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What I want to preach about this morning, we're going to come back to James chapter 4, but what I want to preach about this morning is purity, being pure. Now, purity is a word that is found a lot in the Bible. It's actually, I looked up just all different variations on the word pure. I found 155 mentions of the word pure, and we're living in a very impure society, and a society where people's thoughts are very impure, and I want to preach about purity. First of all, let me just help to define purity for you. I always think that the Bible is its own best dictionary. You know, just by looking at how things are used in the Bible, we can figure out what they mean. Well, guess what? The most common usage of pure in the Bible over and over again is when he's talking about pure gold. You know, when you're back in Exodus reading those parts, where he's going on and on about the temple, he talks about pure gold, pure silver, pure this, pure that. Purity is basically the absence of contamination, the absence of something that is not supposed to be there, the absence of the impurity or the uncleanness. When we think of pure gold, we're talking about something that is 100% gold, not mixed with anything of lesser value, okay? And of course, gold is measured in purity by how much foreign contamination is mixed in, and so purity is important to God. It's used throughout the Bible. First of all, let me show you this. Turn to Psalm 12, if you would. Right in the middle of your Bible, Psalm 12. Let me start out by saying this. God is pure, and the Word of God is pure. Now, look at Psalm 12. While you're turning there, I'll read for you Psalm 119, verse 140. The Bible reads, Thy word is very pure, therefore thy servant loveth it. Look at Psalm chapter 12, verse 6. The Bible reads, The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Again, being compared to a precious metal, such as silver or gold, having all of the imperfections and impurities removed, it says, Thou shalt keep them, O Lord. Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. Turn to Proverbs chapter 30. Next book in the Bible is Proverbs. So he said, God's word is very pure. He said, The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. He says in Proverbs chapter 30, verse 5, Every word of God is pure. He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar. Now, here again, the definition of purity rings true. If you add something to it that's man-made, it's no longer pure. Do you see that? God's words are all pure words, every single one of them. This book right here, if I add to it my words, if I add something to God's word, and of course we're warned in Revelation 22 that eternal damnation awaits those who add unto or take away from his word, if we add something to it, it's no longer pure. If it has fallacies and falsehoods and lies mixed in, you could say, well, it's 99% good, but it's not pure, because pure means 100% clean. Okay? And so God's word is very pure. Now, there are people today who think, well, just as long as we get the gist of God's word. And we have all these different so-called versions of God's word, hundreds and hundreds of different versions that all say different things. And let me tell you something, if they say something different, one of them is what God said, and one of them is what somebody else said, and one of them's a pure Bible, and one of them's an impure Bible. Okay? And that's why we're King James Bible only at his church, because these new versions, such as the NIB, the HIV, the NAS, the RSV, all these new versions, if you look at them, they're filled with lies. Like, for example, Luke 2 33 in the modern versions says that Joseph is Jesus' father. That's a lie. Joseph was not Jesus' father. Jesus Christ was born of the virgin Mary. Okay? The King James Bible tells us that salvation is a very narrow way, meaning that most people are not saved. But if you look it up in these new versions, they say, well, salvation is a difficult way. There's nothing difficult about salvation. Jesus did the difficult part. We just need to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and we shall be saved. And so we need to first of all realize that God is pure. The Bible says God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. He's just pure light. Everything about God is righteous and clean and pure and holy, and His Word is the same way. His Word is very pure. Every word of it is pure. Of course, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. You can't separate God from His Word. They're both pure. And so God demands us to be pure. Look at 1 John 3. 1 John 3. We as Christians ought to be pure. Purity ought to be a word that's in our vocabulary today as Christians. It says in 1 John 3 verse 1, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God. And it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. And so the Bible's teaching that if we believed on Jesus Christ, we're God's children. Some people will say, well, we're all God's children. No. The Bible says, but as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name. That means that they weren't already God's sons. But once we believe on Him, we become God's son. And it didn't say once you get baptized, you become God's son. It didn't say if you join a church or start living a good life. No. Being saved is just strictly by believing on Jesus Christ, putting your faith in Him. And when you believe on Him, you're a son of God. You're a child of God. And eventually we will be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. Someday when we get to heaven, all of our sins will be gone, and the flesh will be gone, and we will be conformed to that image someday. We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. But