My sermon this morning is the song Imagine in light of the Bible.
I was sitting in a restaurant the other day and I heard the famous song Imagine by
John Lennon playing on the radio in the restaurant and I just thought about how
foolish and wicked and ungodly that song is and I thought that it would be a great
opportunity to expound some biblical truths this morning in regard to that song.
And it's not just a song, it's a philosophy.
That song has been known as a great atheist anthem.
In fact, every year in Times Square and New Year's Eve, that song is played before
they usher in the new year.
It's been played at several of the Olympic games.
It's a very popular song amongst godless individuals.
Now let me start out by expounding some truths from Matthew 24 and 25 and then I'm
going to get into the song Imagine itself, the lyrics of the song.
Number one, what I want to show you is that the wicked are hypocrites according to the
Bible.
Go to Matthew chapter 24, the end there, I'm going to show you four truths about
the wicked from Matthew 24 and Matthew 25.
There's a series of parables here.
At the end of Matthew 24, there's a parable and then Matthew 25 has three more
parables and from these four parables, we can derive some truths about the wicked.
Number one is that the wicked are hypocrites.
Now put your finger in Matthew 24 and go over to Luke 12 because we're going to look
in both places.
Matthew 24 and Luke 12, a lot of the godless people of this world, the atheists and those
who are anti-Christian, they'll often say, oh, Christians are hypocrites or churches
are filled with hypocrites, but in reality, those outside of the church, those that
are non-Christian are far more hypocritical than Christians ever thought of being.
You see, a hypocrite by definition is a person who says one thing and does another.
Jesus said to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, he said
for they say and do not.
Now real Christians, they admit that they're sinners, they admit that they're not perfect,
and they strive to follow God's law.
They promote God's law.
They promote God's word as a standard by which we should live our lives, but obviously,
we're not perfect.
We make mistakes.
We sin.
That doesn't make us a hypocrite if we strive to follow God's word.
We preach God's word, and we do our best, but obviously, yeah, are there hypocrites
in churches?
Sure.
There are people who pretend to be serving God, and they pretend to follow God's word,
and then secretly, they're not following any of it or they don't even really believe
in any of it, but out in the world, you'll find all kinds
of hypocrisy of people claiming to be such good people and putting on such a show to
show everyone how good they are when in reality, they're rotten on the inside.
You'll find that amongst all human beings, unfortunately, whether Christian or non-Christian.
The whole world is filled with hypocrites, but let me show you how God equates unbelievers
with hypocrites.
Look if you would at Matthew 24, 48, but and if that evil servant shall say in his
heart, my Lord delayeth his coming and shall begin to smite his fellow servants and to
eat and drink with the drunken, the Lord of that servant shall come in a day when
he looketh not for him and in an hour that he's not aware of and shall cut him
asunder and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites.
There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Now look at Luke 12, 45.
It's the same parallel parable here, but there's one word that's different.
It says in Luke 12, 45, but and if that servant say in his heart, my Lord delayeth
his coming and shall begin to beat the men servants and maidens and to eat and
drink and to be drunken, the Lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh
not for him and an hour when he's not aware and will cut him asunder and will
appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.
So notice the same parable is told twice by Jesus Christ.
One time he says with the unbelievers and another time he says with the hypocrites,
using them interchangeably.
When God looks down on unbelievers, he sees hypocrites.
When he looks at these hypocrites, he equates them, unbelievers, hypocrites.
Now why is that?
Well, the true Christian admits that he's a sinner and he realizes that he needs God's
grace and mercy to get him into heaven.
Whereas when we go out knocking doors and talk to unsaved people, what do they tell
us all day long?
Oh, I'm a good person.
When in reality their life's filled with sin, but yet they claim that they're going
to heaven because they're a good person.
See, the unbelievers are hypocrites.
Number two, look at Matthew chapter 25 verse one, I want to show you that the wicked
are fools.
Number one, they're hypocrites.
Number two, they're fools.
Verse one of chapter 25, then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto 10 virgins
which took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom and five of them were
wise and five of them were foolish.
They that were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wise
took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
Now it's of course a parable about the second coming of Christ and people that are
saved versus people that are not saved.
The oil in the lamp represents having the Holy Spirit living inside of you which is
often represented by the oil.
The ones who go try to buy the oil, they're representative of those who are trying to
work their way to heaven, trying to purchase their salvation and so forth.
This right here is a parable about the saved versus the unsaved.
The saved are known as the wise and the unsaved are known as the foolish.
Flip back just a few pages in your Bible to Matthew chapter seven and while you're
turning to Matthew seven, I'll read for you from first Corinthians one twenty where the
Bible reads, where is the wise?
Where is the scribe?
Where is the disputer of this world?
Had not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
The Bible says God has made foolish the wisdom of this world.
