SPEAKER_00: Good morning, First Baptist Wimberly.
SPEAKER_00: This is Mike Gibbons.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Friday.
SPEAKER_00: Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is one of the six seminaries supported by the Southern Baptist Convention.
SPEAKER_00: And it is my all-mauter.
SPEAKER_00: They are the proud owners of the majority of Charles H.
SPEAKER_00: Spurgeon's personal library.
SPEAKER_00: And the books from the Spurgeon College in London.
SPEAKER_00: And Midwestern Seminary chose a name for their bookstore that would honor Spurgeon's legacy.
SPEAKER_00: And that name is the Sword and Trowel.
SPEAKER_00: The Sword and Trowel was the name of Spurgeon's magazine he started in 1865 for his church.
SPEAKER_00: And he described the purpose of the magazine as we would work the trowel with untiring hand for the building up of Jerusalem's dilapidated walls and wield the sword with vigor and valor against the enemies of the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Now the name Sword and Trowel is derived from Nehemiah 4, and the builders who worked with their tools in one hand and a sword in the other.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read verses 16 through 18 from chapter 4 of Nehemiah.
SPEAKER_00: From that day on half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail.
SPEAKER_00: And the leaders stood behind the whole house of Judah who were building on the wall.
SPEAKER_00: Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other.
SPEAKER_00: And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built.
SPEAKER_00: The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me.
SPEAKER_00: Each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other.
SPEAKER_00: In building the wall, some had the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other.
SPEAKER_00: The biblical image is one of building and of spiritual warfare.
SPEAKER_00: A sword is for battle and a trowel is for building.
SPEAKER_00: Nehemiah's wall builders carried swords to fight enemies outside the wall.
SPEAKER_00: But we do battle with the enemy inside our skin.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is war on our own sinful impulses.
SPEAKER_00: But we also need a trial.
SPEAKER_00: We are building the kingdom of God by making disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Battle sin, build God's kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Sword in one hand, trial in the other.
SPEAKER_00: That's how God's kingdom grows.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that as the Bride of Christ, that is what we all strive for.
SPEAKER_00: This is Mike Gibbons, and I love being your pastor.