, was when I quit watching TV almost completely. But I would still, I never had a TV. Since we've been married, we just haven't had TV in our house. But and that was like 13 years ago almost. But basically, we would still go to other people's house and watch it sometimes. We'd watch it in my parents' house, watch it at a friend's house, whatever. But it's just amazing as we just didn't watch it for weeks on end, then when we would watch it, we'd be really shocked by it. Just all the homos and all the smut and all the blasphemy. But you know, when you watch it every day, it's like the frog in the hot water, you just get kind of used to it. But you know, if you decide that, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to watch all this garbage on TV, the best thing you do is just get rid of your TV, you know, just kind of remove the temptation. But you know, we need to also be careful because, you know, with the internet, there's a, there are a lot of good uses for the internet. Like for example, there's this really good website called faithfulwordvaptist.org, you know. And anyway, so you know, there are some, and look, and people say this, you know, oh, you know, why are you against TV? You know, it's the same thing. Okay, well here's the thing, if there was a channel on TV that was like the faithful word channel, and it was just all faithful word all the time, then I could be okay with that channel. You know, or if there was a channel that was just, you know, Bible preaching or Bible verses or whatever, but we know that's not what's being aired on TV. You say, oh, there's a Christian channel. Right. Kenneth Copeland, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, I mean is that, that's Christianity? That's the worst channel, man. And so what I'm saying is with the internet, there are choices. You know, you can go on the internet and you can use it and keep a clean mind. Just you know, for example, I do all my banking online, I do a lot of business online, I use email for business. You know, I go to faithfulwordvaptist.org religiously. You know, I basically just, I'm just saying there's a lot of legitimate usage of the internet. There's a lot of good Bible preaching, a lot of good encyclopedias, you can learn things, you can do research on things, but there's also a lot of sin. If you choose to go down the sinful route, man, there's every type of sinful information on the internet. You know that's true. And here's the thing, when we have children in the home, we better put up some walls, right? You better put up some batteries. I mean, if you're wise, you wouldn't just give your children just unfettered access to the internet in a room with the door shut because you know what? They might not even be bent on evil or setting out to go find something bad, but they could easily stumble upon things that are bad. Maybe they don't even realize how bad it is and they could easily, and so, you know, that's something that we need to think about is, you know what? Okay, I know when I go on the internet, you know, I'm going to certain sites that I know are good and that are, you know, biblical sites or that are business sites, but you know what? We need to set up walls and boundaries so that our children do not have unfettered access to the internet because they can bring them all the same garbage that's on TV. You can find it on the internet if that's what you want. I mean, if you want to go on the internet and find all the trash on TV or that Hollywood puts out, I'm sure it's all on there somewhere if you want to go looking for it and find it. And so, we need to make sure, as the Bible said, you know, when we pray, one of the examples that we're supposed to pray is lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. You know, we need to just keep temptations away from us and just build a wall that will separate us from sin and separate us and then keep us from sin, have some accountability in our lives and some rules and some structure and some walls that we live by. But not only that, go to Ephesians chapter 2. The other purpose of a wall is to provide division. You know, the reason that we have a wall, number one, is for protection. You know, you put a wall around the city to protect it. So number two, walls provide division. If you look around the room here, you see a lot of walls, right? And it's to divide parts of the building. You know, for example, to divide the restrooms, to divide these mother-baby rooms, to divide these storage rooms here, you know, to divide the room in the back. All these walls here, the purpose is to provide a division and a demarcation. And see, the person who has no rule over their own spirit, and they're like a city with broken down walls, okay, they don't make a division in their life. They don't make a separation between good and evil, the clean and the unclean, right and wrong. Now there are all kinds of division in this world, and a lot of people will say, well, division's bad. Okay, a lot of people say, you know, we don't want to have division, we must have unity. Now there is some division that can be bad and there's some division that can be good. Now here's an example of bad division. I