it says in verse 3, every man that has this hope in him purify himself, even as he is pure. God said that right now, while we're on this earth, those of us who are saved, those of us who are God's children, should be making an effort and striving to purify ourselves. What does that mean? To clean ourselves up, to get the imperfection out of our life, to get all the garbage and the uncleanness and the filth out of our life so that we can be pure because He's pure. And He's the example. Look at James 4 where we start, just a few pages to the left in your Bible here in 1 John 3. It says in James 4 verse 7, submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. God is commanding us here to cleanse our hands. That's talking about our outward works, the things that we do. We should clean up our life. And He says we should also purify our hearts, and that is how we're going to get close to God. People today, they think that they're going to get close to God just by listening to some Christian music. You know, they play a bunch of Christian rock and contemporary music that somehow makes them feel spiritual, or they go to church and they go to a worship service, and they feel so close to God. But biblically speaking, the way to get close to God is to cleanse your hands and purify your heart. You know why? Because at 1 John chapter 1, it said if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. The Bible is clear that to have fellowship with God, to be nigh to God, we've got to cleanse our hands and purify our heart. God wants us to purify our heart. Now what is He talking about when He says the heart there? Go to 2 Corinthians chapter 10. About halfway through the New Testament, 2 Corinthians chapter 10. What does He mean by the heart? Well, He's not talking about the organ that pumps the blood throughout your body. The word heart basically means the core of something, the center of something, okay? Like if you think of an artichoke heart, it's what's on the inside. And when God talks about our heart, oftentimes He's talking about our thoughts, our mind, basically what's going on inside of our spirit and our soul. Not the body, not the flesh, not the physical outside, but what's on the inside, what's going through our mind. Let me give you an example. Here's a really famous verse. In Matthew 5 28, the Bible says, But I say to you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Now look, He's saying that you've already committed the adultery in your mind. You see how He uses the heart there to refer to what's going on in your head? He's saying when you think a dirty thought, when you look upon a woman to lust after, you've committed adultery in your heart. And God said we need to purify our heart. That means we need to not think those kind of impure and wicked thoughts, okay? Look at this example in 2 Corinthians 10. It says this, 2 Corinthians 10 3, For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare, so we do have a warfare going on, but the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they're not fleshly, they're not physical weapons, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations. What are imaginations? Things that you think about in your mind and in your heart. Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ and having a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. God says here that the war that we fight as Christians, the battle that we fight is a battle that is actually taking place inside of our own mind. The battle is inside of us. That's why he said in James 4, From whence come wars and fighting among you? Come they not hence even of your lusts that war in your members? The Bible says the flesh war against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. These two are contrary to one to the other so that you cannot do the things between. You see everybody here this morning, if you're saved, if you're a Christian, if you're a believer in Christ, you have a war going on inside of you. Between the old man, the old you, the flesh that wants to take over and the new man and that battle is a battle of the mind. The battle of the imagination, the battle of the thoughts. You see nobody just goes out and commits some wicked sin until it first takes place in their mind. That's where it starts. The Bible says, Then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death. Sin starts out in the mind. It starts out in the lust of the heart. It starts out with the imagination. Remember in Genesis chapter 6, when God was going to send the flood and he had Noah get on the ark? It said that the reason why he was going to destroy the earth was because he looked down upon the earth and it said that the imaginations of man's hearts were only evil continually. Man just had a filthy mind and a filthy heart all the time and that's what destroyed that society to the point where God flooded the entire world and saved only eight people alive on the ark because it starts out in the mind. And so if we're going to live a clean and pure life, if we're going to cleanse our hands, we've got to keep our heart pure. So what does it mean to keep our heart pure? What does it mean to have a pure heart? Of course the famous verse, Blessed are the pure in heart where they shall see God. The Bible said in 1 Timothy 4-12, Let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Don't, generally, be an example of purity. The Bible says in Proverbs 20-11, Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure and whether it be right. And so purity is important. How are we going to be pure? Well think about it. What is purity? Purity is the absence of that which is unclean, the absence of something dirty, the absence of something filthy. Let's say I had a glass of