to show us some great truth.
And Father, I just pray that you would please
just help these sayings to sink down into our ears
and that we would take with us what we've heard today
and take it to heart.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Well, we're living in a day where it seems like
people are living in a dream world.
It seems almost like people are living
in some kind of an alternate reality.
You talk to people and you can't seem to talk sense
into them many times because it just seems like
they're so separated from reality.
They're living in this little dream land
that they've created for themselves.
Seems like I talk to people all the time
and even many churches that I've been to in the past
where I went there and it just seemed like
people were not in reality.
I almost felt like I was in the twilight zone,
the way things were and the way that people thought.
And I was studying the Bible.
I was trying to find this in the Bible.
I was looking through the Bible
and I was trying to find this idea of people
just being so separated from reality.
And I couldn't find the word reality in the Bible,
but I found this idea several times in the Bible
of people dreaming,
people being kind of half asleep and dreaming.
And God says, look, you're living like
your life is just this dream.
You need to wake up and kind of see what's really going on,
but it's almost like you've been enchanted
or bewitched or spellbound into this dreamlike state
where you're just outside of reality.
Have you ever had a dream
and something happened in the dream
and maybe the next day goes by
and you have trouble separating whether it really happened
or whether it was just a dream?
Have you ever had that happen?
And you'll think, I remember one time,
I remember for some reason this sticks out in my mind,
I was a teenager and I thought that my sister
had quit her job and got a new job,
but it was really just a dream that I had.
And weeks and weeks went by
and I just thought that she worked at this new place,
but in reality, I mean, it never happened.
She still had the same job,
but I just had that in my mind
because I had it in a dream
and I was just having trouble
separating the dream from reality.
Well, that's the way I see the world today.
I see a lot of people who have a hard time
separating truth and reality from fiction.
Well, in Isaiah chapter 29, look at verse number nine here.
And we read the chapter Isaiah 29
because it talks a lot about this,
but look at Isaiah 29, nine.
See, in this case,
God's talking about the nation of Israel,
more notably than the Southern kingdom,
the nation of Judah, that they're living in a dream world,
that they're living outside of reality.
The Bible says here,
stay yourselves in wonder, cry ye out and cry.
They are drunken, but not with wine.
They stagger, but not with strong drink.
He's saying it's not that they're drunk,
but it says for the Lord has poured out upon you
the spirit of deep sleep.
And it closed your eyes, the prophets and your rulers,
the seers hath he covered.
And then before that,
it talks about this dream that the man dreamed,
and I'll get into that dream a little bit later.
And then look, if you would, at verse number 11.
Now, let me explain the word there
at the end of verse number 10.
See that word seers?
It says the seers hath he covered.
See, the word seer in the Old Testament
is used to talk about a prophet.
It's used to talk about a preacher.
And the Bible defines that word in the book of 1 Samuel.
It says that a person who was a prophet
used to be called a seer.
Why was he called a seer?
Well, because the preacher, the man of God, the prophet,
is supposed to be able to see things
that maybe other people don't see.
He's supposed to be able to see something
that maybe God sees,
but maybe not everybody can see around him.
Well, look at verse number 11.
The Bible says in the vision,
see again, the aspect of sight is being brought up,
and the vision of all is to come unto you
as the words of a book that is sealed.
Now, we're talking about the Bible here.
Which men deliver to one that is learned,
saying, read this, I pray thee.
And he saith, I am not learned.
Wherefore the Lord said,
or I'm sorry, I skipped a verse there.
It says, read this, I pray thee,
and he saith, I cannot, for it is sealed.
And the book is delivered to him that is not learned,
saying, read this, I pray thee,
and he saith, I am not learned.
You see, because people live in this dream world,
this fiction world outside of reality,
the Bible has become a sealed book to them.
They have a hard time understanding,
and as the Bible used the word,
they have a hard time seeing the things of God.
They have a hard time understanding or seeing
what a preacher sees, what a prophet sees,
what a man of God or a woman of God
who studies the Bible can see.
They can't see it because they're dreaming.
They're living in this alternate reality.
Now look, it says here that those that are educated,
the person that's learned, you give them the Bible,
you hand the person who lives outside of reality,
and we're gonna explain what that is in a little bit,
but the person who's living in this dream world,
this floating around la-la land that people live in
outside of reality, you hand them the Bible,
you say, read this, and they say, I can't,
because it's sealed.
They say, I don't understand this book.
It's a cryptic book.
It's kind of a enigmatic type of a book,
and it has to be interpreted, and I can't read this.
It's something that's for maybe some kind of a priest
or a preacher or something.
I can't understand it because it's just gibberish to me.
And then you take it and you hand it to somebody
who's uneducated, who's living in this fake dream world,
and it says that they can't read it
because they're so stupid that he just says,
I just, I can't even read this.
I can't understand the Bible because I'm an idiot,
is what it's saying,
because I'm just living outside of reality.
So there's two types of people there.
Well, think about the day that we live in,
and I'll explain to you what I'm talking about.
Think about what a outside of reality world we live in.
Think about the reality escape.
Now, the obvious things come to mind
when you think about escaping reality,
when you think about going off into a dream world.
Well, the first thing you think of obviously
would be alcohol and drugs.
Alcohol, and that's mentioned in the chapter
here in verse number nine.