First Corinthians one twenty five because the foolishness of God is wiser than men
and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
First Corinthians three nineteen for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God for
it is written he taketh the wise in their own craftiness.
Look down at Matthew seven twenty four, therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine
and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock
and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house
and it fell not for it was founded upon a rock and everyone that heareth these sayings
of mine and doeth them not shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house
upon the sand and the rain descended and the floods came and the wind blew and beat
upon that house and it fell and great was the fall of it.
So the one who hears the sayings of Jesus Christ and does them is known as a
wise man.
The one who hears the sayings of Jesus Christ and does not do them and does not
live by them is known as a foolish man.
The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God.
Those who do not obey God's word, those who do not follow the words of Jesus Christ
are foolish people.
Foolishness means that they're dumb, they're stupid, they're unwise.
And so the foolish virgins in the story there in Matthew 25 represented those that
are not saved.
That's why when they knock on the door and say, Lord, Lord, open to us, he says,
I know you not whence you are.
Elsewhere it's said of the same group, depart from me, I never knew you.
And what do those people say, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name and in thy
name of cast out devils and in thy name done many wonderful works?
Then will I profess unto them, I never knew you.
Depart from me that work iniquity.
Talk about hypocrisy, bragging about their good works.
And Jesus saying, I didn't even know you.
You're a worker of iniquity.
You're a wicked person, hypocrites, fools.
But number three, according to the Bible, the wicked are lazy.
Look at Matthew 25, verse 14.
Here's the next parable.
For the kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants
and delivered unto them his goods.
Look at verse 24.
Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou
art a hard man reaping where thou hast not sown and gathering where thou hast not strawed.
And I was afraid and went and hid my talent in the earth.
Lo, there thou hast that is thine.
His Lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest
that I reap where I sow not and gather where I have not struck.
And of course, this man is cast out into outer darkness, another representative of
the unbelievers.
And these parables are representing different types of unbelievers in different situations,
but they all have to do with the condemnation of the lost, the condemnation of the unsaved.
Number one, we saw that the wicked are hypocrites.
The unbelievers are hypocrites.
Number two, we saw that they're fools.
They're foolish.
Even when they think they're wise, the wisdom of this world is foolishness with
God.
Number three, we saw that they're lazy.
They are wicked and slothful.
Slothful means lazy.
And number four, we'll see that the wicked are selfish.
They're selfish.
Look at verse 41.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, depart from me, ye cursed and everlasting
being fire, prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was an hungred and ye gave me
no meat.
I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink.
I was a stranger and ye took me not in, naked and ye clothed me not, sick and in
prison and ye visited me not.
Then shall they also answer him saying, Lord, when saw we thee, a hungred or a thirst
or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them saying, verily I say unto you and as much as ye did it not,
to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.
So here we see the unsaved being rebuked for a lack of actually caring about and
taking care of other people for being selfish.
Now, you say, wait a minute, Pastor Anderson, if you would flip over to John Chapter 12.
John Chapter 12.
You say, wait a minute.
The left-wing liberals are some of the most compassionate people out there, Pastor Anderson.
I mean, the atheists and the agnostics and the liberals and the lefties and the commies,
I mean, they're so compassionate.
They're always helping the poor.
How can you pin this on them?
Let me show you what the Bible says because this is a good picture of what the left-wing
liberal John Lennon types are to the poor.
Look at John Chapter 12, verse 4.
Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him.
Why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor?
This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and
had the bag and bear what was put therein.
Then said Jesus, let her alone against the day of my burying as she kept this, for
the poor always you have with you, but me you have not always.
You see, we need to go back to point number one and understand that one of the hallmarks
of the unbelievers is their hypocrisy.
Of course they're going to talk about caring for the poor and look like they're helping
the poor and look like they care about other people and have compassion and love
someone other than themselves, but that's all part of their hypocrisy.
In reality, the unbelievers of this world are selfish people.
They love themselves more than anything else.
You see, love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.
Love comes from God and the world does not have real love in their hearts.
The real love that comes from having Christ in your heart.
The real love that's the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
They have a fake love like Judas where they pretend that they care about the poor, but
they don't care about the poor at all.
It's that they have the bag and they steal from what's put there in.
You see, today we have all kinds of liberal left-wing politicians who get up and talk
about how much they love the poor and how much they care about the poor, but they
live in a mansion.
They drive around fancy sports cars and fly around in private jets.
What they want to do is they want to take your money and steal it from you and
give it to people, not even that are poor, but give it to people that are lazy.
Now, they love, and what we see in the story is that they love to give away other
people's money.
That wasn't Judas' money.
That wasn't Judas' ointment.
What did he say in verse number 5?
Why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence?
Hey Judas, why don't you go sell your own ointment and give it to the poor?
He's trying to take what belongs to someone else and give it to the poor and make
himself look so spiritual and caring and compassionate.
All the while, he's stealing.
