(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

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. Thank you. All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Straw Hole Baptist Church. If you can grab your handles and open up the song for 145. Song 145, It Is Well With My Soul. It Is Well With My Soul. Song 145. Now, before we get into this song, I just want to address again how we go into singing this song. When we get to the chorus, it says, it is well, I will lead that, the men will follow with me, and then the women will go on the secondary, okay? Men on the primary, women on the secondary. All right, song 145. Now, we will sing the song, it is called, When Peace Like a River When Peace Like a River When Peace Like a River attended my way, attended my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, when sorrows like sea billows roll, but ever my love, now has taught me to say, but ever my love, now has taught me to say, when peace like a river When peace like a river when sorrows like sea billows roll, my love, my love, now has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. It is well it is well with my soul. it is well it is well it is well with my soul. with my soul. should love him, no trial should come. Let his blessed shore and control at Christ as we guard in my helpless estate, and has shed his own blood for my soul. It is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. I sing of the bliss of this glorious thought. I sing not in part, but the whole is nailed to the cross. And I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. On the last, and Lord, haste the day, when my faith shall be signed. The clouds we roll back as the scroll. The sun shall resound, and the Lord shall be sent. Even so, it is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. It is well with my soul. Amen. Brother Jerry, do you want to say something? Yes, sir. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this church, Lord. I want to thank you for the safe trips that you've given all of us out here. I pray that you'll be able to sing, to preach, and to sow any more. Thank you for salvation. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Let's turn to our next song, song 415. Psalm 415, victory through grace. Psalm 415. All right, let's sing this out together, church. Come what you have, face it, cover, find the King in his life. Bring the host of all the faithful into the midst of the fight. See the courage give and sing, that there will be no rain. Shout in the name of your leader, your resulting in sin. Like the strong is the battle, like the swift is the grace. Get to the truth and the faithful, victory is won, it's through the grace. Wondering now and still to conquer with this wonderful King. Who shall be our King, who shall be needed, all his glory they see. He is our Lord and Redeemer, Savior and God, our Divine. There the stars and forever, right as kingdom will shine. Out to the strong is the battle, out to the swift is the grace. Get to the truth and the faithful, victory is won, it's through the grace. On the last note, this is a newer song. Let's dig through this. Conquering now and still to conquer, Jesus our ruler of all. Who comes in their centers, all shall perish, not till their splendor shall fall. Yet shall the armies now lead us, faithful and true to the last. Why did thy vengeance, eternal, rest when their warfare is past? Out to the strong is the battle, out to the swift is the grace. Get to the truth and the faithful, victory is won, it's through the grace. Keep your hand up real high and one of our ushers will make sure that they get a bulletin out to you. And keep your hands raised high until the usher gets to you. If you open up to the first page, you will see our service times listed there Sunday morning at 1030. Sunday evening again at 5 p.m. Wednesday night at 7 is our Bible study. We're going to be going through Psalm 77 verse by verse this week. So try to make it out here for our Wednesday night service if you can. We've got the soul winning opportunities listed there as well as the salvations and the baptisms for the month of October as well as for the year. Let's go ahead. If there are any salvation numbers to report that have been unreported so far, please slip your hand up real quick. We'll get those counted up. Yes, sir. Yesterday. Amen. Anybody else? All right. Very good. Keep up the good work, of course, this afternoon and for those of you who are visiting, if you're not sure what soul winning is or maybe you've been to other churches, they call it visitation evangelism. But what the soul winning is where we go out and we try to lead people to Christ. So the whole point of of our Christian faith is to be able to lead other people to Jesus Christ. So we go out with our Bibles in hand and show people the truth of the gospel, what the word of the Lord says and try to convince them to to change their mind in whatever they're currently believing. Most people are currently believing in their own works to be able to change their mind and put their faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It's as simple as that. But it is the most important work that we as Christians can do. So this is the lifeblood of this church. And we encourage you to participate if you'd like to. You don't even have to really do anything other than show up. If you've never been before, you could come along with us as a silent partner and and, you know, observe how we go about speaking with people. So that is if you really want to know what our church is about, that's the best way to do so. So we've got a time this afternoon at one thirty and you're more than welcome to stick around and join us for that. All right. Down the bottom of the page, we have the offering totals received through the month of October. Prayer requests. There have been a few updates. So unfortunately, with Bobby Levy, that was a friend of Nye and he has passed away and he was struggling with that cancer. We praise on prayer list for a long