He talks about a man who's drunk,
and he says, no, it's like they're drunk,
but they're not actually drunk.
But think about television.
What's television?
It's a make-believe world.
It's a form of reality escape where you can get away
from your stupid life or your meaningless life
as you see it, and you can sit in front of a television
and just numb your mind in a dream world,
in a land of falsehood and fake make-believe.
Or you can turn on reality TV,
and you can actually enjoy someone else's reality
because your reality is so miserable,
it's not fun enough for you to fight with your spouse.
You don't enjoy enough fighting
with your own family members and roommates,
so you turn on the TV and you can watch people
in a real-life situation in an apartment together,
fighting with each other, yelling at each other,
and that somehow is entertaining
because it's like being in a dream world.
It's separating you from reality.
Think about just the comic books that people read,
the fiction books, the novels, trying to escape reality.
Think about the video games that people just spend hours
playing video games to leave
and separate themselves from reality.
Think about music.
And I think, you know, everywhere I go,
I feel like I'm living in a movie
because I feel like there's this soundtrack on all the time,
and I feel like I'm an actor in a movie.
You know, have you ever walked in these places
and you start walking different
because you just think you're a movie star?
You think you're off the screen
because you walk in and you hear this music
and it's exciting?
Even the gas station now, you're pumping gas
and they're blasting the rock music.
Every department store, they're blasting rock music.
The mall, downtown areas,
where you're just walking around outside,
they have loudspeakers now just playing rock music.
Everywhere you go, every store, every restaurant,
every gas station, you can't hardly get away from it.
And I literally feel like my life is a movie
because I feel like there's just this soundtrack on
in the background of this fake life that I live.
Well, then there's God's word.
Then there's the Bible, then there's reality.
And that's talked about in this chapter two.
You see, God didn't give us his word
in the form of an interactive DVD.
I mean, wouldn't that have been possible?
I mean, God is in heaven
and he could have delivered the Bible to us and said,
here, this disc is the Bible.
Pop in this DVD and you can watch the Red Sea part.
And there's times when you can participate
and you can help Noah put the animals on the ark
and you can watch Abraham
and that going out of the Eridicalities
and you can help fight against the King of Sodom
and you can do all these great things
and it's interactive DVD.
You just go where you wanna go.
You can see all the images, all the music, the soundtrack.
See, God didn't give us the Bible
in the form of even a colorful magazine
where you could leap through it and look at all the pictures.
God didn't give us the Bible in the form of a Nintendo game
that you could play this game of the Bible
and play through it and interact with it.
He didn't give us an iPod.
He didn't give us a Walkman.
He didn't give us anything like that.
How did God decide to give us his word?
Well, it's in the chapter here in a book,
a book that's black and white,
white pages with black ink.
There's no pictures in this book.
There's nothing exciting about it.
It says white pages and black ink,
but my friend, it's reality.
This is reality.
You see, when you start spending your time in this book
that's white pages and black ink and looking at it,
you'll begin to see things as God sees it
in black and white.
Look if you would at verse number 18
in the chapter there where we are.
The Bible says, and in that day shall the deaf hear
the words of the book and the eyes of the blind
shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness.
They'll see past all the obscurity of the world.
They'll see past all the darkness of the entertainment
and all the shining lights and the obscurity
and the blurred reality,
the blur between what's right and wrong,
the blur between black and white,
the blur of situational ethics
and lack of just clear moral insight.
It says when they hear the words of this book,
they can see through that
and see the sharp images of right, wrong.
But you see, the only way that you're ever gonna see that,
the only way that you're ever gonna see the things of God,
the only way you're ever gonna understand the Bible,
the only way that you're ever gonna see what God sees,
the only way you're gonna be a seer
like the men of the Old Testament
who could see something that nobody else could see,
the only way you're ever gonna see that
is when you turn off the TV,
when you turn off the DVD,
you turn off the music,
you turn off the video games,
you turn off all the flashing lights
and all the bells and whistles of our society,
all the noise and all the images
and all the loud images just say,
turn it all off and just open up the Bible
and God says, be still and know that I am God.
That's what he says.
He says, shut off all the noise,
turn off all the machines and just sit still
and know that I'm God.
You see, that's what's wrong with the society we live in.
Nobody just sits down in quietness
and just meditates and muses upon the things of God.
No, they've got the stereo on.
No, they've got the talk radio on.
No, they've got the music on.
No, even Christian music.
They've got the music on, they've got just anything
and they just are not listening to the voice of God.
They're not listening to this book.
They're just so distracted
and they're living in this dream world, TV set reality.
You say, well, I don't like to read.
Look, you must read this book.
God doesn't give you the option of,
I just don't feel like reading.
I just don't like it.
It doesn't matter whether you like to read.
God says, read this book.
It's a book, read it.
Now, let me give you some examples
of how these things can warp our reality,
these things that are just pumped down our throat.
Everywhere you go, there's television screens
just pumping it down your throat,
even if you don't own a television,
which I hope you don't,
but it's just shoved down your throat,
the music everywhere you go.
You can't go to a restaurant, can't go to a department store
without just hearing it, just pumped into your mind.
Let me explain to you how it warps your view of reality.
Let me tell you how it turns your world into a dream world.
Well, think about television, for example.
Now, people have said many times that people like myself
and others who raise our kids, you know,
strictly in a godly home,
they say that we're sheltering our children.