notice this in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 14, it says this, talking about Jesus Christ, "'For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.'" So here we see that Jesus Christ has broken down a wall. So this was obviously a wall that shouldn't be there, right? He broke down a wall that we shouldn't have in place. Now the question is, what wall did he break down? Because I've heard people quote this verse, and I've heard them misquote this verse. Because when it says here that he broke down the middle wall of partition between us, it's not saying he broke down the wall between us and God. Because that's not what the context of this passage teaches. Back up to verse 8, it says, "'For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Wherefore remember that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision in flesh made by hands, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. For now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ, for he is our peace who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in the ordinances, for to make it himself of twain one new man, so making peace, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross.'" So you see, both is not referring to us and God, because he says he's going to reconcile both unto God, so see how the both does not include God? He says we're going to reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby, and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh, for through him we both, who are the both here? He says, "...we both have access by one spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone." The both is the circumcision and the uncircumcision, the Jews and the Gentiles. He's saying here that God, at one time we were Gentiles, but he says now you who were strangers to the commonwealth of Israel, you were foreigners to Israel, he said now you're made nigh by the blood of Christ, and God has broken down the middle wall of partition between us so that we can both be reconciled to God, and we can both be a part of one body. Now we know that the church is called the body of Christ, isn't it? And the Bible says that we can be joined in one body as Jews and Gentiles because God has broken down the middle wall of partition between us. Why? Because there is no difference between the Jew and the Gentile. There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek. You see, one division that we should not have is a division based upon nationality. We should not have a church, and the Bible talks about unity in the church, and the division in the church is a bad thing. We should not have division within the church. For example, do we have walls around our church building? Should we have a wall just right down the middle of our church building? No. You notice that everybody here who's sitting in church here doesn't have any walls separating them, right? We're all here in one group. Oh, you're black? Okay, you're over here on the other side of this wall. I mean, is that the way that our church is set up? No. But here's the thing. There have been times when churches were segregated like that, you know, a white church and a black church. Is that biblical? No, because the Bible says that God's house should be called a house of prayer for all nations. He said, and Jesus Christ spoke to the Jews, and he said, Other sheep have I which are not of this fold, talking about Israel. He said, Them also must I bring, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd. We should have one church, and by the way, there shouldn't be a separate messianic Jew church. They need to just join the Baptist church, because why? Because they are no different than us. They don't need their own separate Jewish church. They need to just come to a church and Jew and Gentile, red and yellow, black and white, should all be in the same church. There shouldn't be a division in the church based upon nationality. God has made all nations of the earth of one blood, the Bible says. Okay, but what kind of a division should we have? Go to 2 Corinthians chapter 6, 2 Corinthians chapter 6. So you see how walls are there to divide. Here we see in Ephesians 2 that there was a wall in the past that divided Jew from Gentile, but that that wall no longer exists in the New Testament. In the New Testament, that wall has been broken down, providing no division between Jew and Gentile, no division between those that are the children of Israel physically and those that are not. But there are some walls that need to remain in place to help protect us, yes, protect us from sin, protect us from enemies, but not only that, we need walls to provide division in our life. Look, if you would, at 2 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 14. The Bible reads, Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. He said, For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what conquered hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God, as God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Watch this. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you. Here God is saying, look, there needs to be a separation, there needs to be a division, there needs to be a distinction and a difference between the saved and the unsaved. It shouldn't just be that there's no, you know, we're just mingled in with the heathen and just completely mingled in with the world. No, there should be a separation. We need to come out from among them. And look, the whole point of going to church is to come out from among them and be separate. So if half the people in our church were unsaved, would this verse really apply? If half the church is unsaved, is that really coming out from among them and being separate? How in the world could we have a church where half the people are unsaved if the Bible says there's no fellowship between the believer and the unbeliever? There's no communion between Christ and Belial? What fellowship has light with darkness? You see, a wall will separate light from darkness. You know, if I were to go behind this wall right here with the door shut, it's going to be completely black in there because the light cannot come through that wall, okay? And so the Bible's teaching us here that a wall will provide a division in our life. There should be a difference. Exodus 8 23, you don't have to turn there, says, and I will put a division between my people and thy people. Tomorrow shall this sign be. Now look, I'm not saying that we should be completely withdrawn from the world and, you know, we're going to go move to a compound in South America, you know, where we can just put up a really big wall and it's just going to be us and we're going to keep all the sin out and all the unbelievers out. You know what? The Bible does teach us that we should not be removed from the world, but that he will keep us from the evil, okay? So we're to be in the world, but we're not supposed to be of the world, okay? We're going to go to work tomorrow, you know, most of us, the men, we're going to go to work tomorrow, we're going to go to our job, and we're going to be surrounded by unbelievers, aren't we? There's nothing wrong with that, but you know what? There should be a difference between us and them. There should be a division between us and them. There should be a distinction between us and them, and let me tell you something, we should not become best buddies with the unsaved. Let's treat them well. Let's buy them lunch. Let's treat them nicely. Let's be a friend to them. Let's help them out. Because you know what? Let's not become their best buddy. Because you know what? The Bible teaches very clearly that the friendship of the world is enmity with God, who so ever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. You know, our closest friend should be at church, or should be with other Christians of other churches that are Bible believing churches. You know, we should have our closest friends be people who are believers, because that's who we're going to have the most fellowship with, and you know, we need to have a wall that says, you know what? I'm not going to just sit there and become completely intermingled with the heathen. And especially, we need to make sure and understand the sin of marrying an unbeliever. The sin of marrying an unbeliever. Now some people have already made this mistake, and they've paid the consequences for it. You know, and you see people that they marry an unbeliever and they don't think it's that big of a deal, but there are all kinds of consequences that they don't think about. Like we were talking about this this morning, you know, you think about those that marry the Roman Catholic, and they think, you know, oh well, close enough, wrong. Catholics aren't Christians, okay? Catholics do not believe in salvation by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They follow a pagan type religion of idolatry and necromancy, and they do not believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. You know, we go out and knock doors, and you say, well you're mad at Catholics. We go out and win Catholics to Christ every week. We knock on the doors of Catholics and bring them the true gospel, because they're not hearing it at their church, and they need somebody to bring the gospel to them. But you know, somebody marries a Roman Catholic and thinks, oh close enough, and they think they're going to change them, and then the first baby's born, and the Catholic in-laws want to baptize their baby. They're like, whoa, I don't want to do this. Well, sorry, we're going to baptize your baby, or whatever. You know, you don't think about that when you're this young person, just, you know, oh, he's really cute. Oh, she's so pretty, oh yeah. You know what, you need to be wise and understand that you're not going to have communion, and you're not going to have fellowship with an unbeliever in marriage, and it's not going to work out well at all. And you say, well, I know somebody where it worked out well. Yeah, but you know what, I know a lot of people that did a lot of wrong things, and then it ended up working out okay. It doesn't mean that I'm going to go try it, though. You know what I mean? I know a guy who fell off the third floor of a building, and he was fine. You know, does that mean we should, let's all just jump out the window, and we'll