He's stealing money so he can have extra money that he doesn't deserve.
He is taking more than his share.
He's taking more than what he's supposed to have.
He's dishonestly stealing and gaining and living a more luxurious life than the other
disciples through theft.
But oh, he loves the poor.
He cares about the poor.
He's compassionate.
He's selfish and a hypocrite and it's exactly what Matthew 25 teaches us.
Go to Isaiah chapter 32.
Isaiah chapter number 32.
You see, the left-wing liberals of this world, they make their money through wickedness
either through stealing or through banking and all their usury and wicked lending practices
or they make it in Hollywood.
I mean, think about the most outspoken liberals.
What are they?
Hollywood actors.
And you know what?
That's not a righteous way to make your money.
Perverting minds, polluting minds, committing adultery on screen, committing all kinds of
sin on screen, promoting whatever the sodomite agenda, whatever the antichrist agenda.
Look, that is a wicked industry.
So they make their money through wickedness or the musicians who sell their soul to the
devil and make their money through producing ungodly music.
Not through an honest day's work, not through doing anything righteous, right?
But then they pontificate about how we need to give our money to the poor.
But really, they don't want to give their money.
They're greedy of their dishonest gain that they earned through hurting other people.
They hurt other people.
The movie industry with all the smut that they put out, all the bad music, all the
different pornography and all these different industries, they do all this wickedness, but
then they turn around and rebuke you for not loving the poor enough.
That's exactly what Judas Iscariot is doing in this story when he says, why was
not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor?
And it says, this he said, not that he cared for the poor.
You see, a lot of people, they put on a show of wanting to help people or care about the poor,
but that's all it is.
It's just a show.
And the Bible said of these same hypocrites that all their righteousnesses they do for
to be seen of men.
They only do that which is right when they can be seen of men, when they can get glorified
for it publicly.
And we see that a lot with these left wing, you know, celebrity types.
Go to Isaiah chapter 32 verse 5.
The Bible says, the vile person shall no more be called liberal nor the churral, churral
means fool, said to be bountiful, for the vile person will speak villainy and his heart
will work iniquity to practice hypocrisy and to utter error against the Lord to make
empty the soul of the hungry and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.
The instruments also of the churral are evil.
He deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words even when the needy
speaketh right, but the liberal deviseth liberal things and by liberal things shall
he stand.
Now what's the Bible saying here?
That someday at the return of Christ when God sets everything right, the vile person,
verse 5, shall no more be called liberal.
Now what does the word liberal mean?
Liberal means that you're generous.
That's what it literally means.
If I were to give you a liberal portion of mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving, you know,
I'm being generous.
That's what liberal means.
I'm free with what I'm giving out here.
So what the Bible is saying here is that there are people today that are vile people,
wicked people, but they're known today as liberal.
They're called liberal, but they're not really liberal.
They're not really generous.
They don't really love and care about other people.
They're just vile, wicked people.
What do they do?
Look at verse 6, the vile person.
This is the one who's known as a liberal, but he's not really liberal.
He's really one who's vile and it says his heart will work iniquity to practice
hypocrisy and to utter error against the Lord to make empty the soul of the hungry
and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.
So we see a lot of the same elements that we saw over in Matthew 24 and 25 where we
saw the foolishness, that's the churl in verse 5.
We saw the hypocrisy and then we see the working of iniquity, which is a wording
that was used, and then it says that he'll utter error against the Lord, speaking
against God, blaspheming God, right?
And then it says to make empty the soul of the hungry and he'll cause the drink
of the thirsty to fail.
The instruments also of the churl are evil.
He devises wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words even when the needy
speak it right.
Listen to me.
There are people out there today that are destroying the poor with lying words.
They call themselves liberal and generous and they pretend to be helping the poor,
but they're actually destroying them.
You see, when you teach people that there's no God, when you teach people that Jesus
is not their savior, when you teach people to turn away from the Bible and the Word
of God, you are destroying their life.
But not only that, when you teach people not to work for a living, when you teach
people that they can just give free money and just free handouts from the government
and that that's an acceptable way to live your life, to just continually be drawing
on free money, free money, and not work, not do anything, you are destroying those
people's lives.
Men and women were created to work and we're not happy unless we're working.
Men and women that are unemployed, they get sad, they get depressed, they get down.
They're not working.
They're not doing what God wants them to do with their life and so they're miserable.
And they're also parasites that are a drain on the rest of society because they're
not working, they're not contributing, they're not producing anything, they're not happy,
their relatives aren't happy, the people around them aren't happy, and then the government
who gives them all this free stuff says, oh, look how we're helping these people.
You're not helping people by teaching them to be lazy and not work.
You're not helping people by giving them a free education if that education is against
Jesus Christ and against God and against the Bible and teaching them to live and behave
like an animal because there's no creator.
You're not helping people.
