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Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome everybody to Faithful Word Baptist Church. If you would please find your seat and we'll begin our services this evening. When you find your seat, please grab a hymnal and turn to song number 428. Song number 428, it came upon a midnight clear. Song number 428. It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious song of old. Sing it out on the first. Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, Oh, for each star's together proudly the holy bird, So praises sing to God the King and these human alert. How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is filled, So God is born to human court the blessings of His hand. No ear may hear His call, but in His word of sin, Where these songs will be sung in song, but in Christ's presence. Oh, holy Child of Bethlehem, who stood to us today, Cast out our sin and entering, He boarded us today. We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings fell, Oh, come to us, abide with us, oh, Lord, Emmanuel. All right, at this time we'll go through our announcements together. If you don't have a bulletin, slip up your hand nice and high. We'll get to you with one. On the inside we have our service time. Sunday mornings at 1030 is our preaching service. Sunday nights at 6, Wednesday nights at 7. This Wednesday will be a special treat. Pastor Bruce Mejia from First Works Baptist Church in Los Angeles is going to be out here preaching, and so even if you don't normally come on Wednesdays, I'd recommend that you show up. You're not going to be disappointed to hear Brother Mejia preach. We've got the soul winning times listed below, as well as salvations and baptisms. All the birthdays and anniversaries are listed there to the right. Also, we've got Christmas caroling coming up. This is going to be on Thursday the 19th. We're going to meet here at 530 p.m. Get organized and out the door. Do just a little under an hour of door-to-door Christmas caroling. Big groups of 20, 30 people, so you don't have to be shy about it. You can just fade to the back if you're not a big singer, or you can get right out there out front and just in their faces, just belting it out. We'll make sure every group has some strong singers, and we'll mix them up that way. That's going to be on the 19th. It's a Thursday evening. We'll come back and enjoy milk and cookies, so we're hoping that you'll bake some cookies. You ladies, you're not going to have a cookie bake-off this year, so this is your one chance to have your moment in the sun with your best cookie recipes. Bake some cookies. We'll provide the milk, and we'll drink milk and cookies. In the past, we've had hot cocoa and cookies. It's a little too sugary. It's too much. If milk and cookies are good enough for Santa, it's good enough for me. No, I'm just kidding. Santa's not real. Anyway, that's going to be on December 19th. It's good fun. Make some memories. Have good fellowship. It'll be a great time. Speaking of fellowship, on the back, there's also the note about the Christmas party and gift exchange for ladies and teen girls, and this is on December 14th, and so read up on all those details there. Google anything you don't understand, like if you don't know what a white elephant gift is, and then below that, we've got the bridal shower for Isabella Schneider. That is going to be on December 15th in the afternoon right here, and RSVP to Denise Furbay. Here's the thing. If you don't know Isabella Schneider, never be shy about showing up to these things. When we read it as an announcement at the church, the whole church is invited, so never be shy about showing up and meeting people, getting to know new people and meeting the ladies and so forth, and of course, that's going to be here 2 p.m. on Sunday the 15th, so that's going to be a busy weekend for all those ladies and girls, just back-to-back Christmas party, bridal shower. It's going to be an awesome weekend, all right? And then that's it for announcements, so let's go ahead and count up the soul winning from the past few days, going back to Thursday. Anything to report from Thursday? All right. Anything else from Thursday? Gotcha. Okay, and then what about Friday? Got it. All right. And then what about Saturday? Got it. Got it. Anything else from Saturday? And then how about today Sunday? Brother Scott? Seven with the main group with Brother Scott. Gotcha. Gotcha. Got it. Got it. Got it. All right. Gotcha. Very good. Keep up the great work, and with that, let's go ahead and sing our next song. Come lead us. All right, there should be an insert in front of your hymnal. Let's begin by singing, Come Thou Long Expected Jesus. Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free. Sing it out on the first. Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free. From our fears and sins release us, let us find progress in Thee, Israel's strength and consolation, hope of all the earth Thou art, whose dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart, Lord, Thy people to be lived through, for the child and let us be, who's born to reign in us forever, now Thy grace shows me Thy glory, Thy life of eternal spirit, rule in all our hearts alone, by Thine all-submission heaven, praise us through Thy glorious run. Let's sing one last song before the reading of the scripture. Flip that page over and we'll sing, What Child is This? What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap this evening? Sing it out on the first. What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap this evening? Whom angels greet with anthems sweet, while shepherds march o'er deep? Blessed is Christ, the King, Whom shepherds guard and angels sing. Gave space to breathe in blood, the babe, the son of Mary. While I see it touch me this way, where arms and hands are feeding, where the rich and the pure for sinners hear, the silent Word is feeding. Then tears shall piercing through, the cross before will be for you. Hail, hail the Word made well, the babe, the son of Mary. So bring him incense, gold, and purpose, and key to all. The King of kings, salvation rings, where loving hearts enthrone him. Praise, praise the Son of God, the virgin saints above abide. Joy, joy for Christ is born, the babe, the son of Mary. Amen. Great singing. All right, this time we'll pass our offering plates around. As the plates go around, let's turn our Bibles this evening to Philippians chapter number four. Philippians chapter number four. As we always do, we'll read the entire chapter, beginning in verse number one, follow on silently with brother Alex Larson as he reads Philippians chapter four. Philippians four, the Bible reads, Therefore my brethren dearly beloved and longed for my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved. I beseech Euodius and beseech Syntyche that they be of the same mind in the Lord, and entreat thee also, true yoke fellow, help those women which labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellow laborers whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men, the Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things which ye have both learned and received and heard and seen in me do, and the God of peace shall be with you. But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again, wherein you were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want, for I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound. Everywhere in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be in hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. Notwithstanding ye have well done that ye did communicate with my affliction. Now ye Philippians know also that in the beginning of the gospel when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only. For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity, not because I desire a gift, but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. But I have all in abound, I am full having received of Epaphroditus, the things which were sent from you, an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God. But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Now unto God and our Father be glory forever and ever. Amen. Salute every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren which are with me greet you. All the saints salute you chiefly they that are of Caesar's household. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. Father in Heaven, thank you for your son Jesus Christ who died for sins and rose again from the dead. I pray that you please bless Pastor Anderson with the fullness and the power of the Holy Spirit as he preaches your word. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Man, last Sunday I preached a few sermons on the book of Philippians and tonight we're gonna continue talking about Philippians and this evening I wanna focus on verse number eight. The title of the sermon is Think on These Things. Think on these things, the Bible says, finally brethren whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report. If there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things. Now before we get into that, let's back up a little bit and get some context in verse number six. The Bible reads, be careful for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God and the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Now when the Bible there says be careful, this is not the way that we would use the word careful in 2024. When we talk about being careful, we would say like, you know, you're not doing anything dangerous or something, right? But that's not what this means. Careful in this context means being filled with care or what we would say today is worrying, right? Being filled with anxiety or worries or something like that and that's what the word care means in the Bible, not careful like, whoa, you're gonna slip and fall and crack your head or something like that. So the Bible says be careful for nothing. He's saying don't worry about anything, right? Don't worry about anything but instead, in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God and then you'll have the peace of God. Why? Because if you realize that God hears our prayers, we know that he hears us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him, if we go through life realizing that God has our best interests at heart, the hairs of our head are numbered, he knows what's going on in our lives and that if we pray about things, he's going to get involved, he knows the situation, he's looking out for us and so once we've prayed about a situation, then we don't need to worry about it. You know, God's either gonna fix it right away or he's gonna fix it down the road or he has some other solution in mind that we haven't even thought of. Whatever his reasoning, whatever his thought process of why things are the way that they are, we know that his way is best and so we just need to patiently wait upon the Lord just turn our situation over to him and just not worry about anything. Go to sleep and not be tossing and turning, thinking about all the things that could go wrong but rather just realize, hey, it's in God's hands now and so I'm just gonna go on with my life, I'm just gonna move on. So the Bible says, Be careful for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And so the thing to understand here is that if we don't pray, we don't have this assurance. Okay. Because the Bible says you have not because you ask not. And so therefore if we don't pray, we're gonna miss out on blessings, we're gonna miss out on God being involved but in all our ways, if we acknowledge him, then he'll direct our paths and then we can have the peace of God knowing that God's gonna take care of things, right? And it also says that when we do make our requests known unto God by prayer and supplication, that we should do it with thanksgiving. Why? Because we need to realize that even though we're worried about something wrong with our lives and we're asking God to fix something, we should stop and take inventory of all the good things in our life that are going well. Because a lot of times we can be fixated on something negative and we're not being thankful for all the good things, all the things that are right about our lives, we're just so worried about this big major problem in our lives. And I've got news for you, everybody has a big major problem in their lives, every single person. Okay. And I'm sure there's some turkey out there right now, they go, oh, my life's so perfect, it's so good. Bro's about to slip on a banana peel or something because I'm telling you, nobody's life is that perfect. And especially I wouldn't go around bragging and being that prideful about how perfect my life is because God is not gonna like that kind of talk. Arrogancy and pride and things like that that the Lord hate. And so let me just break it to you. I know from my personal experience, I'm 43 years old, I've lived quite a bit of my life, I've been around a lot of other people, obviously I deal with people for a living, so I see other people's lives and I'm telling you, everybody is going through stuff. Even people who maybe seem like they have it all together, everybody is dealing with big problems and if they're not dealing with them now, they will be tomorrow or they did in the past or what have you. Okay. Life is filled with problems. Okay. If we pray about these things, then we can put them in God's hands and be thankful for all the things that are right with our life and don't compare ourselves to this fake image of this person that doesn't have any problems. Like, oh, this guy over there, why is his life so good? He doesn't have any problems and I'm going through. No, no, no. He's going through stuff you just don't know about it. Okay. She's going through other difficult things and if all our problems were hung on a line, you'd take yours and I'd take mine. Right. Because everybody's got problems to deal with. And so the peace of God, which passes all understanding, it says in verse 7, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. So this peace is extreme. It's something that we can't even really wrap our minds around. How could you be so calm in the storm? How can you be sleeping in the bottom of the ship when the waves are crashing and the ship seems like it's about to be shipwrecked and you're asleep in the bottom of the ship? That's the peace of God that passes all understanding. Right. Where you could be in prison, beaten, and you're still singing praises to God at midnight. Right. That's the peace of God that Paul is talking about. And by the way, Paul is writing this epistle from prison. This is one of his so-called prison epistles, right? Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. He's writing from prison and yet he's saying, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. And he's saying, I've learned in what sort of state I am there with to be content. He's writing these things not from some mansion by the beach or something. He's writing from prison. So he knows what he's talking about. So there's a little bit of context there of, uh, not worrying about things and being careful for nothing. And by the way, Peter said the same thing in first Peter chapter five, verse seven, casting all your care upon him. Right. All your worries, all your anxieties, casting all your care upon him for he careth for you. Right. So he's worried about you. He's looking out for you. So you cast all your care upon him. You let your requests be known unto God, and then you don't need to worry about anything. Okay. Now this is all by way of introduction. This is just to give us the context because what I really want to preach about is verse eight. Verse eight is the key thought that I want to home in on. And if you look at this list of things in verse eight that we are supposed to think on, he says, think on these things. Another way of saying that would be think about these things. Right. So all throughout our day, we're thinking, right? Our brains are going. Maybe you're driving down the road, standing in line somewhere, doing a repetitive job that you've done a million times. I don't know what you do for a living. But, you know, when I used to do fire alarms, I'd be just turning the screwdriver and stripping wires and pulling cables and programming things. And it was just stuff that I'd done a million times. And so your mind tends to think about other things. Right. And so we spend most of our day thinking about stuff. Right. We're sitting and eating our food. We're thinking about stuff. We're in the shower, brushing our teeth, sleeping. You know, what are we thinking about when we're sitting there, walking, whatever? All this downtime. What do we think about? Well, the Bible is telling us that in general, we should think about positive things. Because if you look at this list of things, everything on the list is positive. It's really just a list of, like, every aspect of positivity that you can imagine. Like, morally positive, aesthetically positive. You know, just all the different positives. It's basically giving a list of things. True, honest, just, pure, lovely, good report, virtue, praise. It's everything positive. He's saying, think about the good things. Spend your time thinking about good things. Now, we don't want to misunderstand this and think, oh, well, the Bible is saying we should never talk about anything negative. We should never address anything negative. We should never think about anything negative. Obviously, negative things need to be dealt with. They need to be addressed. They need to be talked about, okay? Obviously, Bible preaching. If we're going to preach the whole Bible, there's going to be a lot of negativity, frankly, because there's a lot of negativity in the Bible. If we look at Christ's preaching and we sat and looked at Christ's preaching and looked at how much negative there is versus positive. If we looked at the Mosaic law, how much negative versus positive. We could go to virtually any section of scripture and you're going to find that often the negative ends up outweighing the positive in a lot of places. So there are a lot of negative things that need to be dealt with and need to be preached about and need to be confronted. We don't want to just stick our heads in the sand and say, you know, good God, good sin, cold hell, and have that mentality of these kind of Joel Osteen types. And here's the funny thing about Joel Osteen. You know, I'm not an expert on Joel Osteen. I haven't been exposed to a whole