be fine, because he was fine. You know, that logic doesn't make any sense, okay? And it's never fine to disobey God's laws anyway. And God is commanding us here not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers, and that's why no one should even date someone who's unsaved. You shouldn't even get yourself that involved. You know, if you're going to date somebody who's unsaved, then the first date needs to be right here. This is the first date. Okay, you want to go on a date with me? All right, meet me on Sunday morning at 1030 at, you know, 2707, or 20, oh, that's the old address, 2741 West Southern Avenue is where I need to be picked up for my date at 1030 a.m., all right? That's the only acceptable first date right there for an unbeliever. You know, but you want to sit there and open yourself up to temptation by dating unbelievers, then the next thing you're going to be marrying an unbeliever, and then you're going to have all kinds of problems that you never would have imagined, and you're going to mess up your life in so many ways. You know, you think about just the opening up of temptation, you know, at least if you're a Bible-believing Christian, at least if you love the Lord and love His commandments and read the Bible, and the person that you're dating is the same way, at least if one of you were to be backslidden or one of you would be weak, then at least the other one would be there to basically caution and say, hey, no, wait a minute, this isn't right. But, you know, when you're dating an unbeliever, basically there's going to be, that person's not going to have the same boundaries at all, and you're going to fall into sin. More chances are, you know, more often than not, you're going to be led into temptation. And so there should be a separation between us and the unsaved. Yes, we should love them and try to reach out to them and be a friend to them, but they should not be our closest buddies. We shouldn't be going and hanging out with them after work. Hey, let's go play pool together after work. Hey, let's go hang out together. Let's go camping together. That should be something that we do with God's people. People that are on the same page with us. But if you would go to 2 Thessalonians, there's another group that we should have division from. The Bible says in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 verse 6, it says, Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. So the Bible here is telling us that there are even some believers that we should be divided from. Even brothers that we would divide from because they're walking disorderly. He says in verse 14, And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man and have no company with him that he may be ashamed, yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a what? So who are we talking about, the saved or the unsaved? So there are people that we should be divided from. And look, Jesus said this, you don't have to turn there, Luke 12.51, Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth, I tell you nay, but rather division. Jesus said, I came to bring division. In John 7.43 it says, So there was a division among the people because of him. It says in John 9.16, And there was a division among them about Jesus. And in John 10.19 it says, There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings. See God's word always causes division. God's word is sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing, the Bible says, between the soul and spirit and the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. So look, we need walls in our life. We need to build walls. The Bible says that if we don't have any rule out of our own spirit, it's like a city with no walls. What's the purpose of a wall? Number one, to protect us from the enemy. To keep us safe from a foreign invader. Also to protect us from sin and ungodliness that would try to creep into our lives. You see it's pretty hard for sin to creep into our lives if we have the right walls in place. It's pretty hard to commit fornication if you're basically dating somebody in a public place with a lot of people around. If you're dating in a restaurant or in a park or somewhere where there's a lot of people around and you're in a public place, you can still have a private conversation but yet you're out in public. You're not behind closed doors somewhere. That's going to be a lot easier to stay away from temptation than if you're putting yourself in a position where you have no walls, no boundaries, just, yeah, let's just go hang out at your place. Yeah, let's spend the night on the sofa. No problem, right? You got two beds, right? We know we're not going to sin. You know what? You're opening yourself up to so much sin there. You're making provision to the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof and it isn't right. You know, we need to make sure that we have walls in our life. Set the alarm clock. Get up in the morning. Go to work. Have rules. Have boundaries on what you eat and drink. I got quiet on that one. Some people, they just put the worst garbage into their body and it's amazing because the Bible doesn't mention smoking one time. Can somebody