water up here, a crystal clear glass of water, and you can see through the glass and you can see that the water was completely clear. Of course this water is completely clear, but you can't see through the glass. So what does it mean to purify water? Have you ever bought water at the store and it said this water has been purified, right? What does that mean? It means that they removed the contamination. It means that they removed the debris. They removed the dirt. They removed the garbage out of it. And that's what God wants us to do with our life and our heart. Now, how do things get into the heart? Well, they come through your eyes, if you think about it. They come through your ears. Okay, the things that go into your mind are the things that you see and hear. The Bible says we cannot help but to speak the things that we've seen and heard. And the Bible says the things that come out of our heart defile us, things that we say. And so we need to be careful not to let impurity into our minds and into our lives. Now look, here's the bottom line. We go through life, we're going to pick up the impurities of this world. I mean, you might go to work and when you go to work you're probably going to hear them blasting all the wrong music. You know, who works at a job where you just you hear all the wrong music blasting? I mean, almost every job I've worked at you're basically getting pumped in with rock music or whatever kind of music. And a lot of it, you know, it is just really explicitly telling you a lot of bad things and it really has a bad message. The rest of it's probably implicit. But everywhere we go we're bombarded with the wrong things. We're bombarded with the world's filth. You know, we drive down the road, we see it on the billboards. You know, hopefully you don't go home and turn it on on the television. This is why you might not even have a television. You know, because the problem is people sit in front of that thing and just feed the mind with everything that's impure and unclean and you drive down the road, you see it, you're going to be exposed to it. You can't get away from it completely. I mean, we do live in the world. You're going to hear it. You're going to see it. But we've got to purify it. We've got to clean it out of our mind. And the Bible talks about the washing of water by the word. The Bible talks about how, go if you would to Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is a chapter all about God's word. So first of all, I'll say this. In order to keep a pure heart and a pure mind, one of the best things you can do is limit your exposure to the filth of this world. You know, you're going to see things that you shouldn't see just by virtue of living in the world, just by walking down the street, just by driving down the road, just by going to work, just by living in the world. But let me tell you something. You ought to try to limit that exposure as little as possible and not to set a wicked thing before your eyes. You see, sometimes things will be in front of you. You're going to see things that are bad, but you ought never to purposely set something wicked in front of your eyes. Like for example, I might be driving down the road and see a woman by the side of the road that's scantily clad. But you know, that doesn't mean, well, since I saw that, I might as well just go home and just turn that on the TV and watch all the scantily clad women. Now, I don't know, I haven't watched TV in a really long time, but somebody help me out. Do the women on TV, are they dressed modestly for the most part? I mean, do they wear long flowing skirts and they dress like feminine modest ladies? What percentage of the women on TV do you think dress like that? Zero. That's not good. No, because you know, you watch TV and they know what sells. They know what the flesh wants to see. And so they put out every girl that's scantily clad, that's in the short shorts and the low cut top, and that's dressed sleazily and promiscuously. And that is setting a wicked thing before your eyes. You're going to sit there and turn that on and just feast your eyes on that. And you know, you may not know it, but you are impurifying your heart. You're muddying up your heart. You're bringing in all these wicked images into your mind. You're bringing in all these imaginations and bad thoughts into your mind. And that's why David said, I'll set no wicked thing before my eyes. You know, but you sit there and you look at that. And by the way, one of the reasons why I wouldn't want to just sit down with my family in front of the TV is because I think of my daughters. You know, I don't want my daughters just seeing 99% of the women that they see dressed wrong. You know, I want them to grow up and dress right. I don't want them to grow up and look like a hoochie mama the way that they dress. And so I want to make sure that they're not being just filled with the world's garbage. And so we got to limit our exposure to the world's garbage, you know, necessarily we're going to be exposed to it. You know, I'm not saying that we should go live in a cave somewhere or go in a monastery somewhere or form our own compound and everything like that. God said we're going to be in the world, but we shouldn't be of the world. And so we shouldn't just set it in front of our own eyes. You know, you might have to listen to some rock music at your job because it's just pumped over loudspeakers everywhere you go. But you know what, that doesn't mean you have to go home and turn it on in your own car. Why don't you get in the car and turn on God's word on Alexander Scurvy reading God's word? Why don't you get home and read the Bible and get some of that filth cleaned out of your mind? Because look what it says in Psalm 119 verse 1. It says, blessed are the undefiled in the way. That'd be another word for pure. Undefiled. Unmixed with things that are bad. It says blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies and that seek him with the whole heart. They also do no iniquity. They walk in his ways. Thou has commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. Oh that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes. Then shall I not be ashamed when I have respect unto all thy commandments. I will praise thee with a brightness of heart when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments. I will keep thy statutes. Oh forsake me not utterly. Look at verse 9. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to thy word. With my whole heart have I sought thee. Oh let me not wander from my commandments. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. So what's the key to a young man cleansing his way? What's the key to being undefiled in the way? What is the key to not sinning against God? He said hiding God's word in your heart. Taking heed thereto according to God's word. It's God's word that's going to cleanse and purify your mind and your heart and your life. You see I remember when I when I first got married and I worked a job in alarm company and I remember this was something you know I'd grown up as a teenager just listening to all the wrong music. Watching all the wrong stuff on tv. Watching all the wrong movies. And so I just had so much garbage in my mind. You know I mean you could probably relate to that. Just so much filth. There's so many movies that you wish you hadn't seen or music that you heard you try to get it out of your head. You ever just get stuff like that just stuck in your head? Some song that you heard it's a really bad song. You don't want to think about it but just keep coming back. And that's what I learned by the way. Sometimes things go in and they don't come out. That's why we have to be really careful what we expose our eyes and ears to. But I remember I used to struggle with my thoughts. Just because it seemed like whenever I'd be working because I did kind of a mundane job sometimes. Just you know installing a bunch of fire alarm horn strokes. Just installing them all day long. Doing the same repetitive activity like every five minutes. So my mind is just wandering. And I just remember my mind would just wander pretty soon. I'm singing a bunch of bad songs in my mind that I don't want to sing. I'm thinking about all these movies that I shouldn't have seen. I'm thinking about all these wicked images that I've seen. And just all this stuff was in my mind. And I remember that's when I first started really listening to the Bible on tape a lot. I got a Walkman and just put on the Bible on tape and used to listen to it. And I would listen to a lot of preaching. And one of the biggest reasons it wasn't just that I wanted to listen to the Bible. Which I did. But it wasn't just that I wanted to listen to preaching. It was because I felt like man I need to keep my mind occupied with the right things with God's work. Just to stop my mind from wandering into all this impurity. And you know just through the years of just listening to the Bible and listening to God's work and listening to preaching. You can start to get some of that junk out of your mind. And purify your heart. And go through the day a little bit more pure. You're never going to be totally pure while you're living in this world today. But you know what? We ought to strive to purify ourselves as He is pure. You know one of the ways we can purify ourselves is by getting in the Word of God. But let me ask you. How do you think you're ever going to have a pure mind and a pure heart if you spend hours a day watching TV, listening to a bunch of rock music put out by people who hate God, put out by a bunch of effeminate queer little sissies, or put out by a bunch of communist weirdos. You know how do you have a pure mind and then you read the Bible for five minutes? Your mind is going to dwell on whatever you're putting into your mind. And if you put God's Word into your mind that's what's going to keep popping into your mind. You do a lot of solany, that's what's going to be coming into your mind. You're going to be thinking about solany. You're going to be thinking about the Bible. When you sing these songs, when you sing the hymns, those are the songs that are going to be keep coming into your mind and keep coming back, keep coming back. I'm glad that my children someday, they'll have these songs just keep popping in their mind, popping in their mind. Because that's what they put into their heart. We need to purify our heart. We need to be undefiled in the way. And a lot of Christians today don't care about this. This isn't the sermon that's being preached at most churches at this point. Most of them are just trying to tell you, you know, how to get through the week. You know, how to succeed on your job and how to have a better family life. And those are all good things. You know, and how to stay encouraged. Those are all great. But you know we need some sermons to preach against the filth of our world today because we've got a bunch of impure Christians today. And look, we all are exposed to it. And in a world today where filth and impurity is the norm, we've got to take even more heed and work even harder to try to keep ourselves pure. Paul told Timothy, he said, keep thyself pure. You know, I might not be able to keep you pure and you can't keep me pure, but you can keep yourself pure. Timothy was living in a wicked area. Timothy was exposed to a lot of sin and wickedness, but Paul said, lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins, keep thyself pure. You don't have to participate in the sins of the world around you