Have you ever heard that term before, being sheltered?
You can't shelter them, okay?
Don't shelter them.
They're gonna get exposed to it somehow.
Well, let me explain to you how this works.
I take my kids out soul-willing with me,
and when I take them out soul-willing,
you know what they see?
They see alcohol.
They see cigarettes.
They see people screaming and cursing at each other.
They hear every four-letter word.
They see the television.
They see everything, any sin you want to name,
go down the list.
But here's the difference.
I was sitting on a plane recently,
and here I am on the plane,
and they have the TV screens on,
and I'm not watching them,
but I happened to catch a glimpse of what was going on,
and I didn't have any audio or anything,
but just these screens are going.
I look up at the screen,
and I see two young, nice-looking guys
sitting around a table, clean clothes,
just perfect haircuts,
sitting there in a perfectly immaculate kitchen,
which I perceive to be their apartment.
These two men, I guess, were roommates or whatever,
these young guys.
They're sitting there.
The apartment was immaculate.
Now, have you ever been to an apartment
of two guys that lived together
and just, where it was just immaculate?
Because I never have.
But in any case, here it is, it's perfect.
It's just picture-perfect, it's like a model home,
and they're sitting at the kitchen table,
the breakfast table, sitting around just talking.
They're in their pajamas,
it seemed like they'd gotten up,
and of course, they're perfectly manicured and everything,
but they're sitting there just talking.
It's first thing in the morning,
but just right in the table,
and almost to where you couldn't even hardly notice it,
is just a bottle of Jack Daniels and two glasses,
and every once in a while, they just take a sip.
And so it didn't even make sense.
I mean, what, these guys are first thing in the morning,
sitting around the breakfast table
in the perfect, clean apartment, drinking hard liquor,
and they're just not even missing a beat.
They're drinking it like it's orange juice, okay?
But see, here's what it is.
Your mind is being programmed to associate
that alcohol with a clean, nice house.
Look, I take my kids out solely with me.
They see the alcohol, my friend, they're not sheltered.
They see alcohol, but you know what they see?
They see a filthy mess of a house of a drunk,
because that's what people,
you go to somebody's house who drinks,
and tell me how clean their house is.
I'll show you the piles of dirty laundry
that my kids see out solely with him.
The piles of stacked up dirty laundry,
the piles of stacked up dirty dishes,
the piles of mess and filth, the bugs, it's garbage.
Why?
Because that's the effects of alcohol.
And see, here's the thing.
The difference between me sheltering my kids
by not showing them television,
by not showing them this garbage,
and taking them rather out so wanting
is that they both get exposed to the sin.
My kids get exposed to the sin in reality.
See, that's the key word, reality.
They see it in real life, and my friend,
alcohol is a lot different in real life than it is on TV.
Because on TV, it's beautiful, it's glamorous, it's clean,
but crisp, cool, clean.
I'm driving down the road, I see a Budweiser truck.
It says, crisp, cool, clean.
And I'm thinking, clean?
How is it clean?
What do they mean by that?
Did they wipe off the outside of the bottle for you?
They keep it nice and clean?
I mean, they're advertising beer.
I mean, think about it.
They could use any adjective that they want
in the English language.
They're using three adjectives.
They all want them to start with a C.
And one of them is clean?
In what way is it clean?
It doesn't even make sense.
But that's what they want you to think.
That's what they're trying to train you.
It's clean.
It's nice.
And so you can see the booze out soul-winning
and see it in reality and show your kids in reality.
Or you can see it on the television
and watch a fake, make-believe version of it.
You see, most people, and even churches
that will preach against different shows
on the television, or maybe they'll
preach against different movies, or they'll
preach against going to the movie theater,
or maybe they'll preach against the R-rated movies,
or maybe the PG-13 movies.
They always fixate.
They're so one-dimensional, because they fixate on this.
Does it have cussing?
Does it have nudity?
And that's like the criteria.
Is this a good or a bad movie?
Does it have cussing?
Look, cussing is probably the best thing on television.
Cussing is not what I'm worried about, television.
What I'm worried about is that my kids' minds
are being programmed by the world and by Satan.
It has nothing to do with it.
Christians get this machine.
And when I heard about this machine, I could not believe it.
That people in our church had this, not in this church,
but in this church that I went to,
it was called the angel guard.
And you put the angel guard, and no offense to your daughter
angel, but anyway, you get the angel guard,
and you put this on your TV, and it bleeps out
all the cussing for you.
Isn't that amazing?
I mean, you play your DVDs, you play your videos.
So now, here's what I can do.
I can set down my three kids, Solomon, Isaac, and Johnny,
and I can set them down in front of the TV, right?
And they can watch the filthiest movie.
But don't worry, because all the cussing's bleeped out.
But they're still learning this movie.
And then guess what?
When they turn 18, you know what they're going to do?
Hey, I like that movie.
Let's go rent it.
They don't have angel guard.
And I don't care if they have angel guard or not.
Cussing is not the worst thing on television.
The worst thing on television is the whores and whoremongers
that are there becoming their heroes.
The worst thing on television is a whole long list
of things that's brainwashing them psychologically
and taking them out of reality and putting them
in this fake dream world.
And then you wonder why you hand them the Bible.
When they grow up and they get out
of their little Christian school,
you wonder why you hand them the Bible and say, read this.
And what do they say?