give me a passage on smoking? And don't tell me the smoke of their torment has ended up forever and ever. I'm talking about smoking. I mean the Bible never mentions smoking but who here thinks that a Christian is wrong for a Christian to smoke? Put up your hand if you think that smoking is wrong. Okay, but is there any Bible verse that says that? Okay, so what makes you believe that smoking is wrong? What makes you believe that, Brother Donnie? Yeah, our body's the temple, right? So we're supposed to take care of it and not abuse it, right? So that principle's in the Bible. Okay, but what about, but you're not abusing it when you fill it with junk food? Parsley hydrogenated garbage? Okay, I mean when you're just constantly eating junk and just drinking sodas filled with high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, and sodium benzoate, you know, that stuff is not doing anything for your body except just putting poison into your body and tickling your tongue. I mean that's not nutrition. You know, and the Bible talks about people eating for drunkenness instead of eating for strength. You know, we shouldn't live to eat, we should eat to live, okay? And when we put food into our body, it should be nutritious food, and I'm not saying we shouldn't enjoy food because the Bible talks a lot about enjoying food. He talks about celebrating on holidays and eating the fat and drinking the sweet and eating honey, but you know what, he also tells us about restraint and tells us, you know, yeah, eat honey, but he said, don't eat too much or you'll vomit it up, he says. He tells us eat sweets, but don't eat too much sweets. He tells us, look, don't be a glutton, you know, control yourself. I mean what if you just say I'm going to have no boundaries to what I eat? No walls, without walls. I mean, look, I know there's a without walls church down in Chandler, how about without walls the restaurant, you know what I mean? It's just all the worst junk, and you know, you sit there and you're not eating fruits and vegetables, and you know, there are a lot of dieting fads out there, right? And it seems like people's opinion on nutrition is constantly changing. You know, one day they'll tell you like, salt's bad for you, and then they're like, oh, salt's actually really good for you, it turns out, you know, and then 20 years later it's bad for you again. You know, or oh, this low carb diet is great, and they're like, oh wow, yeah, low carb is really bad, you need carbohydrates, you know. So it's just all these fads, right, and different things that, you know, I remember when I was a kid they had a commercial on TV, you know, when I was watching TV like five hours a day, they had a commercial on TV where all these eggs are getting out of jail. Does anybody remember that one? You know, there's all these eggs and they're locked up behind bars, and it's like they're opening the jail, and it was called, hey, give eggs a break. And it was basically, I guess, they'd gone through a phase where they told you that eggs were bad for you. And then now all of a sudden they're saying, well, it turns out eggs are good for you, so the eggs are being released from prison, these eggs are walking out of prison, it's like, give eggs a break. Only one person has seen that? Anybody else see that? A couple people, yeah. Give eggs a break. But here's the thing, the Bible never changes. That's why I get my dietary advice from the Bible. And you know what I noticed about the Bible? You know one thing that I noticed God telling me to eat a lot of? Bread. Bread. And remember in the old days, the food pyramid, before Michelle Obama messed it up, remember the food pyramid had, you know, at the bottom of the pyramid was what? Bread! It was like bread and grain. Six to eleven servings a day. You remember that? It was like all the bread and grain at the bottom, and then it was like fruits and vegetables, your meat and your dairy, and then the fats and oils was sparingly at the top of the pyramid or something like that. Okay, but look, everybody, you know, and then the pyramid becomes, you know, my plate. You know, from Michelle. You know, Michelle Antoinette or whatever. So basically, you know, she's got her new, you know, thing that gives you less bread or whatever. Okay, sorry Michelle, I'm going to eat as much bread as I can. Because bread, I think bread should be the staple of our diet. Because remember the Bible said give us this day our daily bread. And the Bible talks a lot about eating bread, because bread is very good for you. Now I'm not talking about the white Wonder Bread that, you know, you squeeze the whole loaf into a ball the size of a super ball, because it's just all fluff and air. You know, the one that's been completely bleached. It literally is bleached. I mean, it says on it, like, bleached. And then they sit there, they strip all the nutrition from it and just completely bleach it. It's just this, like, empty shell of what once was flour, okay. And then they have to fortify it with vitamins, because they've taken all nutrition out. So then they have to, like, grind up a multivitamin and throw it in the mix, just to give you the vitamins that they stripped