They're actually being destroyed and they end up more poor.
They end up worse off.
They end up in a pattern of continual poverty, continual hunger, continual thirst because
they are being lied to, they're being destroyed with lying words.
But what do we call them?
Oh, they're liberal, they're generous.
Show me the liberal politician that lives in a humble home.
Show me the so-called liberal politician that gave all his money to the poor and took
up his cross and followed Jesus Christ.
You won't find that.
You'll find the circular driveway, you'll find the turret and the tennis court and
the private airstrip.
That's what you'll find amongst these so-called liberals, whether it's the Hollywood liberals,
the rock and roll liberals, the politician liberals, they're hypocrites.
They're fake.
It's not real.
Their love isn't real.
What they do isn't right.
Go if you would to Luke 21, Luke 21.
The type of giving that they do is the wrong kind of giving.
Now I'm all for generosity.
I'm all for charity.
I'm all for helping people and I'm definitely for helping the poor.
I'm definitely for helping those who are disabled or crippled or injured or helping
those who fall on bad times through sickness.
But look, when I drive around Tempe, all I see now is 20 and 30 year olds out begging
for money.
That's all I see.
We were just yesterday, my wife and I driving out and we're at an intersection and all
four corners of the intersection all had a lazy bum on them.
Nobody was injured.
Nobody was missing any limbs.
Just able bodied.
I mean one of them looked to be about 25.
In fact, one of these lazy jerk types is sitting in the auditorium right now.
This little punk here, this 22 year old punk who's been sitting outside our church
all week and he's told by the staff to leave over and over again.
No plans to get a job.
No plans to do anything with his life.
Just lazy, sitting on his rear end and we told him, hey, we don't want you loitering
and sitting around here.
He's like, oh, I'm reading my Bible and people give me money.
Well, you know what?
People need to stop giving their money to lazy punks sitting around for any reason.
And you know what?
If people would stop giving money to these panhandlers on the intersection that are 25
years old, able bodied when everybody's hiring right now, then maybe they'd stop standing
out there.
Maybe they'd do something with their life.
Maybe we could clean this city up.
Instead of everywhere we go in Tempe, it's an epidemic of homeless lazy derelicts.
And they need to go to work.
And somebody needs to tell them the truth.
And somebody needs to preach them the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And then teach them to observe all things that Christ commanded.
Hypocrites, especially a hypocrite who's going to sit on his butt and read the Bible
when the Bible said, six days shalt thou labor.
I don't even know why he's even here right now listening to my preaching.
I said, don't come here unless you're going to do what I preach.
Sit there and listen to my preaching as you don't go to work.
Makes me sick.
Go to work.
Everybody needs to go to work from Adam all the way until now.
You're supposed to go to work, man, and get a job and do something with your life.
Not be one of these hypocrites, one of these lazy people.
And then look, people give them money and they think like, oh, I think I'm earning
my way into heaven right now.
Here's $5 for the drug addict who won't go to work.
Here's $5 for the drug addict.
You're not even helping them.
Giving drugs to a drug addict makes them worse.
Giving alcohol to a drunk makes them worse.
How are they ever going to hit rock bottom?
How are they ever going to be like the prodigal son where no man gave unto him?
That's when he went back to the Father's house and got right with God.
And look, I'm all for helping people who legitimately need help, but people need to go to
work and if they won't work then neither should they eat.
That's what the Bible says.
And I don't care if that's not popular.
I don't care how many hateful emails I get.
You can get up and walk out and say, well, I'm never coming back to this church.
This church isn't compassionate.
Well, don't let the door hit you on your way out because I'm here to preach the
Word of God and the Word of God says six days shall thou labor.
And the Word of God says you're wicked if you're slothful.
And the Word of God says to work with your own hands so that you'll have to give
to people that actually need it.
Not to give to the lazy and give to the wicked.
What does this have to do with the song Imagine by John Lennon?
Well, I showed you from the Bible four attributes of those that are wicked.
The four attributes that we saw from the Bible of those that are wicked is that number
one, they're hypocrites.
Number two, we saw that they're foolish, meaning that they lack understanding.
They lack wisdom.
They lack knowledge.
They lack brains.
Number three, we saw laziness.
And number four, we saw selfishness.
Okay, so I was sitting in a restaurant the other day and I hear the lyrics to this
song and these four attributes just popped out at me from the song.
Here are the lyrics to this song and this is a really popular song.
Who knows the song that I'm talking about?
Put up your hand.
I mean, look around.
Everybody practically has heard of it.
I just heard it in a restaurant this week.
They play it at the Olympics.
They play it every New Year's Eve in New York.
It's a very popular song by John Lennon and John Lennon is from the Beatles.
Who's heard of the Beatles before?
Yeah, exactly.
Listen to this song.
This is from around, I believe, 1971.
Here's the lyrics to the song.
The first words of the song, imagine there's no heaven.