time, but he did succumb to that illness and he has passed on. So pray for family and pray for Nye also. He was kind of a good friend to her when she first came to the country, especially and was and was able to help her out in areas that she had help with. So it was a good friendship and obviously it's a very sad loss. So just pray for all involved there. And then we'd got a good up to a couple of good updates. So brother Dominique has been released. He had his hearing on Thursday and they let him go, which is great. So I'm not certain because I haven't had a chance to speak to him directly. There has been one other person that's been communicating with me that's been communicating with him directly and relaying the information back to me. Hopefully, I think this is just it. Like he's just done with all of that business, but I'll find out for certain. But yeah, so that was very good news. Appreciate your prayers there. As soon as I get more information, I could update you if there's anything else going on with that. And then so Miss Courtney's father, I got an update. He had that mini stroke and he's been recovering. And that has been going well as far as the physical recovery is concerned. He was able to ride a motorcycle and go golfing, which is, I mean, that's tremendous to have that mobility right after having a mini stroke. So he didn't ever lose full control of any of his body, but to be able to do those types of things that require some level of dexterity and things is very good. So we're happy to hear and report that he physically is doing much better. But he still does need the gospel. So just please be in prayer that, you know, these situations, especially when people have serious health problems, can make them a little bit more conscious or thinking about their own mortality and where they're going to end up when they die. That is ultimately the most important thing. So we continue to pray for that and then looking to see, I don't think I have any other updates. Does anyone else have an update for people who are on the prayer list? Yes. OK. With the cancer? Is it the Children's Health Care of Atlanta? Show it, yeah. Yeah, that's a great hospital. So it's good that he's up here. Oh, she did. OK. So Helen on here that has been in hospice and has been struggling with her health has passed away also. So please pray for her family members and their mourning through the passing of Helen. All right. And then does anyone else? Thank you for the updates for the Austin. Anyone else have any updates on things on the prayer list? All right. Very good. We have our churches and pastors to pray for every week. Different friends of our church. This one to be put for a shield of faith Baptist Church Boise, Idaho. Pastor Joe Jones pray for the ministry, pray for a pastor and his family, and that God will continue to use them to do a great work for him. On the next page. So we are in the month of October. October challenge is a visitor challenge. And the visitor challenge is, of course, we challenge our regular church members to invite people to church. And we give prizes out for all of our visitors. But even if you don't have someone, if you're just visiting with us with nobody having invited you, that's great, too. And we're happy that you're here. So everyone, if it's your first time visitor and I get the ushers, one of my brother Chris, you mind coming up here real quick and help distribute some of these prizes we have for our first time visitors. And I'm not going to make you all come up to the front, but you go and grab those we got we got a little tray of chocolates for you. So if it's your first time visiting with us today to slip your hand up. And brother Chris knows if you're not your first time. We're just kidding. Go ahead and pass those out. And then if you're a church member invited someone, you get a different you're going to get a prize, too. We get a different prize. So we appreciate you all being here with us this morning very much. And for those visitors, too, we have different challenges every month. We focus on different things, just spiritually speaking. So we have prayer challenge, Bible reading challenge, soul winning challenge, you know, all these various things to be mindful about from month to month and make sure that we're not letting anything slide spiritually. So being able to get people to come to church and get plugged into church, especially those that don't have a church. If you're visiting from another church, you're great. We appreciate you being here. But church attendance we believe is very important. So this is why we do this challenge this month. So anyhow, thank you all for being with us this morning. No more exciting news here. This has been announced for a little while now, but we have a new church plant in Greenville, South Carolina, that we are in the works of planning and preparing for. And we've had a great response from people in the area that already are planning on attending the church plant there. So encourage others. If you know other people that might be interested in attending this church, please direct them to our website. And it's not listed right here in this, but on the back of the bulletin, there's the sign up sheet for our church camp there. That's highlighted in blue on the back page is the same link that the same Web page that will have the link for the registering for the church plant. So we're trying to get a good idea of who all is going to be attending or planning on attending, how frequently, how many people so that we can rent a space that will be sufficient for the people that are planning on being there right up front, at least. And since it's usually a multiyear lease, we need to be able to plan for expansion into the future. So really appreciate your help with that. And please just be in prayer for this church plant. There's a lot of work that goes into it. And just pray that God will help us to reach more people at the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the whole point of starting up