and the people around you. Just because you live in Tempe, Arizona doesn't mean that you have to live the typical lifestyle of Tempe, Arizona. You can keep thyself pure. That's what Paul was telling Timothy. The Bible says there is a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness. You see, a lot of what the world considers pure and normal, God says it's filthy. Let me give you an example. When we think of the word purity, a lot of times people will think of, of course, people going to their wedding day pure, as in not having committed fornication, right? Isn't that a common term for purity? People will talk about being pure. And by the way, that's what the white wedding dress is supposed to represent, by the way. That white wedding dress is actually a biblical concept that talks about when the bride of Christ being adorned in white and it says that that white represents the righteousness of saints. You know, we ought to have a generation of young people growing up today that will go to the wedding altar pure. The Bible says, for this is the will of God, even your sanctification that you should abstain from fornication. The Bible says, for God has not called us unto uncleanness but unto holiness. And let me tell you something, purity today is not the norm. Purity today is not the average lifestyle of young people. If you're going to be pure today, and I'm preaching to the young people right now, those that are unmarried, those that are single, or maybe even those that are older and single, the bottom line is being pure when you get married is not the norm today. And so if you follow every lifestyle that the world follows, or if you raise your children according to this world system, don't be surprised when they don't go to the wedding altar pure. I mean, if 99% are doing it, and then you're going to raise your children according to that exact pattern, and you just show up to church on Sunday, but Monday through Saturday, your home resembles the home of the world. You've got all the same TV programs. They've got all the same music in their earphones. They've got all the same influences. They dress the same. And then you're shocked when they go the way that everybody else in the world is going and commit fornication, which fornication, to define it for you, is going to bed with somebody that you're not married to. That's the average today. That's the norm. That's what most people are doing. Most people are not keeping themselves pure and virgin for when they get married. It's just a fact. But let me tell you something. I want my children to keep themselves pure. I kept myself pure before I got married. I want my children to be pure. And maybe you've already made that mistake, but you can keep yourself pure from here on out. And those that are young people today, there are many teenagers and children listening to my voice that have not yet made these mistakes. They need to decide right now, hey, I'm going to keep myself pure. I'm going to be right with God. I'm not going to live a life of uncleanness. And I guarantee you, those that did not keep themselves pure wish that they had. And they realized that living the filthy life of sin was not worth it. You say, why do you use words like that? Well, it's called Bible words. You see, the Bible uses a lot more negative words for sin than we use. We like to make sin not sound as bad. So if somebody's a drunk, we call them an alcoholic. Because that doesn't sound as bad as being a drunk. The Bible calls them a drunk. And you see people today and they're drunks. And they ought to be called drunks. And somebody got to get up at church and preach and say, you're drunk. Quit drinking. That's what the Bible says. How long will that be drunken? God preaches against drunkenness. And we ought to call things by the right name. We ought to look at people going to bed together before they're married and call it fornication. Not immorality. Not a mistake. No, it's fornication. We ought to call it adultery when people break their wedding vows. That's called adultery. OK, we ought to call it being a whore or a harlot when a girl is sleeping around before she's married. That's what the Bible calls it. It calls her a whore. It calls her a harlot. That's what we ought to call it. But no, we just call it, well, you know, we try to go easy on sin today. We go light on sin. And then this is the society we end up with. A society that bounds with impurity. A society that bounds with sin. We ought to weep and mourn. Go back to James 4. Go back to James 4. And boy, you want to talk about a disgusting place? Let me just give you a little commercial right here. We'll do a little commercial break. You want to talk about a disgusting place? That place is Las Vegas, Nevada. That is the most disgusting, filthy place I've ever seen in my life. And no Christian ought to go there recreationally. That place is disgusting. I'm sorry. I had to drive. I drove up to a job in Utah. And on the way there, I went through the Navajo reservation. I went through Gap. I went through all that. And I went all the way up and around the Grand Canyon. Well, things worked out a certain way where I wanted to go home the same way, but it worked out. I couldn't go home the same way. I had to go home through Las Vegas. So I hadn't been to Las Vegas in years. And I had told myself I'm never going to Las Vegas again. Because I used to work over there. I used to do work in Las Vegas. And I just decided, that's it. I'm never doing work here again. Because even just being there just to work made me sick. But sometimes time dims the memory. You know how it is. Time goes by and you forget. So I just thought, well, I think I'm just going to have to end up driving through Las Vegas because of this, that, and there were a