Great song, right?
Imagine there's no heaven.
It's easy if you try.
No hell below us.
Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people living for today.
Why would that be a good thing if everybody's just living for today?
Think about the foolishness and the hypocrisy of that statement, how the world's going to
be such a wonderful place if everybody would just live for today.
Aren't these the same people telling us how we need to worry so much about the environment?
Isn't that looking a little further than today?
Imagine all the people living for today.
Well, here's what happens.
If everybody starts living for today, you know what?
Then who's going to go to work if it's just all about enjoying yourself today?
Who's going to build everything that you use every day, John Lennon?
Who's going to put the food on your table and earn everything and build everything and
do the real work that keeps this world going?
Does everybody just go, live for today, man?
Just take drugs and just make love, not war and all this junk.
That's not going to work.
He said, imagine there's no countries.
Nice grammar.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too.
Imagine all the people living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as one.
Now listen, the world will be as one.
Here's my question for you, John Lennon.
You can't even keep the Beatles together.
How are you going to make the whole world one?
You can't even get along with three other people.
But you're going to get up and preach to us how we need to make the whole world
as one.
That's a hypocrite.
He can't even get along with four people.
Oh, the world's going to be as one, man.
You can't even make your band as one.
Let alone six, seven billion people that were on the earth at that time.
Imagine no possessions.
I wonder if you can.
No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people sharing all the world.
I wonder if he imagined no possessions.
You know why the Beatles broke up?
They're fighting over money.
What good little lefty liberal hippies, that they're in court all the time, fighting over
money?
Do you see what I mean about the hypocrisy there?
They say one thing and they do another.
Oh yeah, man, let's just imagine no possessions.
Okay, why don't you sell your house and give it to the poor?
In fact, why don't you give away all your music for the free, man?
Right?
Why don't you just give away the rights to all your music for free?
We could all just be as one, man.
And we could just listen to the Beatles and all we need is love, man.
What do you need all those lawyers for?
What do you need that business department for?
Why can't you get along with three people?
Because all four of you just lust for more money even though you're millionaires.
But do you see the hypocrisy and foolishness of this song?
I mean, anybody who heard this song who's a righteous person or a smart person should've
just said, get this song.
This song's ridiculous and stupid and hypocritical.
But yet, millions and millions of people every single year are swaying to this song
and just, imagine all the people.
It's like a worship service to foolishness.
It's a worship service to the left-wing, atheistic, hypocritical, garbage philosophy
of a world that is against Jesus Christ.
Imagine there's no heaven.
It's easy if you try.
No hell below us, above us, only sky.
Imagine all the people living for today.
If everybody's living for today, you know what that sounds like to me?
STDs, bastard children born out of wedlock, that's what it sounds like to me.
Sounds like looting.
Sounds like breaking into stores and walking out with a VCR and a TV.
It's like all the people living for today whenever these riots break out.
That's John Lennon's ideal world.
Imagine all the people just taking whatever they want.
This stuff is garbage.
No countries, nothing to kill or die for, but you know what else there is?
Nothing to live for either.
Nothing to live for.
That's why John Lennon, after writing this song, his whole life went into just a downward
spiral.
This was the last hit song that he ever put out in 1971.
But guess when he died, 1980.
So what did he do for those nine years?
Just drunk, on drugs, and putting out music albums that everybody hated, that nobody wanted
to listen to.
All the critics said, I can't even finish the album.
I can't even listen to it.
It's such junk.
It's such garbage.
He spent the last six years of his life as a house husband.
Staying home, raising one kid, in between drinking and drugs and stupidity, and blaspheming
Jesus Christ.
Just ended his life as a complete loser.
But he says, oh man, there's nothing to kill or die for.
Well, you got killed, buddy.
No religion, too.
Even all the people living life in peace.
You think everybody's just going to live in peace with no religion?
There's just no countries.
This guy is crazy.
He can't even get along with a few people, but he thinks the whole world is just going
to live in his hippie paradise.
Who's going to go to work?
Who's going to build the, you know, who builds the intersections that these derelict
stand at asking for money?
Who put up that streetlight?
Who built the library that they hang out in all day to get in the air conditioning?
It was built by tax dollars of people who actually went to work.
So this utopia where we don't have to work, there's no greed, we could all just
share.
No.
Somebody has to go work hard and think about tomorrow, not just living for today.
Go to the ant, thou sluggard, the Bible says, consider her ways and be wise which
having no guide, ruler, or overseer, prepareth her meat in the summer.
Works hard and prepares things in advance.
He said, imagine no possessions.
I wonder if you can.
I can't imagine you not having any possessions because you're so filthy rich and fighting
over money with your fellow band members.
No more greed or hunger or brotherhood of man.
No, here's a brotherhood.
You accept Jesus Christ as your savior and then you're a brother in Christ.