I can't read it.
It doesn't make sense to me.
Or I'm too stupid to understand it, as the other guy said.
Give me an NIV.
Give me something I can understand,
because I'm not learned.
I'm not learned, because I live in a dream world.
I didn't take the time to learn the English language
so I could read the King James Bible.
I'm not learned.
I can't read it.
Then you go, oh, you're educated.
You went to four years of college.
You went to six years of college.
Here, read this.
No, I can't read it.
It doesn't make sense.
It's a sealed book to me.
See, that's the day we're living in.
It's a dream world.
Why don't people understand the Bible?
Why don't people understand the things of God?
I'll tell you why.
Because they've warped their mind in a dream world
from just television, music, video games, sports,
comic books, and everything's just fake.
Everything's a game.
Everything's just not reality.
Think about television, how it's always
had an agenda from day one.
You say, well, what about the old days when, man,
television used to be so good?
Are you talking about the Andy Griffith Show?
OK.
Think about the Andy Griffith Show with me for a moment.
The Andy Griffith Show, the whole point of the show
is a single parent.
That's the whole point of the show.
Is it a mother and a father and children?
No, it's a single parent.
It's a man who lives with his aunt.
Look, my role model is not a man who lives with his aunt.
My role model is a man who pays his own bills
and lives in his own house with his own wife
and raises his own children, not some single parent.
And you say, well, that's not fair.
In the show, his wife died.
And so he's this widower, and so he's just raising the son.
Look, it doesn't matter, because all they're trying to do
is ease you into it back then.
Oh, look, this is through no fault of his own.
But why am I spending an hour a day watching a single parent,
just getting used to the idea of a single parent,
just getting me used to it, getting me programmed?
Not to mention that Gomer Pyle on the show
is a sodomite in real life.
The actor who played Gomer Pyle is a full-blown sodomite.
I think he's dead now.
Praise God.
But think about another show a little later on.
Think about the Brady Bunch.
Oh, a clean show.
Boy, those were the good old days, weren't they?
Well, what's the show about?
It's about a man, again, whose wife died,
and a woman whose husband died.
And now they've gotten married, and they each have three kids,
and now they're joining the families together.
Now let me ask you something.
How many people do you know whose wife died,
and they married somebody whose husband died,
and they joined the families together and had kids?
Do you know anybody like that?
Do you know somebody like that?
OK, well, that's rare.
That's a pretty rare circumstance,
though, let's face it.
That is not the norm.
But that's what you watch on TV.
But what's an extremely common circumstance,
very common circumstance, is a divorced man with kids
and a divorced woman with kids getting married and joining
the family together.
Now that's all the time.
We could list.
I mean, we could just start listing people.
I could list till I was blue in the face.
But see, what is it trying to do?
It's just always trying to show you
some kind of an alternate reality, not normal,
not the norm, but just trying to expose you
to different ways of life, trying
to expose you to that, so that you'll just
get used to the idea.
And it's kind of fun when they join the families together.
Ha ha.
It's a great time.
Some people can't take this kind of preaching.
That's why she's leaving.
No, I'm just kidding.
She's sick.
But anyway, you can go all the way back,
and you can think about how TV has always had an agenda,
period.
It's produced by the world.
There's a reason why, because they have an agenda.
I was thinking about this recently.
Think about the Bugs Bunny Show, perfectly harmless show,
right?
Well, does anybody remember watching Bugs Bunny Show?
A common theme of the Bugs Bunny Show
and Warner Brothers and cartoons is Bugs Bunny
dresses up like a girl.
He dresses up.
He puts on a dress.
He puts on lipstick and puts on makeup.
And he kisses and makes out with Elmer Fudd.
You say, you're crazy, Pastor Anderson.
Look, if anybody has watched the Bugs Bunny Show,
you know that that's true.
People are nodding their head right now,
because I'm telling you, that is what happens on the show.
And Elmer Fudd's getting real uncomfortable.
And sweat starts pouring down his face
as Bugs Bunny is kissing and hugging him.
That's filthy and perverted.
But ha ha.
Well, it's not funny in light of the fact
when you fast forward 50, 60 years
and look at the society we're living in when all those people
grew up.
And what were they doing?
Even back then, 50, 60 years ago,
I'm not sure of the exact chronology of the Bugs Bunny
but I'm sure it was 50 years ago.
50 years ago, they were already trying
to teach you one truth, homosexuality is funny.
It's a joke.
And what do we have today, the sitcoms?
Homosexuality, it's a joke.
Ha ha, it's funny, we're supposed to laugh at it.
But see, it's not a joke when you see the agenda,
how they're changing our nation.
It's not a joke when every day in the news,
they're making some political advance.
They're getting married.
They're taking over.
They're adopting kids now.
They get married and then they adopt somebody's foster kids
that got taken away from them.
Some person who legitimately gave birth to a child,
and I'll tell you something right now,
whether this is popular or not, it's
never right to take people's kids away from them, period.
I don't care what they did.
You don't take away somebody's kids from them.
That's not anybody's right to do that.
If somebody committed a felony, then stick them in jail
or do whatever you have to do, kill them,
do whatever they deserve.
But you don't take away people's kids from them
because you don't think they're a fit parent because that's
none of your business because God gave them those kids.
And I don't care if a woman's taking drugs or whatever.
That's her kid.