bunch of circumstances where I couldn't go back the other way. I'm like, well, I guess I'll just drive through there, no big deal. Well, I was trying to get something to eat. So I tried to get something to eat in Utah. And everything was closed. And I kept typing into my GPS. And I would go to restaurants and they weren't there. It was like, oh, it says it was going to be a subway. So I drove that subway. It's not there. I'm like, stupid Tom Tom. And I hadn't eaten. I was on this job that was going to be really, I had not eaten in a really long time. I was starving. And I found this box of cookies in my trunk that had been from a long time ago. It was like a ginger snaps or something that somebody bought. And I'd eaten most of them. But there were a few left. And I ate those. I just wolfed those out because I was just so hungry. I was just starving. So I'm driving, I'm driving. And my wife said, oh, I'm going to find you something to eat in Las Vegas. And I told her, I'm like, I don't want to go to the part where it's all the nightlife. So I'm like, you need to find me one that's just right on the freeway or something, just away from all that. OK. So she finds me. And sure enough, she finds me a Chipotle. And it's open. But sure enough, it's just right in the middle of that. It was right off the freeway. It was right off the freeway. But it was just right off the freeway, right in the middle of that Las Vegas night. And this is like a Thursday night. I pulled off and got that burrito. And I tell you something, I almost didn't even want to eat the burrito anymore. I almost just wanted to offer it as a meat offering to God. I wish that I had never even stopped to get that burrito. And I'm not going to make that mistake again. I'm through with it. That place is filthy. I mean, just literally, you want to talk about drunkenness? I mean, there are just thousands of people walking down the street, and they're all drunk. They're all drunk and just listening to the stupid things that they say, the dumb things coming out of their mouth. And they're all just, and I mean, just pornography is, I mean, you're just like, whoa. I mean, there was so much pornography. I cannot even understand how anybody could even live in that city. It's so bad. I mean, there's just pornography like all over the ground. It's just strewn with pornography. Just in the distance, I walked from my car to the Chipotle, just porno all over the ground. It's like you can't even look down. And let me tell you something. That is the way this world's going. That's the way this country is going. And how many people do you know who that's where they go on vacation? They go to Las Vegas and they go for the nightlife and the party. And they have their little slogan. Yeah, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. No, what happens in Vegas stays in your heart. It stays in your heart for the rest of your life and makes you impure and defile for the rest of your life. That's what it does. You think you can just go there and play around and have your fun, but let me tell you something. It's going to defile you for the rest of your life. And this is what our big cities are becoming, not even just Las Vegas. We as Christians ought to be repulsed by that lifestyle. We ought to stay as far away from it as we can. And look, yeah, maybe it's concentrated physically in Las Vegas. But you know what? We have a little bit of Las Vegas here in Phoenix too. There's little Vegas's all over the place. I mean, we've got places like that where filth and sin abound. And you know what it did for me though? Although I wished I had never got that burrito and it didn't taste very good. But I'll tell you right now, it made me just stick to my stomach and it made me mad. And it made me realize, thank God, you know, that I'm a Christian. Thank God that, you know, that I've been delivered from a lot of this garbage. Okay. But you know what? All of us, all of us need to be careful that we don't go that way. And just seeing it in its true context in Las Vegas, it just made me repulsed by it. But I wish that young people would get that exact vision in their mind when they think, oh yeah, we'll just have a couple of beers, just drink a little. Yeah, well, you know, we're not going to look at porno, but we're just going to watch the movies that are, you know, that are R-rated or PG-13 or whatever, then show a little skin. Let me tell you something, that's where you end up, in a pile of your own sick in Las Vegas. And it's a disgusting place. And I remember one time a guy got mad at me because I said something negative about Las Vegas, and he was from Las Vegas at church here. You might remember that. But this guy, he got all mad, got all defensive. You know what? That was before I'd even been there. Now if that guy was here, I would have told that guy I'm so bad for trying to defend Las Vegas to me, just now that I know what it's really like. But you know what? We as Christians ought not to be conformed to this world. And we ought to decide, you know what? We're going to live a life of purity. We ought to be people as Christians who get married and stay faithful to our spouse till death do us part and keep our mind pure and not fill our mind. And it always blows me away. People will be sitting with their wife sometimes in front of the TV watching this smut. You know, how insulting, how shameful. You know, I want to keep my mind pure and only think about her. I don't want to think about all these other strange women. And you know, I want her mind to be pure, and I want my children to be raised in a pure, clean environment. And we ought to just go home and just purify our house. We ought to just purify the DVD case. We ought to just purify the music cabinet and realize that being a