lot of his preaching because frankly, I'm not really interested in listening to Joel Osteen. But there have been times and situations where I was put in a situation where I ended up hearing Joel Osteen. Like for example, I was staying at someone's house for a week and they had him playing on the radio every day at the house where I was staying. And so therefore, I'm just hearing Joel. I'm just starting my morning off every day with Joel. A little bit of TD Jakes into the mix, you know, it wasn't what I would have chosen. But hey, it was a great place to sleep. It was a great place to stay. So, you know, I've heard a little bit. And here's the thing about a lot of preachers like him. It's not like everything they're saying is just lies or something. You know, a lot of the stuff that these guys are saying is true. But the thing is, they're only telling you the positive in many cases. And the problem with most preachers is not what they say. It's what they don't say. And I remember I had a family member who was going to an independent, fundamental, King James, soul-winning church. And she went there for a few months. And she said that the preaching was only positive. And she could tell there's something wrong with this preaching. And here's how you know there's something wrong with it. Because when you're reading the Bible, there's all this negative stuff. And then you go to church and it's all positive. It's like, wait a minute, something's not connected. I remember that's what I said to my parents when I was a teenager. I said, why have we gone to this church for two years and the pastor has never said the word hell? Like he's never even mentioned hell. He never even brought it up. I said, it's like hell doesn't even exist with this guy. What's going on? And my dad's like, yeah, that's a good question. So my dad went and asked the pastor, why don't you ever talk about hell? And he said, well, I know I should, but it's just, I just don't like to, you know, it's just, it's just too negative. But here's the thing, when it comes to the Bible, we're supposed to preach the whole Bible. We've got to preach all the counsel of God. And the trouble with most preachers is not what they say, but what they don't say. That family member who went to that church where it was all positive, this is what she said. She said it was like Joel Osteen, except it was KJV. It was Joel Osteen with the King James. And that's what a lot of fundamental Baptist churches are, unfortunately, when they try to be all positive. Okay. This guy preached through the book of Genesis and preached through the Sodom and Gomorrah story without mentioning homosexuality. I mean, that's, that's pretty intense. You know, you can get through Genesis 18 and 19 preaching without mentioning that. It's like, wow, you're, well, you're really relevant for 2024, aren't you? Of course, this was like 10 years ago, but it wasn't relevant for 2014 either or whenever this was. But the point is, I'm not saying, hey, never deal with anything negative. Put your head in the sand, ignore everything that's negative. But here's what I am saying, though. Do not sit around meditating about negative things. I'm talking Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Look, I believe in hell. I'll preach about hell. I go soul winning and tell people that hell's real. I want to get people out of hell. But you know what I don't do? I don't sit around for hours thinking about hell. I just don't. I think about hell when I'm reading my Bible and I'm reading about hell or if I'm soul winning or something. But I'm not just sitting around just thinking about all of the murder and adultery and all the stealing and idolatry in this world. Look, those are things that need to be preached against, that need to be dealt with. But here's the thing. If I sat around just thinking about those negative things all the time, you know, that's going to affect me. And you know what? I'm going to be careful. I'm going to be super worried and have a lot of anxiety. I mean if I'm just sitting around just thinking about all of the human trafficking and murder and rape and pillage and evil governments and I just sit around thinking about that all day, then I'm going to be an anxious person. I'm not going to have the peace of God if I'm just sitting around thinking about everything that's negative. And so in general, we should tend to have a positive attitude, rejoice in the Lord, the joy of the Lord is our strength, and we should go through life focusing on the things that are positive and thinking about the things that are positive in order to have a good disposition, in order to not go through life as an angry man or something like that. And that's why the Bible is saying, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, right? Think on these things. The Bible says in Proverbs 17, a merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dryeth the bones. And of course we could find examples in the Bible of people who fixated on negative things and ended up destroying their lives, people like Haman, Esau, Absalom, you know. And they fixated on things that were negative about their situation and it ended up ruining their lives. Now, especially when I say we don't want to fixate on the negative, yeah, we don't want to fixate on the negative of this world, but we especially don't want to fixate on our own negative situation. Okay? So like I said, everybody has problems, right? Maybe you have health problems, maybe you have financial problems, maybe you have relationship problems, family problems, you know, church problems if you go somewhere else, because we don't have any problems here, amen? But the point is that, you know, whatever problems that you have, you don't want to go through life fixated on those things because it's better for you to just prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, just let those things be on God's plate and not sit around worrying about them, right? Instead, be thankful for what's good about your life, right? Because I could sit around and think about the bad things about my life or I could sit around and think about all the good things in my life. You know, I have bad things in my life and I have a lot of good things in my life. And it's like, which ones am I going to sit around thinking about? Am I going to go through life being content and thankful or am I going to go through life just being bitter and anxious and worried and troubled and upset, right? You can choose because all of us have both. If all of us could, if we were all given a sheet of paper, we could all take, like I could take a pen and paper right now and I could just fill one page and just make my life sound horrible and miserable and everything on that page would be true. And then you could hand me another piece of paper and I could just make my life just sound super awesome like everything in my life is just great and I'm living the dream and everything on that paper would be true. You understand what I'm saying? I could easily do that. I could easily take two pieces of paper, write only true things on both and one of them would paint my life as just miserable and hellish and the other would paint my life as just wonderful and perfect. And by the way, you can do the same thing to other people too, right? I could take my parents, I could take a piece of paper and make my parents sound like the worst parents ever even saying only true things or I could take a piece of paper and make them sound like the greatest parents ever and say only true things. And you know what the true story is? My parents were awesome parents and they were great parents but you know what? Because no one's perfect, if you live with someone for 20 years, yeah, you can sit there and find all the negative things and you can go to church and you can pick people apart and find everything that's negative about them and paint them in the worst possible light or you can paint them in the best possible light and esteem others better than yourself. Instead of trying to tear people down, you can lift people up, right? And this is the choice that we make in our lives because guess what? A lot of times the exact same circumstances, the exact same people, the exact same events can be painted in two very different lights depending on your perspective. And I for one don't want to go through life being an unhappy, miserable, bitter, angry person. I'm not going to. I'm going to go through life being joyful and having peace and having love toward other people and not just fixating on everything bad about everyone and everything. And so whatever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, that's what I want to think about. I want to think on those things. Now let's go through some of these things one by one. Turn if you would to Psalm 101 because there's a wonderful list here and whenever there's a list in the Bible, it's nice to go through that list and kind of dwell on each item on the list, right? So in general, we can take kind of the macro approach and just say, hey, everything on the list is positive. Let's focus on the good things about our life, about our situation rather than the negative things, right? But now let's kind of zoom in on each thing and the Bible is saying, you know, think about things