You don't take and give it to some sodomite.
And that's what they're doing.
They take kids away from people and they put them
in these foster homes where they get abused and molested
and attacked.
And everybody I've ever known who grew up in a foster home
said, I've been violated in my foster home
because they get moved from one to the other and they get violated.
That's the world we're living in, and so Bugs Bunny just
doesn't make me laugh anymore.
I just can't think it's funny anymore
when I see Bugs Bunny in a dress with lipstick on,
kissing Elmer Fudd.
Makes me sick.
It makes me want to throw up.
And that's always been what it is.
But you think about music.
Think about how music warps our mentality.
So television's just always been trying
to expose us to these weird alternate scenarios.
Think about how music warps your mind.
What's music about?
I mean, the obvious is that it's all about dating and romance
and love.
And so here's what it is.
It glorifies romance and love and dating, not being married.
Even though you spend probably 40 or 50 years
of your life married and probably only a few years
dating.
I spent a few years dating.
I plan to spend the rest of my life married.
But all the music's about dating and romance.
This tiny phase in your life, when you're just a certain age,
when you're dating and everything,
that's what it's all about.
So what happens?
You listen to that music all the time?
Then you start getting this warped, la-la, dreamland
view of the relationship between a man and a woman.
And so what do you do?
You look at your own marriage.
You look at your own situation.
And you say, oh, this isn't like the song
that I heard about where it was all just perfect.
And so you say, I'm just going to get a divorce.
I'm just going to leave because this isn't what I expected.
Why?
Because you expected the wrong thing
because you didn't read this book.
And so you expected everything to be perfect
and a bed of roses.
And so you, like the other 70% of the people in America,
go out and get a divorce because you're in a dreamland.
Because look, marriage is going to take work.
Marriage, there's going to be friction.
There's going to be strife.
There's going to be problems.
And yes, I know that your favorite country music song,
well, country music probably is about that because it's
so depressing and everything.
But your favorite pop song and your favorite rock and roll
song told you it was going to be all just fun and dandy
and I want to hold your hand.
But in reality, it's just not quite like that.
And so you can't just say, well, maybe we just
don't really love each other.
And so I'm just going to move on.
Look, it's a warped view.
It's a dreamland.
And then obviously, the other thing that's just obvious
is that it glorifies and glamorizes sin, obviously.
I just heard a filthy song.
I was in Mervinsville.
They heard some filthy song.
The whole song is about a, and it's just a real happy song.
And boy, it just sounded like a really pleasant song.
I heard some of the words.
It's talking about him fornicating
one night with some girl.
He's like, I didn't even know her name.
That's what the song was about.
But I mean, it just sounded real happy and just friendly.
Probably most people don't even listen to all the words
to hear that that's what the song's even about.
Because that wasn't really the chorus.
But if you listen to it, you hear what it's saying.
It's obviously glorifying, glamorizing sin.
But here's the other thing.
Here's something that maybe a lot of people
don't quite think about.
Well, think about why do Christians
listen to worldly music?
Well, because it gives them an avenue
where they can feel ungodly.
See, a godly Christian, they have the fear of God.
And they're scared to go out and get drunk and party
and do that kind of stuff.
But what can they do?
They can listen to music about it.
And it can kind of get them a little bit of the thrill
of what that world is like.
It's almost like they close their eyes
and drift off to sleep.
And they're in a little dreamland
where they're kind of living in sin.
But the opposite is also true.
Christian music, people who listen to Christian music,
it gives them a feel-good surrogate form of Christianity.
It makes them feel like they're a good Christian
when they may not necessarily be.
Look at verse number 8 in Isaiah chapter 29.
This is God describing a dream that a man has here.
He says, this is what these people are like.
They live in this dreamland.
It says in verse 7, they shall be as a dream of a night vision.
Verse 8, it shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth.
And behold, he eateth, but he waketh, and his soul is empty.
Or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and behold,
he drinketh, but he waketh, and behold, he is faint,
and his soul hath appetite.
So shall the multitude of all the nations
be that fight against Mount Zion.
He's saying here, this man goes to bed, and he has a dream.
And in the dream, man, he's just eating all kinds of food.
And he's just gorging himself with great food.
But he wakes up, and he's hungry.
You ever had a dream like that?
He's just eating and eating.
And he wakes up.
He's hungry because he didn't really eat anything.
And then he said, or maybe he's just really thirsty,
so he goes to sleep.
And man, he's just drinking a cherry icee.
He's drinking Coca-Cola.
He's drinking ice water, whatever.
And he's just drinking it down.
Oh, it's so refreshing.
But then he wakes up, and he's still just as thirsty
as he was because he didn't really actually drink anything.
Well, that's all this dream world, fake music
that people listen to.
They put on their little Christian music.
I love you, Lord.
And I lift my voice.
You know, this touchy-feely kind of good,
oh, I just feel so close to God when I listen to this music.
I just feel like I'm just worshiping God.
I just feel like I'm in the presence of God.
Look, did you read your Bible?
Did you pray?
Did you win anybody to Christ?
Did you actually sing praises to God
like God told you to do?
No, you just listened to music
that puts you in a dream world
that lifted you up out of yourself
and put you into an alternate fake reality
where you just love the Lord,
where you're just praising God,
where you're just right there with God.
But did it affect the way that you dress?
Did it affect the way that you live?