out of it. You know, but if you get real bread that's actually made from whole grains and wheat, like a fresh baked homemade loaf of bread, that's like the best thing that you could be eating. And not only does it have a lot of good carbohydrates, it has protein in it. Like, you wouldn't think of that, would you? When you think of protein, you think of meat, but actually real bread has a lot of protein in it. You know, I've gone to the store and bought a really healthy looking bread. You know, the really gnarly one with seeds and grain all over the outside of it. You know, it looks like you really chew on it. That kind of bread, it had like four grams of protein for like two little slices or something like that. I mean, that's a lot of protein. Maybe it was even four grams of slice. I don't remember. It was a lot of protein, I remember. And so, you know, I go by what the Bible teaches, and here's the way I see it. Anything that God made is going to be healthy for me, because God created all the fruits and vegetables and he said he gave them to us to be for meat for us. So whatever God made, I'm going to consider that to be healthy food, and then anything man-made, I'm going to be suspect of that, you know, I'm going to be suspicious of that. You know, something that's a bunch of chemicals and laboratory-made stuff. You know, if you look at the ingredients and it's not stuff that's in your cupboard at home, monosodium glutamate, you know, or whatever, you know, you know, this isn't what God made. But you know, if you have like an apple, an orange, a banana, say, I don't like that. Yeah, but you know what, you need to get some rule over your taste buds. You need to get some rule over your spirit. And you know, children, if they're left to their own devices, they're going to eat the worst junk, right? I mean, if you don't tell your children, look, you must eat vegetables, obviously they're going to gravitate toward just a steady diet of Twinkies and Ho-Hos, okay? If you don't guide them and say, look, you need to control yourself here, look, you don't always just eat what tickles your taste buds, you eat what's good for you. You take care of yourself. And you know, if you eat right, you have more energy also. And you know, the Bible teaches us how to eat right if we would study it. You say, I don't know if salt's good for me or not. What does the Bible say? Salt is good. Salt without prescribing how much, okay? So salt is good. There's nothing wrong with salt. The Bible teaches us how we should eat, how we should drink. It tells us that butter's fine. It tells us to eat meat. I mean, the priests ate meat every day, so you're not going to talk me into this vegan vegetarian diet. You know, meat, milk, butter, cheese, bread, fruits, vegetables, these things are all good for you. These are good things, right? And bread should be the staple. Bread should be at the bottom of the pyramid. But what we see today is just a lot of fast food, a lot of just ingredient lists that are like longer than the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. You know, it's like the ingredients of the food. You know, and by the way, that's a good rule of thumb. If the ingredient list is longer than Philemon, too long, alright? You know, you need an ingredient list. If an ingredient has like five ingredients and they're all things that are in your cupboard or fridge, that's a good sign. When you see like 30 ingredients, 50 ingredients, okay, you know, that's bad stuff. It's man-made stuff, okay? So the closer we can eat our food to the way that God made it, we know it's perfection because that's what God made. And this isn't always popular preaching, but we should have some control over ourselves. We should build some walls and say, you know what, I'm not just going to eat whatever I feel like eating. Because if I eat whatever I feel like eating, I would eat one of those tubs of Ben and Jerry's every day. And there have been many days when I ate one of those little tubs that says, serving per container four? No. One. I cross that out and put a one next to it, okay? You know, and I get the one with chocolate and peanut butter, alright? That's my favorite one. And you know what, I don't think that's bad for a treat, but you know what, you shouldn't just be down on one of those every single day. That's not home cooking. You know, that's not the best thing for you. And so what I'm saying is we need to use some restraint in our lives and restrain ourselves and say, look, I'm going to eat the vegetables because they're good for me. I'm going to eat fruit because it's good for me. I'm going to eat my whole grain bread because it's good for me. And I'm not just going to eat whatever tickles my taste buds, just go from a Big Mac to a Cinnabon to an ice cream cone and just, you know, and just gorge ourselves on food that is making us sick and it's sapping us of our energy and it's harmful to our health, it might make you get overweight, it might make you, you know, sick, or all the different things that it could do to eat wrongfully. You know, we need to get some control over ourselves and say, you know what, I'm not just going to eat whatever, I'm not just