that are true more than you think about what? Things that are not true. Now obviously lies need to be confronted and dealt with, but we don't want to just sit around thinking about lies. We want to sit around thinking about the truth. You know, I'm not going to spend my days just studying the Quran and studying the Book of Mormon and studying the Hindu scriptures and reading all the wrong Bible versions to figure out what's wrong with them. You know what? I want to spend most of my time reading the actual word of God in the King James Bible. That's what I want to spend most of my time reading the actual truth. And by the way, people that are trained to spot counterfeit money, they're experts in what the real thing looks like. They're not necessarily experts in what the counterfeit looks like because the counterfeit is always changing. Different counterfeits are going to keep coming out, right? And so what we want to do is be experts on the truth. And yeah, we sometimes need to learn about these things. I read through the Quran one time. Never going to do it again. Terrible. One star. Do not recommend. But, you know, because I preached five sermons about it and so I built a series on that. But you think I want to sit around thinking about it? You think I want to just be pulling it out every day and just finding more garbage in it? No, man. When I was done with the fifth sermon, I literally threw it across the room and said, someone else needs to pick that up and throw it in the trash because I'm so done with that book, I don't even want to take it to the trash can. Okay. You know, I don't want to just sit. You're the one who threw it away. Amen. Thanks for taking one for the team. And so the thing, the thing about that is that, you know, we want to be experts in the truth. And yes, sometimes we need to figure out what the Hindus teach or figure out what the more, you know, so we can preach a sermon against it or whatever. But at the end of the day, what do we want to spend most of our time thinking about? The truth. The things that are true. That's why the Bible says, sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. So the word of God fits the bill. But not only that, we don't want to listen to liars. We don't want to sit around thinking about and meditating upon liars. And by the way, when someone has shown themselves to be a liar, you shouldn't just keep listening to them. Okay. Look what the Bible says in Psalm 101 verse three. I will set no wicked thing before my eyes. I hate the work of them that turn aside. It shall not cleave to me. A froward heart shall depart from me. I will not know a wicked person who so privily slandereth his neighbor. Him will I cut off. Him that hath a high look and a proud heart will not I suffer. Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land that they may dwell with me. He that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me. He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house. He that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight. Right. I'm not just going to sit around listening to lies. Oh, it's okay because I know it's lies. But I'm just going to listen to it again and again and again and again. Folks, we need a lot more truth coming in than lies. What's the psalmist saying? The psalmist is saying, look, I don't want to be around wicked people. I don't want to be around liars. I don't want to be around slanderers. I don't want to be around proud, arrogant, wicked people. I want to have people in my house and in front of my eyes and in my presence that are actually adding value to my life and not bringing sin and wickedness into my life. And so don't listen to liars. Right. Focus on the truth. Think about the truth. Don't sit around thinking about all the lies that are out there in this world. And here's the thing. There are so many lies in this world. And if I sat around and thought about all the lies, you know what, I'd be a really unhappy person. You know, just sitting around thinking about all the lies that are out there. And you know, some people, unfortunately, they have this idea that they have to right every wrong in the world. And this makes them miserable people. Because you're never going to right every wrong. And you hear about so many people in jobs like law enforcement getting upset and often even committing suicide and everything. Because they think like, oh, I'm going to make a difference. I'm going to fix everything. And then they kind of realize, wow, I'm not really fixing anything. And then they just kind of realize that their life's kind of pointless. Right. Because here's the thing. As a cop, you're not just going to clean up the streets of Phoenix, Arizona. You know what I mean? And it's like, let's say you're a social justice warrior and you're going to end poverty or something. Hey, the poor you have with you always. Okay. And look, I'm not just being hard on our cadet over here. Because here's the thing. I can say the same thing about preachers. You know, I'm not going to just end Mormonism. I mean, I would love to just like put it down like a rabid dog. But you know what? I'm not going to end Mormonism. I'm not going to end the preacher of rapture. You know, I'm not going to be able to get everybody saved. It's just not going to happen, right? And so if I just go through life like, I just have to right every wrong in the world and fix every injustice. Folks, it's not going to happen. All you can do is your part to do, you know, for your area, make your area a little better. The people that you reach are, you know, you're making a difference in their lives. You can make a difference in as many people's lives as you can, but you're not going to fix Tempe or fix Arizona or fix the world. You know, you can just brighten, as the song goes, brighten the corner where you are. That's pretty much all you can do in life, right? So I can sit around and think about, hey, look at the positive impact I'm having. Hey, I was able to help someone today. Or I can sit around and think about, oh, there's just way too many people to help and I just can't fix anything. And this whole world and this country is on a bobsled to hell. You know, if I just sit around thinking about that, I'm not going to be a very happy person. And by the way, the Bible says that when people persecute you and lie about you, you know, just say leap for joy because great reward in heaven. What if I just decided, well, I just have to address every slander and every attack and every lie. Look, I've been on the internet for the last, you know, almost what, 17 years of YouTube, 19 years on the internet with my preaching and stuff like that. I mean, people are literally, someone has literally probably been lying about me like virtually almost every hour of every day for the last like decade. Somebody's typing something or saying something somewhere. I mean, people are constantly contacting me about how at their old IFP church, their old IFP pastor just gets up and just lies about me and just says all these things about me that they know aren't true. And it's just been going on for literally decades. But what if I just sat around and thought about that and just worried about that and just felt like I just have to fix all that and right every wrong. You know what? You got to just go through life thinking about the things that are true and just try to avoid the liars as much as you can. Obviously we're never going to be able to totally avoid these things. Sometimes we have to deal with these things. But in general, think about the things that are true. That's what I'd rather spend my time thinking about. So I'm not just going to spend hours and hours listening to people that I know are liars. I'm going to listen to people that are telling the truth, especially the word of God is the ultimate truth. But next we have whatsoever things are true and then whatsoever things are honest. This might sound like just kind of a synonym with true and in many ways, obviously, honesty has to do with truth. But I think that honesty in general typically refers to things that have integrity, right? You know, when I hear the word honest, I kind of think of like an honest day's work. Or I think about, you know, honest food or something where the ingredients are real or something like that. You know, things that have integrity. You know, thinking about some of the mentions in scripture, the Bible says in Romans 12-17, recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. 2 Corinthians 8-21, providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men. So, you know, having integrity in front of people is what the Bible is saying. 