Did it affect the way that you talk?
Did you actually eat from the Bible?
Did you actually eat something?
Or do you just feel full
because you listened to Christian music?
Did you actually drink something from God's word?
Did you actually pray?
Did you actually live for God?
Did you actually do anything for God?
Did you actually open your mouth and speak to God?
Or did you just dream that you did
because you're listening to a music
that makes you feel like you're a good Christian?
And boy, you're one of these people
that they hardly go to church,
they live as worldly as all get out,
but man, Christian rock,
just one tape after the other,
one CD after another, Christian rock.
And it's like, man, they're spiritual.
They are really serious about this thing of Christianity.
I mean, all day long, they're listening about it.
I mean, all day long, it's all about Jesus Christ.
Do they go to church?
Do they read the Bible?
Do they pray?
Do they live for God?
No.
See, it's a dream.
Wake up and realize that you didn't eat anything.
You didn't drink anything.
It was a dream.
It was fake.
It wasn't real.
See, I drive down the road a lot.
I spend about 1,500 miles driving every week.
I drive approximately 1,500 miles,
sometimes May is over 2,000.
And I drive just for my job,
and I'm driving 1,500 miles.
And no, the radio is not on.
Nothing's on.
And I'm driving along the road,
and I'm just very aware of reality
because I can talk to God, I can pray,
can read my Bible, I can memorize the Bible,
and that's reality.
And I don't wanna live in a dream world.
And you talk to people,
and you almost wanna just grab them
and start shaking them
because you try to talk to them and they don't get it
because they're so mesmerized by all the lights
and the flashes and the sounds.
People go to some charismatic church
like we were talking about.
They go to some charismatic church.
They're not even listening to what's said.
They don't even care what Bible version it's out of.
They don't even care what's being preached.
All they know is that they went there
and they felt good and it was exciting and it was fun
and people were there, and it was great.
What were you changed?
What do you know from the Bible?
Can you quote me something from the Bible that you learned?
Can you tell me what the Bible says?
Can you tell me if you prayed?
Can you tell me if you read the Bible?
Can you tell me if you went soul winning?
Who did you win to the Lord?
No, but man, it was a spiritual experience.
And so it's a mesmerized by the lights and the sounds.
You go to a movie theater and get the same thing.
You go to one of these big charismatic churches,
you get the same thing.
You get a show.
You get a show biz, Las Vegas, and you feel great.
Woo!
But when you wake up from that dream,
you're not gonna feel any fuller
than you felt when you walked in.
And when you wake up from that dream,
you're just gonna be just as thirsty
as you were when you walked in there.
You see, I'm not gonna live for some little one hour rush
on Sunday morning where I wave my hands and jive for Jesus.
Hey look, I'm not gonna live, even in life,
I'm not gonna live for some weekend
where I can go out and party.
I'm not gonna live for Friday when I get my paycheck.
I'm not gonna live for some vacation that comes
and I can get away from reality.
No, I wanna live for reality.
I wanna live for Monday.
I live for Monday.
I live for Tuesday.
Boy, I can't wait until Wednesday.
And then Wednesday night, we have church.
And then Thursday, and then Friday, and Saturday, and Sunday.
You must learn to love the routine.
You must learn to love reality, real life.
And see, when you get into reality and real life,
you'll begin to see things the way that God sees them
because you'll be able to see, as the Bible says,
through the obscurity, through all the distractions
that the world has out there, through all the glitter
and the glam and the rah, rah, rah.
You can just see through it and it's just clear and sharp.
Look, watching TV is not reality.
I'm gonna break it to you.
Listening to music is not reality.
Reading fiction is not reality.
And playing a video game is not reality.
Now, if you spend any sizable amount of time
doing any of those things,
you're gonna find yourself living in the la-la land.
And you're gonna find yourself drifting off
into the obscurity of a dream.
See, that's why I've got, many churches I've gone to,
it's not real.
It's like a show, it's a facade.
And what happens is you go to those churches
and what do they do?
They have music where you sit and listen to somebody sing.
And so that's not reality
because it's just somebody getting up and performing
and you just go off into obscurity.
And then they have a preacher get up and preach
who only preaches positive, not negative.
He will not criticize you.
He will not criticize anyone else.
He will only preach positive.
That's not reality because life is not only positive.
Is your life positive seven days a week?
Is your life positive on Monday?
I mean, I know that the sermon you heard on Sunday
was all positive, but was your life positive on Monday
when you went to work?
Was your life positive on Tuesday?
Is your life just perfect?
This is positive, this is so wonderful.
Every day I just jump out of bed
and I'm just running through fields of roses.
The hills are alive with the sound of music.
Okay, is that what your life is like?
Because that's not what anybody's life is like.
But when you go to church, that's what it sounds like.
See, it's not reality, it's fake.
Talk, go up to that person who lives in that la-la land.
Go up to the person that goes to la-la Baptist Church.
Go to the person that goes to Dreamland Community Church.
Go to that person and ask them and say,
let me ask you something.
Is abortion always wrong?
La-la, Pastor La-la, is abortion always wrong?
You know what he'll tell you?
Every sentence will begin with this word.
Well, well, you know, that's a tough question
because, you know, there's all kinds of,
you know, there's different circumstances.
And you know, oh, if you could just spend two hours
with me counseling in my office
and you'd hear the stories.