going to drink whatever, I'm going to eat what's good for me. Just drinks that are good for me, not just down, you know, a two liter of Diet Pepsi every day. That's not good for you. I mean, does anybody think, does anybody dispute that with me? Does anybody say, no, Diet Pepsi by the two liter per day is good for you? No. But yet, people do it. Why? Because they're not ruling their spirit. You know, we need to get ourselves under control. Eli's sons had a problem with this in the Bible. You say, preach the Bible. The Bible talks a lot about food. You know, and Eli's sons, you know what they did? They were supposed to take the meat and they were supposed to take the fat and burn it unto the Lord. They're just gorging themselves on the meat fat, just, I mean, I don't know, you know, they just gorged on it and the Bible says that they had made themselves fat just from gorging on this stuff and then the Bible tells us that the next thing that they went into when they grew up was fornication. You know, because it's just, they just have this attitude that just says, I'm just going to fulfill every appetite, just whatever I want to eat and whether it belongs to me or not, whether it's good for me or not, whether God said to eat it or not, I'm just going to eat it. I'm just going to drink it. I'm just going to do whatever. You know, we need to build some walls and rules for ourselves and make a rule for ourselves that says, okay, you know, I'm going to have Ben and Jerry's, you know, on day X or Y or Z but I'm not going to have it just for breakfast every day, you know. Set up some restrictions and some guidelines and some rules that we live by, okay. And especially, and food is a small issue, but yet it matters. But yet there are other issues in our life where we need to make rules for ourselves. You know, restrictions, guidelines like, you know, a wall, a boundary that says, you know, I don't miss church. That's a good boundary. You know, I don't miss church. I'm there every Sunday. I'm there every Wednesday. Or how about this, a wall that says, you know what, I read my Bible every day first before I do anything else, you know, or I pray every single day at this and that time. You know, that kind of structure, that kind of a boundary, that kind of a wall, that kind of rule in our life is going to help us serve God. It's going to protect us from sin. So number one, we need rules to protect us from sin, to help us control our spirit. Number two, we need rules to provide division, you know, a separation in our mind between what is right and what is wrong, what is good, what is evil, the saved and the unsaved. There's a distinction in our mind. But number three, the third thing I could think of that a wall does, besides protecting from enemies and besides providing division, is that the wall provides a viewpoint for the watchmen. Part of the reason why, go if you would to Isaiah 62, part of the reason why they would have walls back in the old days of the cities was not just to protect them and not to just divide the city from the country, but also it was to provide a place for the watchmen. Because they would put watchmen on the walls and the watchmen would be there to look out for danger, you know, and he would be there to warn them and the reason he would get up on the wall or the watchtower would be that he could get the best viewpoint from there. So the Bible says in Isaiah 62 verse 6, I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night, ye that make mention of the Lord keep not silence. Now being a watchman in the Bible is often tied in with soul winning, because what are we doing when we go soul winning really in a lot of ways? We're warning people. You know, we're going out, it's not just soul winning, it's soul warning sometimes. You know, we love to win people to Christ, but sometimes people don't get saved, do they? But we can still warn them. So sometimes we're soul winning and sometimes we're just soul warning, you know, and we show up and we give them the warning of look, you know, hell is real, salvation's free, God is, you know, you're not going to escape if you neglect so great salvation. You will not escape. And we give them that warning. And you know what I see from this is that, you know, the people who have the walls in their life, they're the ones who are the effective watchmen. See if you don't have any walls in your life, you're not going to be a watchman either. You're going to be, you know, if you're on ground level, you can't even see the enemy until he's on top of you, okay? And here's what's interesting, if you look at, if you notice, churches that are weak on walls, as far as like, they're not preaching the commandments of God, they're not preaching God's rules, they're not living a strict life that's guided by strict rules of God's law, telling us what is right and what is not, you'll notice that's the same ones that lack soul winning. It's true, you'll notice, people who live a stricter life, people who are really serious about protecting their family and protecting their children and protecting, you know, they're the ones who are doing the soul winning. Look who does the most door-to-door soul winning