1 Peter 2-12, having your conversation honest among the Gentiles that whereas they speak against you as evil doers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. And so the idea here is that you're the real deal. And so, yeah, people can talk smack about you all they want, but you're the real deal at the end of the day. That's what it means to be honest, right? You are the real thing. You have integrity. Just like real food, I would call that honest food, right? Going to work and actually putting in the eight hours, that's an honest day's work. And so whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, right? So we could think about all of the fakes and the hypocrites and the phonies, or we could sit and think about all the good things and the good people. And you know what? This is so important. I hope that you're getting the sermon tonight, because this is a life-changing sermon if you would actually apply these truths to your life. Because I'm telling you, you can go through life miserable and upset and negative and frustrated, or you can go through life happy by thinking on these things. True, honest, just, pure, lovely, good report. You know, you could sit and think, you know, honest, whatsoever things are honest. You can sit and think about all the dishonest people that we've dealt with over the years, right? And just think about that. And here's the thing, the longer you live, the more of these memories accumulate. The more idiots you've dealt with, the more bozos and scams and problems. But you know what? I'd rather think about all the good people that I've interacted with. You know, all the good people that I've had the pleasure of knowing and working with and spending time with than all the jerks and bozos and people that stabbed me in the back. Right? Because you can go through life thinking about, because everybody's got both. You think Baptist preacher are the only ones that get stabbed in the back? You're going to get stabbed in the back. If you haven't already, you're going to. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again. And if you're a Baptist preacher, it's again and again and again and again and again and again times 10 to the 15th power. And so what sort of things are true? What sort of things are honest? What sort of things are just? Okay. Now what does just mean? Well, just is pretty much synonymous with the word righteous. Okay? These words are used often interchangeably in the Bible. But personally, when I think, and again we could look at hundreds of scriptures because righteousness or justice, those are such big subjects. It's kind of outside the scope of this sermon, but I'll tell you where my mind goes though. Where my mind goes when I hear true, honest, just, pure. When I hear just, I think about that which is fair and equal and right. Like I was thinking about verses like this, just balances, just weights, adjust Ephah and adjust Hinn, shall you have. These are units of measurement. Deuteronomy 25, 15, but thou should have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure, shalt thou have. Ezekiel 45, 10, you shall have just balances, adjust Ephah and adjust Bath. And then I was just reading Hosea and Hosea actually ends on this verse. It's the last verse of the book of Hosea, who is wise and he shall understand these things, prudent and he shall know them for the ways of the Lord are right. Right? God's ways are right. And the just shall walk in them, but the transgressors shall fall therein. So the Bible is saying, you know, the just man is the person who does right. They're following God's word and they're doing things right. It's kind of interesting that so far true, honest and just, you could really apply this stuff to the word of God. If you think about it, the Bible is true. The Bible is honest. The Bible is just. The Bible is of course pure. The Bible is lovely, meaning that it's beautiful. The Bible is good report is like good news. Hey, that's what gospel means. Literally good news. You know, virtue, praise. I mean, it's like all this stuff. You can never go wrong by meditating on the word of God because you know, it fits the bill of all these things. And so whatever things are true, honest and just, what sort of things are pure? Now, what does pure mean? Well, the dictionary definition of pure means free from anything of a different inferior or contaminating kind, right? So that which is different, inferior or contaminating, being free from that is to be pure. Also in the Bible, the word pure is often associated with abstinence from fornication and adultery. Okay. For example, Timothy is told, let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in, among other things, purity. Be an example of the believers in purity. You're a young man. Be an example of the believers in purity. First Timothy 5-1, just a couple of verses later, he says, rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father, the younger men as brethren, the elder women as mothers, the younger as sisters with all purity. So he's saying, you know, treat the old men as fathers, treat the young men as brothers, treat the old women as mothers, and treat the younger women as sisters with all purity. Why do we need that with all purity tagged on with the young ladies? Because we don't want a man who is a preacher or, you know, in this case, a young preacher. Timothy, you know, we don't want him getting involved with young ladies in what people love to call an inappropriate relationship, whatever that means. I thought it was just called adultery. You know, oh, this preacher had to step down for an inappropriate relationship. Bullcrap, he did. He had to step down because he's an adulterer. Call it what it is. Inappropriate relationship. What does that even mean? Nobody knows. If you don't speak in words that are easy to be understood, you're speaking into the air. The problem with these kind of vague accusations, inappropriate relationship, is that either if the guy is guilty of the worst, then it needs to be called out that it's adultery. Okay? But let's say the guy's guilty of less than the worst. When you say some vague accusation, people just think the worst anyway. As soon as I hear inappropriate relationship, I'm just like, adultery. Right? So what are you accomplishing with that? What are you accomplishing with that? Because either you're being too hard on the guy or you're going too easy on the guy, either way you're just confusing people. You just got to say what it is. Okay? And nobody wants to hear the details. I'm not interested in anything. But you know what? We need to call it out with a biblical label. Fornication. Drunkenness. Right? I don't need to know what brand the guy's drinking. But I do want to know if it's drunkenness. Just to be able to label these things scripturally. If someone's going to be church disciplined, then, you know, we need to have a biblical label on that. And not just, well, you know, inappropriate relationship. What is that? We don't know what it is. But here's my point, is that in this context, with all purity, because it's specifically applied to the young women, we can assume that what's he talking about? He's talking about something about fornication or adultery because otherwise why would a young man be warned about how he interacts with young women? Oh, do it with purity. What are we talking about? We're talking about abstinence from fornication and or adultery. Okay? So, therefore, with that in mind, because that's how the scripture uses this word multiple times, you know, we don't want to have our minds and thought life filled with things that are impure. Right? You don't want to be sitting around, hey, it's great that you're not committing fornication or committing adultery, but should you think about, should you sit around fantasizing about committing adultery or fantasizing about fornication? No, you should not. You should rather spend your time thinking about and meditating upon that which is pure. Clean. Right? So we don't want to sit there and think about these things. And let me give you an important statement. Out of sight, out of mind. Out of sight, out of mind. And the problem is we live in a society where basically we're going through our lives as men and we're trying to keep a pure mind and then basically a lot of things will just be coming at us. Images and advertising and things that are just constantly trying to drag our minds into the gutter and to get us to think about things that are impure and so obviously just living in the world, it's unavoidable. I'm not saying that we need to go to a monastery somewhere, go be a hermit somewhere to avoid these things because that's really how you would truly avoid these things. But is that what God has called us to do? No, he hasn't. And so we should at least though try to limit our exposure to these things as much as possible because we don't want to go through life thinking about things that are impure. And you know what? It's hard for young men to stay pure if they're just constantly thinking about impurity and constantly watching a bunch of entertainment that's putting a bunch of impure images in front of them. Well then how are they going to stay pure if they're just constantly thinking about the temptations, right? We need to not think about those things and not put those things, you know the world's already going to shove it in our face from time to time but we don't need to shove it in our own face because you're just making things harder for yourself, you're just making things worse when you do that. And so we need to sit around thinking about things that are clean and pure and not have impure thoughts, right? Because if we want to think about things that are true, honest and just, the morally good things, morally upstanding righteous things, we also don't want to sit around thinking about smut either, right? We want to have a clean mind as well. The Bible