You just don't have a pastor's heart
because I hear these stories counseling
and there's so many extenuating circumstances.
But look, that's a guy who's living in la-la land.
He's living in Dreamland.
He has not been reading the black and white book
that I've been reading.
He hasn't been reading Exodus chapter 20.
Thou shall not kill, period.
Let me move on to the next thing
because I'm done talking about that.
That's what God says.
Thou shall not kill, period.
Let me give you the next commandment.
It's thou shall not steal, period.
You understand that?
See, that's the way God is.
Thou shall not commit adultery, period.
But you understand my situation.
And listen, la-la boy, I don't care what your situation is.
I don't want to hear about it.
People come to me and ask me for counseling.
I said, I don't do counseling.
I said, I need help.
I don't know what to do.
I said, here's what to do.
Read the Bible every day.
Pray every day.
Go to church three times a week.
Go soul-winding once a week.
Come back to me when you do that.
That's not what people want when they want counseling.
They want to tell you all the reasons
why it's okay for them to disobey God.
Let me tell you the reasons why I'm gonna divorce my spouse.
Let me tell you the reasons
why I'm not gonna be in church tonight.
Let me tell you the reasons why I can't read the Bible.
Let me tell you why.
That's what counseling is.
You know what?
We need to call Noah Webster
because that's what counseling is.
That's what the dictionary should say.
Counseling.
Now, when someone comes and says all the reasons
why they can't do what's right and why God was wrong
when he put a period at the end of all his commands.
But see, it's this dream world
that when you spend two hours a day watching television
or three hours a day listening to music
or two hours a day reading your Harlequin romance novels
and you're living in a la-la land,
you're gonna find that it's hard to see
through the obscurity out of the darkness
and see the crisp, clear colors of reality.
See?
Reality, you will find the more that you read this book
and the more that you turn off the fiction
and the phony and the fraud and the fake,
you will realize that you will begin
to see things very clearly.
Man, you'll hear other people talk about things
and they won't understand.
They'll be like, boy, I just don't get it.
And you're thinking to yourself, it's so obvious.
Don't you see it?
No, they can't see it.
They're asleep.
They're in a dream.
They're not living in reality.
Why don't people go soul in it?
Why don't people try to bring their friends
to church at least or get people saved
or win somebody to Christ?
Because they literally do not have a reality,
a grasp of heaven and hell.
Like to them, heaven and hell are these just
distant, far off places.
It's like Narnia to them.
It's like Oz.
It's like these fairytale land of heaven and hell.
But see, when you start reading the Bible
and you turn off all the fake,
heaven and hell become real to you.
And you realize hell's a real place
and heaven's a real place.
And it's like you could almost just reach out
and touch either one of them.
Because it's so real to you.
Because that's what comes from reality.
But you try to talk to somebody who's in a liberal church.
You try to talk to somebody who fills their mind
with television, even in a great church.
And you try and talk to them about heaven and hell.
And to them it's just, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because they don't see it clearly.
They don't read the Bible
and it doesn't just come alive to them.
Because they're not awake when they're reading it.
They're dreaming.
You see, we need to shake out of this sleep
that some of us are in
and this drunken type of a stupor
that comes from being half asleep
and get a vision of the reality of what's going on.
We need to be able to see the kingdom of God.
Remember what Jesus told, and I'll close with this,
but remember what Jesus told Nicodemus in John chapter three?
He said, except a man be born again.
He cannot see the kingdom of God.
See, later on he explains to them,
he says, okay, this is how you get saved, Nicodemus.
Later on in that passage he says, you know what?
For God so loved the world, in John 3, 16,
that he gave his only begotten Son
to whosoever believeth in him should not perish
but have everlasting life.
He said, for God sent not his Son into the world
to condemn the world,
but that the world through him might be saved.
He that believeth is not condemned,
but he that believeth not is condemned already
because he hath not believed
in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And so he explains to him salvation,
but before he gets there,
Nicodemus comes in the beginning of chapter three
and asks him some religious questions.
He says, you know, we know that you're a teacher of God,
sent from God because no man can do the things that you do
except you be of God.
And he says, look, you don't even know anything about God
because you're not saved.
He says, except a man be born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of God.
The first step to being able to see the kingdom of God
is getting saved, but once you're saved,
you've got to wake up from the dream world
and you've got to be able to rub your eyes and look around
and not just see people walking down the street,
not just see houses and cars and streets and buildings,
but to be able to see the kingdom of God,
to be able to see what God sees,
to see what a seer can see.
I was thinking about the story of Elijah.
I'm sorry, Elisha, the follower of Elijah.
When Elisha took the mantle from Elijah,
and if you remember, the king of Syria with all his men
was coming just with his whole army just to attack Elisha.
And Elisha had one guy with him.
He had his servant Gehazi, and Elisha and Gehazi
come out the door of their house and they look around
and they see this mighty army coming just to take them
because they had been, basically Elisha had been hearing
from God and telling the king of Israel
what the army of Syria was gonna do next
and they were ruining all their plans.
And so, Gehazi's flipping out.
He said, look, what's going on?
These people are coming to kill, we're gonna die.
And Elisha said, hey listen, there's more with us
than there are with them.
We've got more people with us.
And there's two people versus a huge army.
And he says, what?
He says, and he says, oh God, he says,
open this young man's eyes
that he can see what's really going on.
