In every age, past, present, or future, there are those who are - indeed who must be - "Keepers of the Springs." These are people who make it their business to keep pure the vital currents that run through our lives and our culture, because if they don’t, there is soon a pollution about life that kills.

Several generations ago, Peter Marshall, who was the U.S. Senate Chaplain from 1946-48, during the Harry Truman administration, wrote a little story called "Keepers of the Springs."(1) Its too good a story to simply allow it to die a forgotten death, so I want to resurrect it this morning in the hope that it will challenge you and me like I’m sure it did Peter Marshall’s generation.

Once upon a time, a certain town grew up at the foot of a mountain range. It was sheltered in the lee of the protecting heights, so that the wind that shuddered at the doors and flung handfuls of sleet against the window panes was a wind whose fury was spent. High up in the hills, a strange and quiet forest dweller took it upon himself to be the Keeper of the Springs. He patrolled the hills and wherever he found a spring, he cleaned its brown pool of silt and fallen leaves, of mud and mold and took away from the spring all foreign matter, so that the water which bubbled up through the sand ran down clean and cold and pure. It leaped sparkling over rocks and dropped joyously in crystal cascades until, swollen by other streams, it became a river of life to the busy town. Mill wheels were whirled by its rush. Gardens were refreshed by its waters. Fountains threw it like diamonds into the air. Swans sailed on its limpid surface, and children laughed as they played on its banks in the sunshine.

But the City Council was a group of hard-headed, hard-boiled businessmen. They scanned the civic budget and found in it the salary of a Keeper of the Springs. Said the Keeper of the Purse: "Why should we pay this romance ranger? We never see him; he is not necessary to our town's work life. If we build a reservoir just above the town, we can dispense with his services and save his salary." Therefore, the City Council voted to dispense with the unnecessary cost of a Keeper of the Springs, and to build a cement reservoir.

So the Keeper of the Springs no longer visited the brown pools but watched from the heights while they built the reservoir. When it was finished, it soon filled up with water, to be sure, but the water did not seem to be the same. It did not seem to be as clean, and a green scum soon befouled its stagnant surface. There were constant troubles with the delicate machinery of the mills, for it was often clogged with slime, and the swans found another home above the town. At last, an epidemic raged, and the clammy, yellow fingers of sickness reached into every home in every street and lane.

The City Council met again. Sorrowfully, it faced the city's plight, and frankly it acknowledged the mistake of the dismissal of the Keeper of the Springs. They sought him out of his hermit hut high in the hills, and begged him to return to his former joyous labor. Gladly he agreed, and began once more to make his rounds. It was not long until pure water came lilting down under tunnels of ferns and mosses and to sparkle in the cleansed reservoir. Mill wheels turned again as of old. Stenches disappeared. Sickness waned and convalescent children playing in the sun laughed again because the swans had come back.

In every age, past, present, or future, there are those who are - indeed who must be - "Keepers of the Springs." These are people who make it their business to keep pure the vital currents that run through our lives and our culture, because if they don’t, there is soon a pollution about life that kills. I want to borrow this metaphor to discuss with you a few of the necessary springs of life that must be kept pure and clean if we are to survive as a culture and have any hope of eternity. The first I want to suggest is the spring of:

Perhaps there has never been a time when purity and personal integrity were more difficult to maintain than today. This isn’t to minimize the struggles of generations past. It’s just to say that these days there are more opportunities to pollute personal purity and destroy integrity with more ease than ever before. We need not even leave the privacy of our own homes.

So much of what is available to entertain us or make our lives more convenient also has a darker side – a corrupting, enslaving side. Our televisions, our VCRs and CD players, the electronic games our children play, our personal computers, our magazines, the movie theaters – all of these, if not diligently and unceasingly monitored, guarded, and screened, allow moral pollution and filth to seep into our lives and take away our spiritual health. Purity and integrity are systematically destroyed when we don’t keep these vital springs of purity clean.

With some folks, I’m afraid, the "Keeper of the Springs" was fired long ago. Yes, the reservoir of good intentions was installed above the town of their lives with high hopes, but since that time the water has become increasingly foul and people all around are sick. And the problem is that many of these people don’t remember why they are sick. They’re desensitized to the pollution. They’ve come to believe that drinking foul water is normal. To them, the idea of a "Keeper of the Springs" seems eccentric and strange – old fashioned and backward.

Actually, Peter Marshall’s two-generations-old metaphor is not really that far from what the Bible says. Listen to Proverbs 4:23:

This watchful diligence must start with each of us as individuals – watching over our own hearts. Our counsel and advice and even our examples of concern for others cannot be respected if we do not practice what we preach about personal integrity, when people are watching and when they are not – especially when they are not – for that tells really what we are.

A secret sin, a forbidden momentary pleasure, hidden high in the private mountains of our own lives, in some remote crack someplace may seem as harmless as a muddy, polluted spring – unnoticed and out of sight. But the effect of it as it seeps down into the valleys of our lives where real people live surely pollutes and destroys our potential.