Then you're a sister in Christ.
You know what brings people together?
Jesus.
Look around the auditorium.
You know what you'll see?
Red, yellow, black, and white right here in the house of God.
All rallying around their love for Jesus Christ, their love for the word of God.
That's what brings us together.
And you know what?
We go to work, we follow the Bible, we're not perfect but we're forgiven.
Amen?
And we love the Lord and we want to do what's right but these left wing liberals,
they have this utopian paradise plan and it'll never work because it's against the Lord
and against his Christ.
It'll never happen.
God laughs at this.
Now there's a false teacher out there called Ray Comfort.
And this false preacher, Ray Comfort, he teaches a false gospel instead of preaching
that being saved is by believing on Jesus Christ.
You know, by faith in Christ, by grace through faith.
He teaches a false gospel that says that salvation is achieved through turning away
from a life of sin and living a righteous life.
So it's a works-based salvation is what it is.
So he put out this little video.
It's like a 35-minute video and it's all about the Beatles and John Lennon.
And it's called Genius.
So he calls John Lennon a genius.
This is his Christian video.
And according to the Bible, John Lennon's a fool because, you know, according to the
Bible, John Lennon is a hypocrite.
He's lazy.
He's selfish.
And we see all that in the song.
See he's lazy.
Man, let's just live for today, no possessions.
What he's saying is give me free stuff.
That's what he's teaching to his followers.
He's foolish because none of it's going to work.
He's a hypocrite because he doesn't practice anything in the song.
He's lazy because he spent the last six years of his life as a house husband, staying
home instead of going to work.
He wants to just live off of I want to hold your hand or something for the rest of his
life.
But Ray Comfort put out this video, Genius, all about John Lennon and how he's this
genius.
Okay.
Well, in this video, he tries to defend John Lennon and how the song, Imagine, it's
not atheist.
And he's obviously just some Closet Beatles fan who just wanted to just put out this
video to try to, you know, just justify his own love of the Beatles or something.
And look, I was never a big Beatles fan.
I grew up with it a little bit just because that's my parents' generation.
But I'll tell you this, once I started learning about what the people in the Beatles
are like, and once you start hearing their blasphemous things against the Lord, you
know what?
That's when I quit listening to the Beatles.
Why would we want to listen to somebody who hates our Lord, who hates Jesus, who blasphemes
Christ?
And the other band members are the same way.
It's not just John Lennon.
It was the other members, too, that put all these lyrics, these blasphemous lyrics
and all these teachings.
But he doesn't have anything negative to say about it.
Just he's defending it and he even defended the statements that John Lennon made where
he said the Beatles are more popular than Jesus Christ and 200 years from now, people
will be listening to the Beatles, but no one will be reading the Bible.
But I guarantee you, there's way more people reading the Bible in 2017 than listening
to the Beatles.
But that was the blasphemous statement that he made, and Ray Comfort is trying to
smooth it all over and sugarcoat it, and he says, you know, imagine it's supposed
to be this atheist anthem, but it says imagine there's no heaven.
You know, that means he's acknowledging that there is a heaven because you have to
imagine that it's not there.
Except here's what that means.
When he says imagine there's no heaven, imagine there's no hell, imagine no religion,
here's what he's saying.
He knows that stuff's out there, but he hates it and wishes it would be gone.
It's that he hates the Lord.
He hates heaven and hell.
He hates the truth.
It's not that he's saying it doesn't exist.
He's wishing it away into the cornfield because he hates the Lord.
Here's what's going on in this song.
And it's a perfect atheist anthem because it promotes hypocrisy, foolishness, laziness,
and selfishness, which are the four atheist virtues from Matthew 24 and 25.
But the foolishness of Ray Comfort is that he tries to justify this musician and the
whole thing is just a vehicle to basically promote his false salvation.
Go if you would to James chapter 4.
James chapter 4.
And he literally tells people in the video, he says, hey, you've got to stop trusting
in your own righteousness and you've got to trust in Christ, but you also have to
give up all your sins.
And he says if you're really a Christian, that means you're going to read the Bible
every day, go to church, follow the commandments.
I mean, you're going to do all this stuff to get to heaven, is what he says.
And if you don't do all that stuff, you're not saved according to him.
Very little Bible in the film.
He quotes a couple verses from a false modern Bible version, nothing King James.
Very few verses.
And the verse he quotes aren't even salvation verses.
They're just verses ripped out of context to make strange points.
And the truth of the matter is that if we're going to have peace on earth, and I'm all
for peace, I'm all for helping people, it's going to be through the Bible.
It's going to be through Christ.
It's going to be through living a righteous life, not through living for today and imagining
no heaven, no hell, no consequences, no religion.
Now John Lennon was known as a major anti-war activist.
That was one of the big things he's known for, is just being so pro-peace.
And he talked about the reason why is because he got in a lot of fistfights with other
men and he beat his wife a lot.