And God miraculously, for a split second, opened his eyes
and boy, he just saw armies of angels
and flaming chariots, the Bible says.
Huge armies as far as you could see,
just encamped around Elisha, protecting the man of God.
And see, I'm not talking about seeing
some kind of a vision like that.
Obviously, God blessed him in that way
and showed them that miraculous vision.
But I'm not talking about seeing something like that.
I'm talking about seeing what God is doing,
seeing what God wants to do,
seeing the bigger picture of life
that your problems and my problems
are just a tiny little blip in the span of eternity.
I mean, our life is like a vapor.
It's like steam that comes off the pot.
And it just, it appears for a little time
and then vanishes away.
And see, when you get into reality,
you start to see heaven and hell's reality
and you start to see how short life is.
And you start to see that no matter what the problem is
and no matter what the enemy is,
there's more that are with us than are with them.
And see, if we could just see that,
we would just stay the course and live for God
and not be intimidated, not be pushed around.
What's the point of the whole sermon?
The point of the sermon is don't let yourself
get into a dreamland where you're outside of reality.
How do you push the reset buttons?
Every morning.
And the Bible says this,
and you can take the time to read this chapter
a little more carefully on your own time,
but it says here,
it keeps mentioning the word book, the book.
It says they're living in a dreamland.
They think they've consumed food, they haven't.
They think that they're all right, they're not.
They can't understand it by itself.
If they would just read the book,
if they would just hear God's word,
he says that they would be able to see through the obscurity.
What do you do every morning?
You get up in the morning and you have the reality check
where you push the reset button and say,
let me, because let's face it,
every night we go to bed, we dream.
I mean, we literally dream.
When you go to sleep at night.
When I wake up in the morning, my mind is not clear.
Every morning I'm talking about.
Every morning I literally, Pastor Anderson wakes up
and I'm thinking all kinds of goofy, stupid, crazy things
because I've been so asleep, I've been dreaming.
What do I do?
The first thing I've got to do is get in the word of God
because I must push the reset button.
I must calibrate my spiritual thermometer.
I must reset and get on reality.
And this is the only thing that will get you on reality.
You turn on the TV, you just left reality.
You just went into la la land.
You get out this book and start reading it,
you're back in reality.
And the more time you spend in reality,
everything will sharpen up.
Everything will be clear.
You won't have situational ethics.
It won't be complicated.
You won't need hours and hours of counseling
of complicated scenarios.
Well, tell me all the details about your marriage.
Tell me all the details about the story
because I need to know every detail
or else I can't tell you what's right and wrong.
I'll tell you what's right and wrong right now.
It'll take me, I'll counsel any marriage,
it'll take me 60 seconds.
And I'll say, do these things and come back and talk to me.
And there's no way that anybody could do those things
and still have a problem.
It'll take me 60 seconds.
I need to hear all the filthy details of all the immorality
and all the sin and all the garbage.
Sometimes I wonder whether some of these pastors
are just perverts because they want
to listen to somebody's dirty laundry being aired.
Tell me all about it.
Come on in, sit down.
Tell me the filthiest thing that you can tell me.
I don't want to hear it.
Don't tell me any filthy stories
because I don't need a filthy story
to tell you what's right and wrong because I made reality.
And I can just tell you it's black and white, it's simple.
Right's always right, wrong's always wrong.
It's simple, it's clear, period.
Wives supposed to obey their husbands.
Husbands are supposed to love their wives.
The wife is always supposed to obey her husband.
If he's a drunk wife beater, she's supposed to obey him.
And if she is a mean, cantankerous nag
that spits in your face, you're supposed to love her,
you're supposed to stay married till death goes to part.
That is the Bible.
Do that and then while you're at it,
read the Bible every day.
While you're at it, pray every day.
While you're at it, come to church three times a week.
While you're at it, win souls
and tell me if you still have a problem because you won't.
And while you're at it, throw your TV in the garbage can
and quit listening to music and sing out of the hymnal songs
and tell me if you still have a problem
because nobody who does that is the one who's coming
and all my life's falling apart.
I was singing to God be the glory on my way to work
and I got to work and I was just wondering, you know,
whether I should be married
or whether I should have an adulterous affair.
That's insane, it's stupidity and you know that's true.
You weren't listening to God be the glory,
you were listening to Shania Twain.
You were listening to God be the,
you were listening to Blessed Assurance,
you were listening to NSYNC.
You were listening to Backstreet Boys.
You were listening to Have Thine Own Way, Lord.
No, you were listening to Britney Spears
and that's why you think that everything's just,
ha ha, you know, teenage girl, fun, fun, blah, blah.
No, see, you must get into reality.
You talk to other people, you say,
man, I'm always talking to people,
trying to get them in church and trying to get them,
you know, to realize what's right and wrong.
They don't get it.
Why don't they get it?
Because they don't live in reality.
They need this book that you gotta show them.
You gotta take the Bible and show them.
Sometimes you explain this under somebody's arm,
you gotta show them the book.
You gotta give them God's word
because that's the only thing,
that's the smelling salts that might wake them up
a little bit is this book, it's the only thing.
Let's bow our heads and pray.
Father, I thank you so much for the reality of God's word.
Boy, I just thank you so much that I have an anchor
that I can go to and know that everything that you say
is true and I don't have to, have to, have to, have to.