But then there is also concern for our children. We need to provide pure water that flows through our own lives but we must also keep the springs pure for them. As they grow up it is our responsibility to keep the pollution out of our homes and away from their influence in every way we can. And not only this, but we must also assume the burden of teaching them the reasons why certain behaviors are wrong.

Some years ago I had a friend tell me what it was like growing up with his very straight-laced parents. His father was a well-known evangelist and some "preacher’s kids," as you may know, grow up hating their parents’ restrictions to the extent that as soon as they get out of the home, they immediately immerse themselves in the kind of filth their parents sought to avoid. Anyway, my friend, who was at that time a father of several children himself, spoke highly of his upbringing. As an example of his parents tactics, he told me how one time when he was very young, his mom took him out to the side of the road in front of the house to look at a dead squirrel that had just been run over. The poor animal was still warm, having been alive only shortly before that. But there it was, its little body flattened and smeared all over the road. Its head was crushed and its eyes were bulged out. My friend, just a little boy at the time, started crying. He didn’t want to look. But his mom didn’t flinch from her resolve. He told me that he still remembers her words as she made him look at that dead squirrel: "This is what can happen to you if you ever wander out here into this street alone!" Apparently the lesson "took." So did his respect for his parents. He never had to wonder why he shouldn’t play in the street.

Our kids need to hear that there are good reasons for the restrictions we put on them. They need to hear, for instance, that pornography ruins marriages and destroys homes. That, in turn, separates children from their parents and the ones whom they love and who are supposed to take care of them. Alcohol and drugs destroy health and take away life prematurely in accidents and disease. It wastes financial resources and causes families worlds of hurt. A constant diet of R-rated, violent movies and video games, takes away our natural aversion for hurting others. (How can I "love my neighbor" if I’m accustomed to blowing him away with the buttons on a joystick?) A nightly diet of off-color sitcoms or teen soap operas gradually fouls good morals and causes us to unwittingly buy into the secular values of the culture around us. Soon we’ll cease to recognize the sense of serving God. Commitment to our Maker will seem foolish and old fashioned after watching others on the tube mock and denigrate Him, or pretend that He doesn’t exist. The preaching and teaching of His word will seem distant and irrelevant, which can lead to a dark, eternal hell.

Being a Keeper of the Springs for yourself and for your children and grandchildren in the area of purity and integrity is tough! It isn’t popular. People who disagree with your actions will complain and criticize. But it is essential, lest the growing pollution make us unfit for heaven and eternal life – not to mention cause us untold grief here and now.

We must be keepers of the springs of personal purity and integrity lest our lives and the lives of our children become fouled and our spiritual health be destroyed.

We must also be keepers of the springs of:

When you stand before the preacher or the Justice of the Peace, in the presence of family and friends and say "I do," you take on more than just the responsibility to keep a solemn promise you are making to one person. You also take upon yourself responsibility for the condition of the human beings in the family that will likely result from that union and a portion of responsibility for the overall condition of our society because as the family goes, so goes the society. Marriage is a key part of God’s plan and He has clearly defined it as to what it is. It is His ordained means for a man and a woman to raise, nurture, and train decent people who will perpetuate the human race and the remembrance of their Creator.

That the President of the United States would need to say in his State of the Union(2) message last Tuesday evening that he supports the Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman (and not two members of the same sex) lets us know without doubt how fierce is the attack on marriage and the family today. Powerful forces, especially those in the judicial branch of our government, bent upon destruction of Biblical traditions are at work trying to systematically dismantle the family as we know it. There has never been a time in our history when keepers of the springs were more needed in this area.

Marriage did not originate with man. It originated with God in the Garden of Eden. He set it up and He prescribed its standards. As has been stated many times, God didn’t bless a union between "Adam and Steve." He blessed the union between "Adam and Eve," a man and a woman. Jesus reiterated this standard in Matthew 19:4-6 when He said:

There is no Biblical authorization for making members of the same sex, "one flesh." In fact, God condemns such unions in the first chapter of the book of Romans as "degrading," "unnatural," "indecent," and "worthy of death."(3)

But Jesus also spoke of the duration of marriage – something else that is challenged today – not by judges, but by people who think that covenant breaking is no serious matter. He said,

God’s word in Malachi 2:16 says, "I hate divorce."

I realize that we have brothers and sisters in Christ among us whose marriages have ended, not because they chose to end them, but because of the choices of an unfaithful spouse. All of us realize that such things can be beyond one’s ability to control. I also know that we have those among us, good brothers and sisters in Christ, dedicated to the Lord, who learned of God’s standards only after becoming Christians and they cannot go back and undo things for which they are sorry that happened in the past. But having said these things, let me also say that we desperately need those among us who are keepers of the springs of marital commitment and faithfulness. I mean people who have stuck with it – against the so called statistical odds and against the nay sayers. They have held their marriages together through thick and thin, honoring God by honoring His institutions. I mean people who can pass on a legacy as faithful examples to their children and their brothers and sisters in the church.