says in 1 John 3, 3, every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure, right? So God is pure and we need to be purifying ourselves. The Bible says in Titus 1, 15, unto the pure all things are pure, but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscious is defiled. We don't want to get to a point where our mind and conscience gets defiled or dirty or ruined, right? Do you ever see an image and just think, man, I wish I could just unsee that. I wish I had never seen that. Okay, well guess what? Things go in and they don't come out. We want to make sure that we guard ourselves from seeing things that we shouldn't see because we don't want to just indulge in looking at a bunch of impure things and then next thing you know, our mind is defiled. Our conscience is defiled, right? Our brain gets messed up and we don't want that at all and let me tell you something. Over the years, I've spoken to people who have had problems with this and they've messed up their minds by looking at wicked things and filling their mind with wickedness and it's just like then their mind is damaged and you don't want to damage your mind like that. You want to think about things that are pure. And then next, he said true, honest, just, pure and then he says lovely. Okay, now what is lovely? You know, in short, lovely is not really a word that's used a lot in the Bible. It's only used a few times but I think we all pretty much know what it means. It's really beautiful in the sense of aesthetically pleasing, right? Something that's beautiful and aesthetically pleasing and you know, we have some mentions of this in the Bible like for example, in 2 Samuel, it says Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their death, they were not divided. They were swifter than eagles. They were stronger than lions. You know, so if you think about Saul and Jonathan out there fighting the Lord's battles, these were glorious men aesthetically. They were just beautiful to see them, you know, out there doing the Lord's work or whatever. This is David, of course, eulogizing them after they have died. Okay, so Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, right? Also in Song of Solomon, the woman is talking about her husband and she says his mouth is most sweet, yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved and this is my friend, oh daughters of Jerusalem. Also in Ezekiel 33, Ezekiel talks about how his preaching, people are enjoying listening to it but they're not actually taking it seriously or putting it into practice in their lives and so he says that basically, or God is telling him, you know, that he's basically like a lovely song unto them that they just kind of, it's just like music that they like listening to but it's not that they're going to necessarily obey it. So again, it's the idea of lovely music, right? You have some strong warriors going out to battle, running swiftly, teamed up, father and son duo, you know, this is a beautiful thing, right? How beautiful and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity, the Bible says. So we've got, you know, just aesthetically pleasing, beautiful things when we think about that which is lovely. And of course, whenever I think about aesthetics and beauty, I always think about how many scriptures in the Bible talk about the beauty of holiness, the beauty of holiness. You know, when you're right with God, things that are actually godly are aesthetically pleasing unto you. In fact, there are some people who will accuse Christians of imposing their aesthetic upon the world saying, you know, well, it's not that it's morally wrong for somebody's face to look like they fell into a fishing tackle box. It's just that you just don't find it aesthetically pleasing, right? Well, I don't. It's gross. It's weird. I don't like it. But that doesn't also prevent it from being morally wrong to mutilate your face. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? If God doesn't want us, you know, printing any marks on our body, if he doesn't want us making any cuttings in our flesh for the dead, then yeah, when your child dies or your friend dies or your parent dies, you know, cutting their name into your flesh and putting ink in it and the date that they died or whatever, you know what, that's not godly. And by the way, it also doesn't look good. Now, here's the thing about that is that the reason why people will accuse us of saying, oh, well, you know, the reason that you don't like long hair on men, that's just an aesthetic thing or you don't want a woman to have a butch haircut, that's just an aesthetic thing or something like that. Here's the thing is that there is a little bit of overlap between that which is aesthetically pleasing and that which is godly. Because when you are righteous, things that are godly look beautiful to you because the Bible talks about the beauty of holiness. Okay, so when you see a woman that is clearly living a sinful life and just violating scripture with the way that she presents herself, then you know what, you're going to think to yourself, I don't like the way that looks. You know, you see a dude that's effeminate, you're just, I don't like the way that looks, you know, besides the moral issue, you know, and by the way, people that are living for god look better than people that aren't living for god. Now, look, obviously different people have been blessed with different levels of beauty, like obviously some men are just naturally more handsome than others, some women are just naturally more beautiful than others, right? We all have been created differently and, you know, we're all beautiful in god's eyes but at the same time, obviously some people are just objectively better looking or whatever. That's just life. We got to play the hand that we've been dealt. But what I mean by people that live for god look better, I'm saying if you took person A and person A is living for god or not living for god, they're going to look better if they're living for god. I'm just talking about aesthetically. You want to look better? Be godly and follow the Bible and you will look better. Now, I'm not saying you're going to be better looking than everyone because obviously like everyone starts from a different point as far as the genetics that we've been dealt. But from there, you want to look your best, be your godliest. And how many pictures have we seen on the internet where it's like, oh, this is my daughter before she went off to Devil State University and then she went there and became a libtard and studied lesbian poetry or whatever and now here's what she looks like. Who's seen kind of before and after pictures of like her as a conservative versus her as a liberal, right? And when she's a liberal, she's just all gross and androgynous and just looking gross and I don't even know how else to describe it. Just looking ugly. Just looking gross. Oh, that's mean. No, because it's not that god made her ugly because we had a picture of her before she became a libtard and she looked nice. And then you'll see other gross people who get saved and get right with god and then they look way better. And it's the other way around, the before and after. This is before they got saved. Now this is them right with god looking better. And let's face it, the life that god prescribed for us is a healthy life. God's not telling us to do stuff that's going to damage ourselves. But guess what? Alcohol doesn't make you better looking. You know what alcohol does to you physically as a man? Alcohol gives you man breasts. Which breasts are only cool on women, not on men. Okay? And so, you know, those phytoestrogen mimickers in the beer and even just alcohol in general, you know, is going to also give you the beer gut. So not only will you have breasts like a woman, you can look pregnant like a woman. You can have a pregnant belly where the whole rest of your body is a normal shape and then you just look like a pregnant man. And people come up to you in public and ask you, when is the baby due? Right? You know that emoji of the pregnant man? That's not a pregnant man. That bro just drank a lot of beer. That's what that emoji is. That's the beer drinker emoji. Okay? It's got nothing to do with being a tranny. So the point is that alcohol is not making you better looking. It's not a protein shake. Okay? And not only that, but you can always spot an alcoholic just by looking at their nose. Best way to spot an alcoholic, look at their nose or a former alcoholic. Obviously people can get right with God and then still they have the permanent damage of this. You can just look at somebody's nose and just tell this person's an alcoholic. And, you know, if you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm sorry, but I don't really know how to describe it. But, I mean, I guess I'm just not very poetic when it comes to these things, but it's kind of like big and red and has a bunch of craters in it. I don't know what to say. Am I close? Am I in the ballpark? Vaguely describing it? It's just a certain nose. You just see a certain nose and it's like, okay, alcoholic. You just know. Now, is that aesthetically pleasing? Is anybody just like, man, I want to have that nose when I get older. You think, you know, young men are just thinking like, how do I get