Christian is about being pure. Being a Christian is about living a clean life. Being a Christian is about getting the sin out of your life and purifying your heart. And look, nobody's perfect. I'm not her. I'm not trying to say I'm perfect. I'm totally pure. Hey, nobody's totally pure. But you know what? I want to purify myself. And you ought to want to purify yourself too. We ought to clean ourselves up. And you say, well, you're so judgmental. You're going to turn people away. Then get out of here. You know what I mean? People who want to live a filthy stinking life don't even belong in church anyway. Get out of here. Get out of here if you want a pastor that condones filth. Get out of here if you want a pastor that's going to take you to Las Vegas with him. Get out of here if you want to sit down and watch TV with your pastor and watch a bunch of dirty movies with your pastor. Just get out of here because you're in the wrong church this morning. Because this is a church that's going to preach purity and cleanness and righteousness and Godliness and faith. And you say, well, you're not accepting of it. Yeah, we'll accept anybody. But we're going to yell at them that they need to purify their life because that's what church is. See, we go out and preach the gospel. We go out and get people saved. We go out and bring the good news. And when we go out to the lost and dying world, we determine not to know anything among them except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We don't go around trying to purify people's lives. We go around and we just preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and if they believe on Jesus Christ, they'll be saved. But you know what? Inside of God's house, the Bible says that judgment must first begin at the house of God. And you know, everybody's so worried about not judging, not being judgmental. Well, there's a whole book in the Bible called Judge Judges. You know, God said He that is spiritual judges all things, yet He Himself is judged of no man. The Bible says judge not after the appearance but judge righteous judgment. And the Bible says that the time has come that judgment must begin at the house of God. And if you come to church, you should expect to hear the Bible preach. And when you hear the Bible preach, you're going to hear James 4 preach which says cleanse your hands, you sinners. And purify your hearts, you double-minded. Because that's what God commands us to do, to clean ourselves up, to purify ourselves up. And you know, you're not going to hear this down at the schoolhouse Monday through Friday. They're not going to get up and say be pure. They're going to say do it safely. That's what they'll say. They're not going to say be pure. Stay pure. Get pure. You think that the TV sitcom is promoting purity? They'll lack a purity. They'll make a joke and a mockery of being pure. You think that the music on the hip hop station this morning is promoting purity, cleanliness, being a virgin when you get married? You think that they're promoting keeping a clean mind, not looking at women that aren't dressed properly? No, they're not. So there's got to be one place in the entire world that you can walk in and have somebody remind you that you need to be pure, that you need to keep your heart pure, that you need to clean things up. And that place is called God's house, the local church. And it's what pastors today are failing to do, which is why we have Christians today living just as impure as non-Christians. We see the young people growing up in Christian homes and we see them growing up and drinking and taking drugs and fornicating and doing all the wrong things because there's no purity being preached from that pulpit. And you know what? That's all fine and dandy, but not at this church. This church is going to be a place that cries out and screams and yells and calls it by its right name. Horedom, fornication, drunkenness, lewdness, lasciviousness, wickedness, uncleanness, and filth is what the Bible calls the lifestyle that this world considers normal, the lifestyle that's normal down at ASU, the lifestyle that's normal in the world. Well, you know what? I'm going to condemn it. The Bible says, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them for it is a shame to even speak of those things which are done within the secret. And you say, so what's the moral of the term, Pastor Anderson? What do I take from this? What you ought to take from this is that God demands us to be pure. He demands us to be clean. He wants us to clean up our lives. He doesn't want us to live like the world out there. Now sure, if you're saved, if you're a believer, if you live like the world, you'll still be saved. You're not going to lose your salvation. It's eternal life. But let me tell you something. God demands if you want to be close to Him, if you want Him to be pleased with your life, He demands purity. He demands cleanness. He demands casting out of every abomination. He demands bringing every thought. Did you get that? Second Corinthians 10 four. Every thought into the obedience of Christ. That's what He demands. It starts with an impure mind. Next, it goes to an impure lifestyle. Children often grow up in a very sheltered environment in their home because their parents have rules. Their parents aren't just letting them run amok. Their parents don't let them to just go out at all hours of the night and disappear and nobody knows where they were. So children grow up in a very controlled environment oftentimes. But have you ever noticed that many times as soon as that child gets out of that environment when they're 18 or 19, as soon as they get out, they just go out and do all the sin? Let me tell you something. That didn't happen when they turned 18. What