So that's why I talk about peace a lot, man.
Just kind of preaching to myself.
Because he treated the people around him like garbage.
He's going to make the whole world as one.
He can't even get along with his first wife.
He treats her like dirt.
He can't even get along with his second wife.
He's committing adultery and humiliating them both throughout the relationship.
But let's see the real anti-war truth from the Bible.
Go to James chapter 4 verse 1, the Bible reads, From whence come wars and fightings
among you?
Come they not hence even of your lusts that war in your members?
Ye lust and have not, ye kill and desire to have and cannot obtain.
Ye fight and war, yet ye have not because ye ask not.
Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
So according to John Lennon's song, he said that the reason why there's war is because
there's countries and because there's religion and greed and money.
But here's the thing.
He's right about one thing, the greed part.
The Bible teaches that warfare is a result of people being greedy for money and financial
gain and the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil.
Now look at this scripture here, it says, From whence come wars and fightings among
you?
He's saying, where does war come from?
Why do we have war in the world?
Why is there strife between people?
Come they not hence even of your lusts that war in your members?
So we are filled with lusts as human beings and that's what causes external conflict.
That's what causes us to not get along with the people around us and that's what causes
countries to go to war.
They go to war for money.
They go to war to take something that doesn't belong to them.
It says, Ye lust and have not, ye kill and desire to have and cannot obtain.
Ye fight and war, yet ye have not because ye ask not.
Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss that ye may consume it upon your lust.
Okay, so why did John Lennon not get along with his other three band members?
Well because they all are lusting and desiring more for themselves.
More power, more control, more money instead of getting along and being at peace.
Why was it that he couldn't stay married to his first wife?
You know the Bible says that when you get married you're supposed to leave father and
mother and cleave unto your wife and you two are to become one flesh.
And when God is joined together, let not man put us under.
His song says the whole world is going to be as one.
He can't even keep that union as one, him and his wife.
Why?
Because of the lust that caused him to commit adultery.
That's why his wife left him because he committed adultery with someone else.
He committed adultery.
He was caught in the act of adultery.
That's why.
That's his lust that's warring in his members.
Why are nations at war today?
Because of the military industrial complex, because of weapons manufacturers, because
of armaments dealers, because of opium, because of oil, because of resources.
That's what's really going on behind the war machine in the United States and anywhere
else in the world.
It's about making money.
It's about making millions and billions of dollars.
That's why we invade the countries that have oil or opium or whatever.
And that's why we are in a perpetual state of warfare because of the fact that there
are people who profit from warfare.
They make the bombs.
They make the missiles.
They make the tanks.
They make the planes.
And they don't want the party to end.
So they keep the war going.
So that they can keep selling that equipment.
That's what the Bible says.
It's all based on covetousness and the love of money.
Verse 4, ye adulterers and adulteresses.
That's you John Lennon.
Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?
Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
Do you think that the scripture saith in vain, the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth
to envy?
But he giveth more grace.
Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
Submit yourselves therefore to God.
Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you.
Cleanse your hands ye sinners and purify your hearts ye double minded.
Be afflicted and mourn and weep.
Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up.
Go to Ecclesiastes 7 and I'm going to close on this.
Ecclesiastes chapter 7.
So just to review, we started out in Matthew 24 and 25 and saw some of the attributes
of the wicked.
We saw that first of all, they're hypocrites.
We saw that second of all, they are foolish.
We saw that third of all, they are lazy and then fourthly, they are selfish.
Then we looked at the famous song, Imagine by John Lennon, which is known as the Atheist
Anthem, and we saw that all four of those elements are strongly present.
And then if we look at the life of the man who wrote that song, all four elements are strongly
present.
He's a hypocrite.
He was a fool.
He was lazy.
He was selfish.
He was arrogant, prideful, everything that God warned us against.
And then we saw in James chapter 4 the reason why the world is in the situation that it's
in and how the philosophy behind imagine, the philosophy of the left, the philosophy
of so-called liberalism is not the answer to the world's problems.
The answer to the world's problems, according to James chapter 4, is that we will humble
ourselves in the sight of the Lord.
Then we will cleanse our hands and purify our hearts and draw near to God and stop
being an adulterer, stop being an adulteress, stop being a friend of the world, stop letting
the lusts of your members control you and walk soberly, righteously, and godly
in this present world.
And the thing that's going to bring us together is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God.
You say, well, that's not going to bring everybody together.
No, it won't.
It's not designed to bring everybody together.
It's designed to bring Christians together of all types, of all backgrounds, of all
nationalities or economic classes or ages.
You know, it's designed to bring us together in the church.
It's not going to bring the whole world together until the second coming of Jesus
Christ when he sets up his millennial reign on this earth.
But you know what, when he sets up his reign on this earth, you know what the Bible says
about that reign of Jesus Christ, that every man's going to sit down under his own vine
and under his own fig tree, meaning that there are going to be possessions.