that nose that alcoholics have? Oh, how much do I have to drink though to get there? No, because it's ugly. It's not a cool looking nose that you get. And by the way, you know, you look at women who drink and smoke and you know what? They look about 10 years older than their non-drinking and smoking counterparts. Oh, sorry, 20 years older. And depending on what kind of drugs they do, they could even look 30 years older if they take in drugs. But even just alcohol and cigarettes is going to just add years to the way you look. And let's face it, if you're a 45-year-old woman who doesn't drink, smoke, do drugs, you're going to look way better than if you're a 45-year-old woman and you're drinking, smoking, doing drugs earlier in life. Let's face it, often aesthetics and morality overlap, don't they? Things that are godly and righteous are also lovely. And sin will take away the loveliness from people. And again, this could go for both genders because we notice that in the Bible, the Bible is even calling men lovely, right? Saul and Jonathan and the man in Song of Solomon and so forth. So the idea here is, you know, we wouldn't use that word, no dude wants to be called lovely, you know, in 2024. But we would say, you know, handsome or something like that. You know, all of us as men don't want to be ugly. Even if we don't care as much about our appearance as women do, we don't want to be ugly. Well, sin is going to make you ugly. And you know, you see people, as soon as they get in a sinful life, and you're just like, man, you ugly. You used to look so good and now a year later, you look like toasted crap. Like what have you been doing? What have you been doing with your life? Why? What is it? What is it? It's just living the sinful life makes you look gross. And maybe you just can't even tell. Maybe you don't notice because you're like the frog in the hot water, how you're just looking more gross every day. And then you see people living a clean, healthy, godly life and it doesn't matter if they're 40, 50, 60, 70, 80. I mean, I've seen 80-year-olds looking better than 20-year-olds. Because 80-year-olds living a wholesome life look better than 20-year-olds living a sinful, ungodly life. Well, you know what? We could dwell on all the ugliness in this world, which often overlaps with sinfulness. Or we could dwell upon the beauty of this world, right? First of all, there's a lot of natural beauty that we can enjoy, enjoying things that are lovely like sunsets and waterfalls and, you know, just the view out the window and just the birds chirping and all the wonderful things that God has created in nature. And also just, obviously, just people and just things and just, you know, just thinking about things that are beautiful. There's a lot of beauty in this world. We could focus on the beauty of this world or we could just focus on the ugliness. You know, we could go out in public and find the ugliest, weirdest people, you know, just the grossest lesbian freaks or something. Or, you know, we could focus on that which is lovely and just kind of try to stay away from those parts of town, stay away from those people and just kind of tend to just kind of not be around it. That was one thing I loved about being in Armenia is just everybody just looked pretty normal in Armenia. Like, I did not see a single transvestite the entire time I was there. It was kind of nice to just see things that were a little more lovely, you know, just in general just to not be around things that are ugly like that. Just gross, ugly things. And why are some of just the grossest, ugliest women wearing the least clothes sometimes? What is up with that? So weird. What is the psychology behind that? You know, it's like what in the world? Man, if I had something physically weird about me, I wouldn't just be like putting a neon sign and pointing at it. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm just thinking about this. Like, what if I had like, I'm just thinking about, well, I don't know. I don't want to go off in the wrong direction and offend people or something. But you know what I'm saying? Like, you just have these just really weird looking people and they're wearing Daisy Dukes and they're a hundred pounds overweight and you're just like, what the heck? Like, what are you thinking? No, this is not what Philippias 4-8 talked about when it said lovely. Anyway, I got to hurry to get through the whole list. But not only lovely but also a good report. Now, this is a good one too because if you think about a good report, here's another way we could say this, good news, right? Because a report is like news or an update or something like that, right? And so a good report. The Bible says Proverbs 15-30, the light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart and a good report maketh the bones fat. Right? So getting good news, man, it just makes you feel good. It makes your bones fat. It's healthy. It rejoices your heart. The Bible talks about Ananias in Acts 22 being a godly man who had a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there. Demetrius in 3 John verse 12 hath a good report of all men. Okay, so these are people where you hear good things about them as opposed to some of Jacob's children, the sons of the concubines. Joseph brought unto his father their evil report, right? So Joseph comes to dad and tells him, hey, you know, Issachar, Sibulin and, you know, Dan and Naphtali got bad news for you about their lifestyle. They're wicked. They're sinful. And Joseph is bringing their evil report to dad, right? The spies that went into Canaan, the 12 spies that were sent into Canaan to spy on Canaan, 10 of them came back with an evil report. Bad news, doom and gloom. We can't do it. It's not going to work. And so on. We could go down through the list of scriptures that I have here. But the point is here that there's good news and there's bad news. And we're all going to get good news and bad news in our lives, right? We're going to get a good report and we're going to get an evil report, right? And we, you know, we don't obviously want to hear bad things about people that we love or people that affect us in some way. We don't want to hear bad things about our city, our state, our country, whatever. You know, we think about the news, right? And people today are really fixated in many ways on the news, right? A lot of people get the news every day, whether it's a newspaper or whether it's online news, Yahoo news, or I don't even know if that's even a thing anymore. Is it? Yahoo news, the, you know, infowars.com. Is that still, is it still alive? Is it still there a couple more days or something? But, uh, that's a thing. Uh, you know, just scrolling whatever the feed or just going to Google news or I don't know where do people get news, CNN or something, you know, if they're libtard. Where do you get the news? Just YouTube. Fox News, X. Nobody cares because we don't, we don't care. We don't watch the news around here. We don't care. We're not interested. I just figure, you know, if something really important happens, I'll get the memes about it. If nobody's memeing it, it must not be important. If it doesn't reach meme levels, I don't care. It doesn't affect my life. Once the memes start coming, I'll start Googling it like, okay, I need to know what's going on because I want to understand these memes. I want to enjoy these memes. So here's the thing about that though, is that a lot of the news out there, it's bad news and here's the thing. We live in a country with 340 million people. Somebody's always going to be dying or getting, you know, destroyed in some bizarre way. Like horrible things are happening like every second just cause there's 8 billion people in the world. We don't need to know about all of them. So if I just sat around just thinking about every murder and every catastrophe and every war that's going on, I'm going to guarantee you right now there's some war going on. People are killing each other and child soldiers and all the horrible things, terrible things. Human trafficking, you know, those are some bad news. Those are bad reports. We don't want to hear about those things necessarily. Now look, obviously sometimes these things need to be dealt with or addressed. Sometimes they do affect us. But do we really need to just sit around meditating upon all the bad news in every city, in every state, in every country of the world? Is that really going to add value to our lives and give us more joy and peace and happiness in our lives? No. When we are sitting around thinking, think about the good report. Think about the good news. Think about the things that are going well. Think about the, you know, the mission strips that are going well, the soul winning that's going well, you know, people in your life that are succeeding and thriving and doing well, not just fixated on every piece of bad news. And look, let's go back to Philippians 4 and just kind of wrap up this whole thing. You know, we could obviously, each of these things, true, honest, just, pure, lovely, good report, virtue, praise. Virtue has to do with like having good attributes about your character, right? Things that you could praise or things that you could praise God for and think about how good they are. We could do a whole