happened was all throughout their childhood and teenage years, it was all up here in their mind. They thought about it and they thought about it and they imagined it and they imagined it and they dreamed about it and dreamed about it and dreamed about it. And so maybe on the outside, they were physically restrained from doing those things, but it was all going on in their mind. And when lust conceived, it brought forth sin when they became an adult. And that's why children and young people today need to have their minds purified from the garbage of this world. That's why I'm not going to show them the Hollywood movies that glorify sin and glorify sinful living. That's why I'm not going to allow them to listen to that music because you might say, well, it's not going to hurt. No, it's just putting all these wicked ideas in their head, just every day, every day, every day, teaching them. And one day they're going to go and live out those things. It starts out, maybe you're just lusting after another woman, but you know what, it leads to adultery eventually if you don't get that under control. And that's the fact of it right there. And so the bottom line is that we need to purify our homes, purify our minds, purify our lives, set an example for our children, a godly example of clean and righteous living and clean and righteous thought. And if you don't like this kind of preaching, that's fine. Just go trot yourself down to one of these little fun centers because in fact, this is really a good day for it because all of them start on Easter. I noticed that all these new fun little mega churches are starting all over Phoenix on Easter Sunday. Their first service is on Easter and it's the rock and roll church and it's the fun house and the fun center and the play time. Hey, I'm not playing around up here. Do I look like I'm joking right now? Do I look like a standup comedian right now? Do I look like I think it's funny? And you know, I don't think there's anything funny about my children growing up and living a wicked life. I don't think there's anything funny about my children losing their purity before they get married. I don't think there's anything funny about my children being drunken. There's nothing funny about that to me at all. And you know what, I don't care if it hair lifts everybody here and everybody goes away and says I'm gonna go find someplace that's more loving. You know what, I love you and I tell you the truth. And you know what, that's why I love my children and I want my children to grow up and be clean. And if you don't like that, then go to dirty unclean Baptist. Go to the fun center. Go to the big fun house with Pastor Cool and he's gonna be up there and he's gonna tell you a little 15 minute sermon to end and he's gonna tell you all about Jesus. But you know what, Jesus did a lot of preaching while he was on this earth. Did you know that? Yes, Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Yes, Jesus loves you. Yes, he rose again from the dead. But you know why they hung him on the cross? Because he did a lot of preaching against sin, that's why. If he was all sweetness and light, he never would have hung on that cross. They hung him on the cross because he looked at the Pharisees and said they were dogs and vipers and whited sepulchers and he called them adulterers and he called them unclean and filthy and wicked and he exposed them for what they were and that's why they hung him on the cross. That's why. Because he preached against sin and so any church that won't preach against sin, and by the way any pastor won't preach against sin, it's because he's living in sin. It's hard to preach against sin when you're living a wicked sinful life. It's hard to preach against movies when your whole DVD cabinet is filled with a bunch of wicked movies. But you see, Jesus Christ preached purity. He preached cleanliness. He preached having a clean thought life. He preached against all of the things of this world that defile and make him pure. And that's the kind of church that you need to be a part of. And you know what? If you don't think it's loving, I don't really care. The Bible says this is love that we walk after his commandments, not his suggestions. This is love that we walk after his commandments. You know what's loving is when your children are pure. And when I'm pure and you're pure, that's loving. And you know what? We love the lost. That's why we're going to go out and preach him the gospel and tell him how to be saved. But you know what? If any of them happen to, after they get saved, decide that they want to start coming to church and start to learn the truth, well then you know what? We're going to tell them the truth about sin and we're going to warn them. Because that's the only way they're ever going to clean up their life because this is the only place they're going to hear it. At this church or in other Bible preaching churches. We're not the only one. Other Bible preaching churches that will tell them the truth. But they're only going to hear it in God's house. And that's where it needs to be preached. Let's parents have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word there, God. Help us to strive toward purity. You know that we're all sinners. You know that there's none righteous, no, not one. But Father, please just help us to purify ourselves. Help us to have a standard of purity and godliness. Help us to think about when we get dressed in the morning being pure and clean. Help us to think about what comes on the computer screen or the TV screen or the radio. Help us to ask ourselves, is this pure? Is this clean? Is this making me more or less pure? God, help us to get this word purity back in our vocabulary, making a part of our lives. And in Jesus name we pray. Amen.