these extra churches is to get people saved, baptized, discipled into doing the work of the Lord. It's a whole life cycle there. So all right. Continuing on, we've got the annual chili cook off October 31st at six o'clock. So please sign up for this. If you haven't already, we have a sign up sheet up here near the front. There's this little table right underneath this window right here in the auditorium where all of our sign up sheets are located. So if you plan attending this, let us know, especially if you plan on entering the chili cook off. Now, I warn you that the chili cook off has some very serious competition because there are some people in our church. And it's not even just the ladies, but there are some people in our church that make really excellent food. And the chili is great. So you're going to want to come to this event, especially if you like food, if you like chili. And there's a wide variety, generally speaking, of chili, too. So there's, you know, there's no set rules. People bring other meat. It's not always just beef. It's, you know, you could have other things in the chili. And so come hungry, come ready for eating a good meal. We'll have some other sides and other things to go along with that chili. But it's just going to be a lot of fun and just good Christian fellowship. And as it says in the announcements here that this is not a Halloween party. So it's not it's not like we're just celebrating Halloween and this is how we do it. It's an alternative for everyone else who's going out and celebrating Halloween. I'm actually be preaching about that this morning on why we don't celebrate Halloween and I don't believe Christians ought to celebrate Halloween. But this gives us an opportunity to just come together and kind of avoid what the world's doing out there and just have some really good fellowship. Eat some really good chili and and have an overall a good time. So that starts at six. And I understand it's sometimes it's hard in the middle of the week to get here a little bit earlier. But if you can't make it a little bit later, just come anyways. You know, whenever you could make it, I would love to have you here for that. And if you are entering a chili. So real briefly, the rules haven't changed. They're all the same. You can't just buy pre made prepackaged chili and enter that and call that your own. OK, you've got to you've got to have a level of of like actually making it yourself. Now, it doesn't mean you can't buy beans that are already soaked or something like that. Do do that however you like to do that. But, you know, or make it without beans. I don't care what whatever you think is a good chili is is what you want to do for that. And there will be a panel of judges. And the judges need to be people who hopefully don't. I mean, you definitely can't be entering one yourself if you're going to be a judge. But if you have a family member that plans on entering a chili and you want to be a judge, make sure that you have withdrawn yourself from their whole process. So you're not aware of, you know, we want impartial judges, right? So you don't want to know like, oh, yeah, I know that this is my wife's or my daughter's or my husband's or whatever. Just try to stay away from that whole thing. I know I'm always out of the kitchen anyways, so I never know what's going on. And sometimes my kids will will make chilies and stuff and just make sure you don't know what it is and keep yourself impartial. But it's a lot of fun. We'll have some games and fellowship and hopefully you can make it out for that. All right. Continuing on Bible memory passage on week eight, we're getting close to the end of this Hebrews 10 verses one through 22 passage. And hopefully you've been working on this. And if you can quote this entire passage word perfect without making any errors, you'll receive a prize for being able to do that. Down at the bottom of the page, we've got the upcoming birthdays and anniversaries listed there. And then on the back, of course, of the upcoming events. So next homeschool field trip is going to be November 3rd. Please sign up for that if you haven't already. If you plan on attending the Chattanooga Soul Wearing Marathon is going to be November 11th. Brother Jared, do you mind just speaking to me at some point between the services today? I just want to talk to you a little bit about the planning for that with the with the maps and stuff like that. So I'm hoping that you could maybe give me a hand a little bit with the planning on that. So I appreciate that, too. And then December 2nd is our gingerbread house activity. So we've got a bunch of gingerbread houses. Yes, sir. Thank you. Yes, yes, yes. So, yeah, thanks for pointing it out. We have signed up sheets for pretty much everything. But the Soul Wearing Marathon is also very important because our church is also providing people, if you're traveling long distances to go to these soul winning events, that we will put you up in a hotel room so that you could be there for the entire time. If it's kind of prohibitive to get there in the morning and be there all day for this event, because of the distance you have to travel, we will put you up in hotel Friday night and we will also do the same thing for the same reason. If it's prohibitive to be able to come to church on Sunday, we don't want you to go soul winning on Saturday and not come to church on Sunday. So we'll we'll also provide a hotel stay for you close to church Saturday night. So we just we want to get as many people participating as possible. It's a great event. It's always a lot of fun going out and spending all day preaching the gospel. But and we'll also just kind of take care of you and be hospital for that, too. So let us know about that. And I know I already have a lot of emails for people have asked, and I appreciate that. You can reiterate that on the sign up sheet. Just stay consistent. If you've already told me already, that's fine. Go ahead and still sign up on the sheet and let me know that you plan on