sermon on each of these things and look at all the mentions in the Bible and everything. I'm just trying to give you an overview, though, because the point of the sermon is to not fixate on negative things, right? Yes, read your Bible. It's going to be a mix of positive and negative. Yes, deal with negative things that actually need to be dealt with, that you need to address, that you need to handle. But do not spend Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday just sitting there and just think about all the bad news in the world and just thinking about all the people that hate you and all the people that have stabbed you in the back over the years and think about all the things that are going wrong in your life. And thinking about your health problems and your money problems and your family problems and you're just careful and worried and troubled about so many things and you're just thinking about all these bad things and then you wonder why you have anxiety and you're upset. And look, people I think in 2024 America are probably dealing with a lot more anxiety than they have in the past, right? At least they're talking about it more. Everybody's talking about stress and anxiety and worry and everybody's worried about this and worried about that. Well, you know what we need to do? We need to cast our care upon Him. We need to just pray and thank God and just realize, hey, I can have peace. God's going to take care of my situation. And if God allows my financial situation or relationship status or family problems or church problems or work problems, if He allows those things to continue to be negative in my life, well then maybe this is just a cross that I'm supposed to bear, right? Maybe this is just a thorn in my flesh. I mean the Apostle Paul is a great man of God but he had a thorn in his flesh and he asked the Lord three times to get rid of it and God said, my grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in weakness. You're going to deal with this thorn in the flesh. You are going to carry this cross. And here's what I've noticed. All throughout my life, I've had like a cornucopia of problems. I haven't gone through life like with just one problem. Some people just have one thing the whole life. It's just always health problems or something. It's just always financial problems. With me, God has really given me a nice variety of problems. I've pretty much gotten to sample everything virtually from the problem smorgasbord. I've gotten a little taste of everything. I guess because God just wants me to be able to preach about every situation so He just allows me to be tortured in every way possible over the course of my life. And I'm exaggerating obviously. I'm joking. But the point is that I've gone through a lot of different kinds of problems and here's what I've noticed. That whenever a problem in my life goes away, another one just immediately pops up. Every single time. And so I'm not, these days I'm not really anxious about saying like, God fixed my problem, God fixed my problem because I'm just like I don't even want to know what the next problem is so I almost want to just stick with the devil I know than the devil I don't know. But you know what? But at the same time, I could be negative about that and say, oh man, every time I get my life fixed, every time I fix a problem, another one pops up and I could be negative about that. Or I could think about how many times God has fixed my problems because I've had so many problems that have been fixed. You know, I remember I used to in my old sermons talk about how messed up my finger was. And it was something that was pain every day my finger tormented me. Every day it bothered me. It was very painful and annoying and just a hindrance to me. And if it was the one thing that I could have fixed about my life, it would have been this finger. Which is kind of silly because it's such a little thing, but man, it hurt and bothered me every day for about 10 years. And now my finger is 100% better. In fact, today it even took me a second to remember which finger it was and to find the scar and I'm like, oh yeah, because it's that it feels that good that I had to think for a couple seconds which finger it was. Okay. And that's a problem that I thought was never going to go away because when you've had a problem for nine years, you kind of just think at that point it's not going away. I'm going to live with this for the rest of my life. Now it's 100%. I mean 100%. And so I could be positive and say, hey, you know what? Even problems that you think are never going to go away, God will sometimes fix them. So don't sit and think, oh, I'm going to be dealing with this for the rest of my life. You don't know. God could fix your problem tomorrow or six months from now or maybe it'll be 10 years. Maybe you'll have to suffer for 10 years. But you know what? I'm super thankful that my finger is okay now. And maybe that seems like a little thing, but it wasn't a little thing to me because 365 days times 10 years, 3,650 days, this thing hurt me multiple times a day. So it probably hurt me like about 10,000 times. I experienced pain because of my finger. And now it's great. Now it's fixed. But then, you know, as soon as my finger's fine, it's something else. It's always going to be something, isn't it? You know what? The point is don't go through life just sitting and thinking about that one thing and if I could just get this one thing fixed, as soon as you fix it, it's going to be something else. So just learn to accept the things that you can't change and just go through life saying, you know what? I am going to choose no matter what state I'm in to be content because I'm always going to have nine things in my life that are going good and one that's going bad. I'm going to choose to think about the nine things. And then sometimes things will swap category. You got eight things that are going good, two that are going bad. And then sometimes these two will go over to the good column and then two more critters will go over to the bad column and there's a back and forth. But you always have seven, eight, nine things that are going good and one, two, three things that are going bad in your life. You know, just always decide to say, you know what, though? I'm going to deal with these things when I have to. But, you know, I'm going to think about those things as little as possible and just focus on just being thankful for the things that are good and being happy. You know, I don't like to be reminded of things that are going bad in my life. I like to think about the things that are going well. That's a good way to be happy. And so what do I do? I go through life thinking about things that are true. And, you know, a big part of this is meditating on the word of God. But, you know, just thinking about things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, good report. There's so much beauty in this world. There's so many good things. You know, I preached a sermon several months ago called Life Can Be Beautiful. Life Can Be Beautiful. And, you know, I was kind of, I guess, trying to accomplish something similar in that sermon that I'm trying to accomplish right now to stop thinking so much about the bad things and stop and just realize, hey, there's a lot that we have going for us. And there are some beautiful moments in our lives. Yeah, there's pain, there's suffering, there's affliction, but there are some really beautiful moments as well. Think on these things, those things that are lovely, good report. And look, I'm not against you watching the news, but if it bothers you, turn off. You know, and here's the thing. Some people maybe get a lot of enjoyment out of the news or get enjoyment out of social media or get enjoyment out of these things, but for other people they're not making you happy. So get rid of them. Right? Cut out things that are bothering you and making you upset and, you know, making you nervous or anxious or scared. Just don't focus on those things. Right? Think about things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your Word. We thank you for your promises. We thank you for the wonderful blessings that you bestow upon us. We have so much to be thankful for. We could count our blessings all day long or we could sit and complain about the bad things in our lives. Lord, help us keep a focus on that which is positive and in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Turn in your hymnals to song number 431. Song number 431, Silent Night. Song number 431. Sing it out on the first ear. Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin, mother and child. Holy infant so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace. Silent night, holy night. Shepherds ring at the sign. Glory streams from heaven afar. Heavenly hosts sing hallelujah. Christ the Savior is born. Christ the Savior is born. Silent night, holy night. Son of God, love's true light. Pray in peace from Thy holy face. With the God of redeeming grace. Jesus, Lord at Thy birth. Jesus, Lord at Thy birth. Silent night, holy night. Wontless star, land as mine. With the angel's legacy. Hallelujah to our King. Christ the Savior is born. Christ the Savior is born. Amen. Thank you for coming this evening. You are dismissed. Thank you. Thank you.