And he says, the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it.
So there will be countries.
And there will still be heaven above us.
And there will still be hell below us during that millennial reign of Christ.
And there will certainly be religion visiting the fatherless and afflicted and keeping
ourselves unspotted from the world.
And there's going to be a brotherhood of man only for those who are brothers and
sisters in Christ, not a fake artificial brotherhood that can't even get four people
together on the same page, let alone the whole world.
Here's the conclusion, Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 5, it's better to hear the rebuke
of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools.
You see, a rebuke, this is what the word rebuke means.
Rebuke is when someone harshly tells you that you're wrong.
Because nicely telling someone that they're wrong is called a reproof.
Sternly telling someone that they're wrong is called rebuke.
Now here's the thing, it can sometimes hurt when someone rebukes you.
For a preacher to get up and just strongly tell you that you're wrong or strongly preach
against the sin in your life, and a lot of people will walk out of a church like
this and never come back and say, oh, that preacher, he's too negative.
He rebuked me.
He preached on my sin.
He preaches too hard.
He doesn't have any love.
He's just all mean and he's a big meanie.
And here's what they'll do, they'll go get in the car, this is what they'll do, they'll
go get in the car, and they'll go turn on the radio, and they'll hear,
doo doo doo doo doo, imagine there's no heaven, da da da da da, no hell below us.
And it sounds good.
Oh, it sounds so good and it sounds so nice.
And they're thinking, John Lennon, he loves me.
He loves me.
Not like that big meanie, Pastor Anderson.
That big meanie, Pastor Anderson, he's so hateful.
But the truth of the matter is, the pastor who gets up and screams and beats the pulpit
and tells you to go to work loves you.
And listen to me, when your parents yell at you that you need to go get a job, they
love you.
Right?
When your parents are yelling at you, clean up your act, clean up your life, get a job,
go to church.
You know, they actually love you and care about how you turn out.
See, John Lennon just wants to sing to you and just tell you, hey, just live for today,
man.
You know, but here's the thing, he doesn't love you.
He wants you to, look, who wants to die when you're 40 years old?
Who wants to be dead at 40?
That's how John Lennon ended up.
Oh, that's just because, you know, somebody shot him.
Yeah, but here's the thing, God allowed that to happen.
God could have protected him.
And obviously the guy who shot him was wrong, the guy was a weirdo, he's a murderer.
I'm not condoning that.
But guess what?
God could have protected him.
But do you want to spend age 31 to 40 just being a complete loser and then dying
at 40?
Huh?
You want to be in a drunken stupor?
He talked about an 18-month period in his life that he called his lost weekend.
That's not a weekend.
That's like 75 weekends and 75 weekdays or weeks of days that is.
Oh, that's kind of like my lost weekend.
Well, you know, I don't want to waste a year and a half.
I don't want nine years of being a fool and a laughingstock to the world.
I don't want to die when I'm 40 years old.
I don't want to leave behind this bizarre freak of a widow to go around promoting every
filthy perverted cause, even until 2017, that Yoko Ono weirdo.
I don't want to be ashamed and a reproach.
And look, I don't want that for you either.
And that's why I'm preaching this sermon.
I want you to live a godly life, a Christian life.
I want you to go to work and know what it feels like to come home after a good day's
work.
I want you to know what it's like to truly love your wife and not have to sleep with
a bunch of other strangers than to be with your own wife.
I want you to stay married.
I want you to raise children.
I want you to love the Lord, to go to church, to earn rewards, to win people to
Christ, to make Arizona a better place, to make the world a better place.
I want you to lift up the Lord Jesus Christ and lift up his word and shine the light of
the gospel to a lost and dying world.
You know why?
Because I love you.
John Lennon doesn't love you.
And you know what?
That's just one example.
You could turn on the radio and find all kinds of other blasphemous music on there
that sounds so good and it sounds so nice and it sounds so beautiful, but it's better.
It's better to hear the rebuke of the wise than to listen to the song of fools.
So when the choice is there between popping in the preaching CD or popping in the Book
of Jeremiah audio Bible, KJV, or popping in some godly edifying preacher or teacher,
that's the rebuke of the wise sometimes when they hit on your sin.
It's better to listen to that than to pop in the song of the fool from people like
John Lennon and the Beatles.
You say, oh, nobody listens to it anymore.
Well, I just heard it this week in a restaurant or I wouldn't even be preaching this sermon.
Somebody's listening to it.
We need to listen to God's word and we need to stop having pie in the sky, left-wing
liberal ideas, so-called liberal, vile is what it really is, ideas influencing us
and get our influence from the Bible and God's word so that we don't fall into the hypocrisy,
foolishness, selfishness, and laziness of the so-called liberalism of our day.
Let's buy our heads and have a word of prayer.