coming. And if you're getting a hotel room and stuff like that. So just just so I'm consistent with everything, I would appreciate that. And then, like I said, the gingerbread house making activities could be December 2nd, Saturday. And let us know again for that, because the gingerbread houses sell out pretty quickly. We go to Costco and they get a real nice and they're like pre-made gingerbread houses. You just decorate them and we add extra decorations and things like that here. But it's a really good time. It's not just for kids. Of course, kids are welcome, but we need to know how many people are planning on making a gingerbread house. So we do it here where kids can make their own. OK, we just ask that if kids are really little, then they should share with somebody in general. But all of our activities here at this church are free of charge to you. The church supplies everything that's needed for our activities here. We just want everyone to be able to attend. But it does help us out tremendously to let us know that you are coming so that we can make sure we have enough supplies, enough food, enough things for for each one of these activities. So please just sign up for that and let us know you plan on attending. Then, of course, our church camp down there at the bottom of the page. It's a week long event. We have multiple preachers coming in from out of town that preach for us on every night, essentially, of that camp. It's a really good time to hang out, fellowship, enjoy nature and just have some good downtime and just a lot of fun. There's a lot of activities that we do during that camp, too. So it fills up fast. So make sure if you plan on attending that, that you sign up at that link that showed there on the bulletins. And that is about it for announcements. Oh, one last thing, too. I just request going back to prayer requests. Keep my family in your prayers. Appreciate it, especially in the short term here. My wife and children are driving to Arizona to help my mother in law who's still receiving chemotherapy and bringing. Many of you saw the dogs out front. So they're traveling across the country with dogs and kids and everything to go there. And they were my mother in law's dogs that she had bred and then had to start receiving treatment. So it's just been a little bit of an extra burden for us. But just pray for our for their safety as they travel across the country. We just really appreciate that. And with that, I'm going to turn the service back over to Brother Peter, who could lead us to the next song. All right, church, you can open up your hymnals. Song number two hundred and fifteen. Song two hundred and fifteen. Heaven came down and glory filled my soul. Song two hundred and fifteen. Right, church, let's sing this on the first. Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful day. A day I will never forget. After I wandered in darkness away. Jesus, my Savior, I bear. Oh, what a tender, compassionate friend. He met the need of my heart. Shall be spelling with joy and telling. He made all the darkness depart. Heaven came down and glory filled my soul. When at the cross the Savior made me whole. My sins were washed away. And my knife was turned to day. Heaven came down and glory filled my soul. For the spirit of life from above leads to God's family divine. Just and by full different boundaries done. Oh, what a standing is mine. And the transaction so greatly was made. When at the sinner I came. To know the offer of grace he did offer. He saved me, oh, praise his dear name. Heaven came down and glory filled my soul. When at the cross the Savior made me whole. My sins were washed away. And my knife was turned to day. Heaven came down and glory filled my soul. Now I hope that will surely endure. After the passing of time. I have a future in heaven for sure. There in those mountains so blind. And it's because of that wonderful day. When at the cross I believe. Praise his eternal and bless his eternal. From his precious hand I receive. Heaven came down and glory filled my soul. When at the cross the Savior made me whole. My sins were washed away. And my knife was turned to day. Heaven came down and glory filled my soul. Heaven came down and glory filled my soul. In church we'll be offering plates for being passed around if you can open up your Bibles to the book of Proverbs chapter 8. Okay, that's the book of Proverbs chapter 8. As we do customary here at Stromo Baptist Church, we'll read the entire chapter. So if I can record it, please do that. Amen, church. Once again, that is the book of Proverbs chapter 8. Proverbs chapter 8. The Bible reads, Doth not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice. She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming and at the doors. On to you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of man. O ye simple, understand wisdom, and ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart. Hear, for I will speak of excellent things, and the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth shall speak truth, and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness. There is nothing forward or perverse in them. They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge. Receive my instruction, and not silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it. I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride, and arrogance, and the evil way, and the forward mouth do I hate. Counsel is mine and sound wisdom. I am understanding. I have strength. By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me. Riches and honor are with me, yea, durable riches and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold, and my revenue than choice silver. I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment, that I may cause those that love me to inherit substance, and I will fill their treasures. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there was no depths, I was brought forth. When there was no fountains, abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth. While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there. When he set a compass upon the face of the depth. When he established the clouds above. When he strengthened the fountains of the deep. When he gave to the sea his decree, that the water should not pass his commandment. When he appointed the foundations of the earth. Then I was by him, as one brought up with him. And I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth. And my delights were with the sons of men. Now, therefore, hearken unto me, O ye children. For blessed are they that keep my ways, hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso find of me, find of life, and shall obtain favor of the Lord. But he that sinned against me wrongeth his own soul. All they that hate me love death. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for the book of Proverbs. We thank you for the whole King James Bible. And God, we thank you for just the knowledge and wisdom and understanding that you impart in us. And God, fill Pastor Burzins with your spirit. Let it allow for him to speak with boldness. Minimize distractions in the church. Allow for us to be edified and be able to take in what words you have for us to receive. And God, we thank you for all the souls that were saved in the past and also the souls that will be saved on forward. So God, we just praise you and thank you for all that you do. We say this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so my sermon this morning is titled Halloween Celebrating Death, Evil, and Fear. And as I mentioned in the announcements, I just want to preach on why I believe that Christians ought not to be celebrating the holiday, at least the American holiday that's coming up of Halloween. It's on October 31st. And before I even get into this, I just want to, you know, I guess outline a little bit of, you know, especially if this is new. Maybe it's the first time you're hearing this, is one, you know, and what we try to do here at this church is take the Bible very seriously, right? Take the Word of God very seriously, our walk with God, the things that we do, whatever we participate in, every aspect of our life we really ought to be scrutinizing and becoming in conformity with the Word of God. So even if it may be a long-held tradition, things that people have done year after year after year after year, we want to still be able to examine those things and determine if those are things that we should continue to do or if we should stop doing them. Does these things, do the things that we do bring honor and glory unto the Lord or do they not or are they just somewhere in between, right? We need to use discernment, use judgment to determine this stuff. And this is where we're starting off in the book of Proverbs because while there's many things that the Bible explicitly says that we should or shouldn't do, there's also many more things that the Bible is not explicitly telling you, you can or cannot do something. So like the word Halloween isn't found anywhere in Scripture. It's not something that you're going to be able to find, be like, thou shalt not participate in Halloween or something. I mean, if it were, it's really easy, right? So thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery. These are all very easy commands that you could just look at and be like, man, that is black and white. There is no question about that. The Bible clearly says that. But then there's other areas of our life that we need to just use a little bit more judgment, a little bit more discernment, and go to the Bible and seek the wisdom from the Word of God and make the necessary applications to our life so that we could make good judgment calls, right? So that we're not going to be displeasing to God because at the end of the day, I don't know about you, but I actually really do care if God is happy with what I'm doing or if I'm making God angry with what I'm doing. And unfortunately, there are many people through their own life that will make God angry, and they may not even know it. It could be doing it ignorantly. And just because it's ignorant, though, like I don't want to continue that way, right? I don't want to still be doing things. In your heart, you can feel fine. In your mind, you can say, well, I love God. But there are yet things that people can do that are still sinful, that are still wrong, and we should always be striving to learn to understand more about the Bible, understand more about God and who He is, what makes God happy, and what makes God angry. So we start here in the book of Proverbs, just to get a little bit of wisdom, because Proverbs has some real basic truths for life in general. There's less of the stories in Proverbs and a lot of just real simple basic truths that you can just find verse after verse after verse in this book. And just look real quickly there at verse 13. The Bible says the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. So according to the Bible, we should be hating evil. We shouldn't be loving it or promoting it or just say, well, it's just one day a week, or it's just kind of fun, or it's in jest or it's in fun. If you hate something, you really shouldn't be joining yourself in any way, shape, or form to it. Now, if you can't say that, if you could just look at me in the face and say, Pastor Burzins, there is nothing evil about Halloween. I don't know what Halloween you're talking about. I mean, seriously, let's just use real simple intuition here when you drive around and you see the images of like bloody butcher cleavers and people hanging from trees, the ghosts, the goblins, the witches, the devils, the whatever. Now, look, I know that Halloween also has many other people and characters and things and people like to dress up. We'll get into the dressing up part a little bit later in the sermon. But just on the surface, I mean, if you just were to think, someone just says, hey, what do you think about Halloween? What pops up in your head? Well, yeah, I mean, death, right? There's going to be