- Preserve
Psalm 121:7, 8
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil:
He shall preserve thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth,
And even forevermore.
The Lord promises to preserve: keep, protect, guard, watch over, and keep safe are some synonyms; but preserve has the additional connotation of keeping something free from contamination or corruption, like preserves in a jar or preservatives in food packages. The Lord will preserve my soul from the contamination and corruption of sin and all evil. He will preserve my soul in the pure and innocent state which God made in me when He baptized me, when I was born again, when He forgave my sins, and when the Holy Spirit came to dwell in my spirit.
This promise seems impossible and incredible for experience does not see or feel such purity of soul. It keeps sinning and thereby allowing corruption to creep in, take over, and try to rule my mind and heart. Does God really preserve my soul? Well, yes, He does, because He says He does. He must tell us this in His Word of Truth so that we can believe it, for we could not believe it by the empirical evidence of our thoughts, words, and deeds, since they are daily evidences of corrupting sins and evils. He promises, He says so, and so it must be: the Lord preserves us in purity, innocence, righteousness, and blessedness; He keeps our soul from all evil and corruption. Though we continue to sin and sinners continue to contaminate themselves, we are continually at the same time forgiven and cleansed from all sin. The mystery of being at the same time, all the time, saint and sinner must be believed even though it is hard to understand.
The promise is meant for me wherever I go and whatever I do for the whole rest of my life and into eternity. It will be easy to see purity preserved in eternity where there is no sin, death, devil, evil or corruption; but it is not easy to see purity preserved in my own corrupt soul while living this present life on earth. For this reason God tells us the truth in His Word so we can believe it and enjoy it.