amongst Christians. Who is it usually? I mean, if somebody knocks your door, and I'm not talking about cults, I'm not talking about the Jehovah's false witnesses or the latter-day Satan, I mean, if somebody comes and knocks your door that's a Bible-believing Christian, they're probably an independent fundamental Baptist. I mean, isn't that just the truth? I mean, if somebody comes and knocks on your door with the Bible and the Gospel, and they're not part of one of these cults, the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses, you know that the chances are that's an independent fundamental Baptist. If we were to look at all the churches in Phoenix and see which ones knock doors and give the Gospel from door-to-door, you'll find that it's the independent fundamental Baptist that are doing the door-knocking. They're being the watchmen. They're bringing the warning unto the unsaved, right? Okay. Now, let's see which churches are preaching against sin. Is it Community Fund Center Baptist? Is it Without Walls Christian Center? Is it, you know, are they the ones ripping on sin? No. It's the ones that are doing the soul-winning that are the same ones who are preaching on holiness and preaching against sin, and everybody accused of being too strict. We ought to be strict. God's strict. God's got some serious commandments and rules, and he said, if you love me, keep my commandments, and you know what, we ought to be strict on ourselves. And you know, the Pharisees, the problem with the Pharisees wasn't that they were strict. The problem with the Pharisees is that they were not strict on themselves, they're strict on everybody else. You know, they're people who are judgmental, right? And they're strict. They want everybody else to be just right. You know what? We ought to quit looking at everybody else so much, and let's get ourselves right. And let's take care of our own self and get our own house in order, and you know, we ought to be very strict on ourselves. You see, I'm not a real strict pastor as far as, I don't go around, you know, policing what everybody's doing and trying to make everybody do things the way I think they should be doing, but you know what, I am a strict pastor on myself. I am a strict pastor on my own family. You know, and that's where it's got to begin, and you know, we ought to be strict with ourselves and hold ourselves to a strict standard and not see how close we can get to sin, not see how close we can get to worldliness. Let's not build a wall that's a foot high. You know, like, let's not build a two-foot wall like the one that divides, you know, the chickens in my backyard from the swimming pool. You know, it's like a two-foot little fence that you just step over it. Even the chickens can fly over it, but it's just in their mind, okay, there's a wall there. You know, you build a little two-foot wall in your life, you know, you're going to be stepping over that wall all the time whenever you have a weak moment. You need to build a wall that's 144 cubits high. I mean, try climbing, try climbing a wall that's 144 cubits high. I don't, I mean, even if you had a rope, even, I mean, you know, even if you had a ladder, that's pretty high, 144 cubits, that's the kind of wall we need in our life. That's the kind of wall that should separate us from sin. Be strict on yourself, make some rules for yourself, and have some guidelines that you live or die by that will protect you and keep you away from sin and ungodliness. Frame in your doings, have a framework whereby you live your life. Don't live your life freestyle. Don't just go freestyle, just freestyle. What are you doing tomorrow? I don't know. What are you doing on Wednesday? I don't know. What time are you going to work? I don't, if I feel like it, I might go, I don't know, whatever time. Oh man, that sounds like such a great life. Yeah, but you know what, people who live that life though, they're not happy and they're not succeeding. There are people who live that way, don't get me wrong. But that's not how we as Christians ought to live our life. We ought to know, I'm getting up, I'm going here, I'm reading my Bible, I'm going to read the proverb of the day, I'm going to read my Bible, I'm going to pray, I'm going to go soul winning, I'm going to go to church, I'm going to go to work, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to spend time with my family, I'm going to, you know, this is what I'm going to eat, it's going to be nutritious food, it's not going to be garbage, okay. That's the way we ought to live our life, we ought to have some rules and some boundaries. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, thank you so much for your word, dear God, and thank you for the Bible which is the ultimate wall building manual. I mean it's filled with boundaries and walls and rules and things, not to hurt us but to help us, to protect us, help us to be wise enough to implement these things and not to be people that can't rule our own spirit and not to be people whose life is like a broken down city with no walls. Help us to have a 144 cubit high wall of spiritual protection and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.