First Peter, the second chapter, and it's just two verses,

verses 11 and 12.

Peter writes,

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage against the soul.

Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles so that in the thing in which they slander you as evil-doers,

they may on account of your good deeds as they observe them glorify God in the day of visitation.

In those two verses, two issues are seen to be massively important. In fact, I would say they are the two most

important issues in the world, in the universe.

They are the two issues that the whole Bible deals with throughout.

And one of the ways that we know that we are aliens and

exiles and strangers, like Vurs 11 says, is that the world by and large does not think that they are important issues.

If the world did, the newspaper will look different,

television would look different, radio would sound different,

university classes would sound different, advertising would be different, business would be different,

but by and large these two issues which the Bible treats as

the most important issues in the world are non-issues in our world which makes aliens out of us who get our bearings from the Bible.

The two issues are these. the salvation of the human soul and the glory of the name of God.

Or to put it in another way, the two big issues in the Bible and in the world are how do you save the soul so that it's not destroyed and how do you glorify God so that he's not

belittled. Those are the two huge issues in these two verses. Let's just get that before we even talk about any details.

Verse 11, beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshlyusts, which wage war against the soul.

The issue here is whether the soul is going to be so fought against that it dies, that it is lost.

There are anti-souled forces in the world.

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