Like a fouled spring of water, unfaithfulness and divorce pollute our society and ruin our homes and families. Someone has to keep the faith in this area! And indeed, some of you are. May I encourage you to keep on! May I remind you of the importance of your determination! People who do not know better and people who hate God will ridicule you and mock you as being old fashioned. You just tell them that it's not a matter or being old fashioned at all. It’s a matter of being God-fashioned! That’s the choice we make, and we do it consciously and deliberately.

The writer of Hebrews put it this way:

We must be keepers of the springs of personal purity and integrity. We must be keepers of the springs of marital commitment and faithfulness. Thirdly, we must be keepers of the springs of:

I know, I know. Such a statement sounds like just so much duty. And I suppose that in today’s world, duty is out of fashion. But call it what you like – regular worship and church attendance is a spring of life that provides the only steady and reliable source of the truth of God that there is consistently available today. And when I say "church" I am referring to the assembly of God’s people who gather together regularly in His Name to exalt Jesus Christ as their head and follow His teachings without compromise. If you’re a part of a group that does not do that, then it isn’t the Church.

Here are a couple of things the Bible says about the church that make it a spring of life for you and me…

Listen to how the apostle Paul put it in 1 Timothy 3:15:

A building without pillars of support will fall down. A Christian life without the support of the truth that the church provides will likewise fall down. The church is the support of the truth.

Think for a moment. Where would your life be without the influence of the church? How long would you be able to maintain a concern for God’s truth in your life? How effectively would you grow without the constant exposure to the truth of God and the encouragement of other Christians? It isn’t likely that any of us would continue the pursuit of righteousness without the Lords’ church.

Those who work in the church and support the church (and that should be all of us) are the keepers of the springs. The work includes the teaching and preaching of the minister and elders, but it also includes the work of every other member. All those who serve for the benefit of the brethren in the church are keepers of the springs. Those who keep and maintain the building, those who watch the children and teach them, those who watch over benevolent needs, those who plan fellowship – all are keepers of the springs – as are all who contribute to the work of the church with tithes and offerings. The day the church is neglected by these keepers and its message disregarded will be the day that pollution and corruption gains total access to our lives and if that happens, destruction will not be far behind.

But those who insist on attendance to the church for themselves and their families are also keepers of the springs. Early on in our Christian walk, Kathi and I were encouraged by some older Christians to make a single decision about church attendance. The decision was that we would be present in the assembly of Christians each and every Sunday at each and every service. We made that single decision long before I ever had anything to do with the responsibility of preaching. From that point onward, we didn’t have to get up on Sunday morning and decide again, for that week, whether or not we would go to church. The decision was already made. It wasn’t up for consideration or negotiation. There was no arguing with the children. There was no competition from other things. If there was a sports game on Sunday, the children didn’t play. They didn’t have to ask. They knew. If we had to travel on a weekend, we got out a phone book and found a church that preached God’s word and served communion to stop in to on the route we took and planned accordingly. If we had company for the weekend, we invited them to come to church. If they didn’t want to come, we left them a key to the house and told them when we would be home. Unless we were sick, we were in church on Sunday. Once we learned the importance of church attendance, that single decision, for us, was like a "keeper of the springs."

You can do the same for your family. You can make a single decision about church attendance. You can settle it once and for all.

The church is a spring that needs keeping because it is the pillar and support of the truth in our lives. Without the truth we perish. It also needs keeping because it is the only place of refuge where Hell cannot prevail.

Listen to Jesus’ words to Peter in Matthew16:18: "Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it."

Did you catch the promise there? He said, "the gates of Hades shall not overpower it."

If hell cannot overpower the church, then that is where I want to be. I know there is an evil being in this world who wants to destroy me and my family. I know he is far more powerful that I will ever be. That’s why I need to keep the spring of worship and church attendance clear in my life. I know that someday it will make all the difference in the world as to where I, and those I love, end up. I want to be where there is security – where Satan cannot ultimately prevail. I want to be in the church.

We’ve touched on three areas that are springs of life in our lives and for which we need to be "keepers of the springs." These are areas where we can act, starting right now, to improve the moral condition of our lives and the lives of those who depend on us.

Of course, it all begins when we make the decision to give our lives to Christ in faith and obedience in becoming Christians. When a person comes to the place where he or she knows the need for God, is willing to accept Jesus as the Son of God with an open confession of faith, decides to turn away from sin and begin living for Him, and is baptized to put the old life behind and begin a new one, God comes in and cleans the entire life for a new beginning. If you are here with us this morning and need to see that happen in your life, I’d like to extend the invitation to turn to God. You can start that process by letting me or one of our elders know as you leave the building this morning. We’ll set up a time to get together with you and discuss your soul’s need, answer any questions you might have from the Bible, and help you complete your obedience and start fresh. Please, let us help you come to God.

Footnotes: User your back button to return to your place.

1. I found Peter Marshall’s "Keepers of the Springs" sermon at: http://www.christianhomekeeper.com/keeper.html. While I have used only the opening story (Marshall's sermon was on motherhood) I am indebted to the clarity and brevity of its message and use it here with full gratitude and acknowledgment.
2. http://www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/2004/index.html
3. Romans 1:26-32
4. Matthew 19:6
5. Hebrews 13:4

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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