darkness. It's going to be just evil things, scary things, fear, right? I mean, all of these things are very tightly associated with Halloween. And we're going to see what the Bible says about many of these different aspects. And then hopefully you can see like, yeah, you know what? This is something that really ought not to participate in and just change, right? If it's something you've been planning or something you've been doing, maybe you can see like, yeah, this isn't the best thing. But let's dig into the Word of God here. Look down there at the last two verses of Proverbs 8. Now, in the context, just so we're clear, this section of Proverbs 8 is a personification of just of wisdom. So it's speaking about wisdom as if wisdom is like a person, OK? And I'm looking for verse 12. So before we get down to the last two verses, it says, I, wisdom, dwell with prudence and find out knowledge of witty inventions. So I, wisdom, is like wisdom taking on a first person. That's talking about me. I'm wisdom. And then by me, kings reign, verse 15, verse 16, by me. So you see it's a personification of wisdom. And it stays this way in context. You can check it out later. All the way through to the last two verses where it says, For whoso findeth me, findeth life. Hey, if you find wisdom, you will also find life. The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And when you find that wisdom, you'll find life. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. And finding the truth, finding that wisdom will also help you to find life. Whoso findeth me, findeth life, and shall obtain favor of the Lord. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. And look at that last phrase. All they that hate me love death. So everyone that hates the wisdom, hates the instruction, hates to hear about these things of God, and doesn't want to have that true wisdom from the Word of God, the Bible says that they love death. Because these two are opposites from each other. Obviously life and death are extreme opposites. But the people that hate wisdom, they love death. And what we see is a glorification of death and kind of a love for death during this time of Halloween. I think it's pretty clear that it's not something we should be involved in. But let's keep looking at some other examples here. I'm going to read for you from Isaiah 28. You can turn there if you'd like. Isaiah chapter 28. We see examples of people here who I think we could probably say you've also had experiences with a similar type of a person that downplays the gravity or seriousness of hell and will often use it as to be something cool. I mean, you know what I'm talking about. There's people who are like, oh, man, yeah, I'm not going to heaven. I'm going to hell. And you can just kind of imagine maybe like a burly man with a lot of tattoos and a beer in his hand just going, I'm going to reign with Satan in hell. You have people that are really full of pride and kind of have this attitude as if it's no big deal. I mean, you've got hell's angels, right? Like people who just think it's really cool or really bad, man. And all variety of that where people just kind of think there's like this cool aspect of hell. And the Bible actually talks about some people that have a similar mindset. Nothing's new. There's no new thing under the sun. People are people, and people have been kind of the way they are forever. The human nature, our flesh, hasn't changed over the thousands of years that we've been in existence here, that the flesh still causes us to sin, and people still have a lot of the same stupid thoughts that we've always had. Look at verse number 14 of Isaiah 28. The Bible says, Wherefore hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. So he's specifically talking to the rulers that were scornful men. Verse 15 says, Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement. When the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves. So they think that they're fine with their agreement with hell, that they're somehow hiding, and they're able to tell lies, and no one's gonna catch them, and that they know they're doing evil, and that they're still going to not have to receive any judgment whatsoever, and they're actually embracing this, their own wickedness, and thinking that like, hey, we've already made a deal with the devil. Right? We're at agreement with hell. We made a covenant with death. Okay? We're good on that front. We don't need to worry about anything. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, verse 16, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. He that believeth shall not make haste. Judgment also will I lay to the line in righteousness to the plummet, and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place, and your covenant with death shall be disanoled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand. When the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. God's saying your agreement with hell is no good. It's void. It's null and void. It doesn't stand. It has no standing whatsoever. And, you know, I think we could see this as people. Now, this is really wicked people, right? And I'm not saying if you celebrate Halloween, you're a really wicked person like this person. What I'm saying here, the point I'm trying to draw here is that these people have no problem with hell, and they have no problem referencing death. Yeah, like none of this stuff. Hey, we're not going to be affected by this, and we're going to lie our way out of it, and no one's going to catch us, and God's saying, no, there's judgment coming. You know, the Bible says that fools make a mock at sin, and fools also make a mock at God's judgment and God's punishment. You know, there's a lot of people, the Bible tells us, warns us in the last days there's going to be scoffers and people who are mocking the return of Jesus Christ and, you know, just saying, well, where is the coming of the Lord? You know, all things basically are the same as they always have been, so where is He? When's He coming back? And they have this kind of pompous attitude, an arrogant attitude, of just thinking that the Bible's false and that there is going to be no judgment day, and that, of course, is another foolish concept, but, you know, this mindset of just being good with hell, with death, and that it's not a big deal is a foolish mindset to have. Turn, if you would, to 1 Corinthians chapter 10. I'm going to read for you from Hebrews chapter 2, because not only is hell obviously a big deal, and I don't think there's that much representation specifically of hell in Halloween. I mean, there may be some in some movies or something like that, but that's not the most obvious thing, but there's definitely strong references to devils or Satan himself or things like that. I mean, that is just kind of goes hand in hand with Halloween, and Satan or devils are real creatures, like they do exist. This isn't just a fairy tale. It's not even just like some parable. It's real, like angels exist. Devils exist. They are real creatures, real beings that the Bible tells us about and not something that we should be playing around with either and, you know, tossing out even, and in any way trying to make them somehow cool or anything like that, right? When you understand the gravity and seriousness, this is something that we should never want to put in a good light. But what, oh, there was a, I don't know if it's still on the air. It's been a while now. I heard about a show, I think it's called Lucifer. You know what I'm talking about? So I've, just full disclosure, I've never seen this show. I just saw that it was airing or something. I might have seen a little advertisement or something for it. And correct me if I'm wrong, if any of you have seen it, doesn't it kind of put Lucifer in like a not so bad light where it's sort of showing you how like Lucifer works. And see, here's what Luciferians do. There's literally people who worship Satan and they're Luciferians, and they'll tell you that, no, Satan was actually a good guy. See, he was convincing Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge, right? Knowledge is a good thing, and the Bible even says that knowledge is a good thing, so he was just trying to help them out when he had them sin against God and receive the wages of their sin. I mean, it's so backwards mindset, but this is what Satan wants you to think that he's actually a good guy, right? I mean, that's what he desires. So he loves it when people are able to put up images and say that, oh, whatever, the TV show. And again, I haven't seen the show, but I've seen the push from many people to try to make it not be such a big deal. I'm going to read for you from Hebrews 2, verses 14 and 15. The Bible reads, For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same. Talking about Jesus Christ. That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. So Satan has the power of death, and of course Jesus Christ came to destroy him that has the power of death and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Of course we know Jesus Christ came to deliver us from our sin, to deliver us from bondage, to deliver us from death and hell, and that's what Jesus came to do. Satan is that angel. He is that fallen angel that has the power of death and has brought people into bondage through fear of death and has made them subject to that bondage. That is not anything we should ever be putting in a positive light or a positive spin, even for one day. Or poking fun at, or just, oh, ha, ha, ha, it's not that big of a deal, whatever, I'm just going to put an image of Satan on my door, or whatever. Or scare myself by watching movies about Satan or something, you know, like, if you're a believer, you've been saved from that bondage and you've been saved from that fear. And that's not a good thing to be subjecting yourself to anyways. Why don't you just rejoice through the deliverance that Jesus Christ offers? Look at verse number 20, I had you turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse number 20, the Bible says, But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God. Now, again, full disclosure, I want people to understand what we're looking at as we jump around from passage to passage, you understand the full context here. This is talking about eating foods offered as a sacrifice to idols, okay? But I'm going to show you that I think it's fair to make an application to the celebration of Halloween for the same reasons that you wouldn't be partaking in eating food that's offered as sacrifice to devils. We also shouldn't be partaking in any of the celebratory aspects of devils themselves, okay? I think that's not a very far stretch, but just so you know, I'm not trying to say, oh, this is just talking about, no, it's not. It's talking about food offered as sacrifice to idols, but let's see what it says. I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice is sacrifice to devils and not to God. And look, those people, they don't think that they're offering to devils. Just so you know. They have their own gods, their own religions, just as people today don't think that they're serving false gods if they're lighting candles to Buddha or whoever, you know, anything to that effect, they think they're worshipping God. You know, the Hindus, they think they're worshipping God. The Muslims, they think they're worshipping God. All these different groups think they're worshipping God. But the Bible's clearing it up and saying, no, it's actually devils that they're offering sacrifices to. And as believers, you know the truth about this, right? Now, they don't know the truth about this, but as a believer, you're different. You know the truth, and that's why as a believer, you know, the world's gonna do what the world does. I'm not saying we can just cancel Halloween altogether, but for Christians, we should not be participating. We're supposed to be sanctified, separated, and called out and be different from the world. He says, and I would not, there in verse 20, the second half, I would not that you should have fellowship with devils. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. You cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of devils. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? And look at verse 23. All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. And this is another principle that I think we can apply as well to Halloween. Now, in the context here, why is He saying all things are lawful for me? Because if you literally just eat food that was sacrosanct, like, it's just food. And elsewhere in Scripture, we know that the idol's nothing, and we know that the food is just food. The food hasn't changed, it hasn't morphed into anything else. And if you're hungry, and you want to eat some food, you can eat food. Right? But, you refrain or abstain from eating the food offered to sacrifice to idols for the conscience of the other people who actually think it is a thing that's offered in sacrifice to that idol. So you don't want to give any credibility to that offering and to, you know, reinforce that person's mind. Oh, well, I know this guy is a believer, but he doesn't seem to have a big deal with this, so great, it must be okay then. When, in fact, it's not. Right? We should have no fellowship with the devils of food. So we just say, look, I can, you know, all things are lawful for me. I've already been saved from the curse of the law. But all things are not expedient. It's not the best thing to do. All things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. And when it comes to our spiritual walk with Christ, with the Lord, you know, we ought to be above reproach, and we ought to remember that, like, you know, if I know that, like, we're not worshiping devils, we're not doing this other stuff, but I'm just going to dress my kids up in something benign or whatever, and then we're just going to go, but then just, like, fully participate in the rest of what everyone else is doing, when you've got plenty of other people doing all these wicked things, it's kind of like, look, is that really expedient? Is that really edifying? For people to be seeing you engaged in the whole event itself. Right? In the whole holiday, as it's called. It's an unholy day. You know, holiday is short for holy day. It's not a holy day. It's an unholy day. Turn to Ephesians 5. So we're kind of looking at this from a few different angles. People know you're a Christian, you ought to hold yourself to a higher standard. The Bible holds you to a higher standard. Under whom much is given shall much also be required, the Bible says, and the more knowledge you have, the more understanding you have, God's going to expect more out of you. And as someone who's already had your sins forgiven and purged, and Jesus Christ had to shed blood and die on the cross to pay for your sins, we ought to treat that with reverence and respect also and care enough to say, man, this is, that sin is not a good thing in any way, shape, or form. I mean, look at what Jesus had to go through. And thank God, he did go through for that and he loved us enough to do that. But why would we want to seeing what the result is of that sin and knowing what the result is, seeing it through faith, understanding what Christ went through, you know, we don't want anyone else to have to be brought into that bondage or to make people think that that's somehow not a big deal when, you know, a lot of this stuff on the surface, some of it might not seem like a big deal, but at the end of the day, you want to get yoked up together with all of these things and put off the representation that, yeah, it's really not a big deal when people are going out and getting themselves involved in all this other nonsense. Look at Ephesians chapter 5 verse number 6. Because I would say this at Halloween is also a holiday of darkness and not light. I mean, that's why you have all the black stuff and the spiders and the, you know, just things in the dark. The Bible says, Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them. For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. We shouldn't be walking like we're in the darkness still. We shouldn't be exalting the darkness, but rather exalting the light. We're supposed to walk as children of light. Verse 9 For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Is Halloween about goodness and righteousness and truth? I mean, honestly, no. Verse 10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord, which is what we should always be doing. Prove, prove all things and prove what is acceptable unto the Lord and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. Show that they're wrong, that we shouldn't have this fellowship with darkness. We're supposed to be children of light and exposing the darkness for what it is and having no fellowship with the darkness. Verse 12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret, but all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light. For whatsoever doth make manifest is light. As believers, we ought to be celebrating the victory over death. Instead of celebrating death and getting involved in this darkness and the death, hey, there's many places, and I'll just let you blow through some of these for sake of time. Turn, if you would, to 2 Timothy chapter 1. Bible says in Psalm 1 16 verses 3 and 4 The sorrows of death compass me, and the pains of hell get hold upon me. I found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the Lord. O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. And of course that salvation comes from the sorrows of death and the pains of hell. Those things are not things to be, you know, commemorized as good things. John 5 24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is past from death unto life. And this is one of my favorite soul-winning verses. This is actually my favorite verse in the whole Bible, because it's so simple showing that, hey, if you believe on him, you have everlasting life. Present tense, you have it right now. Amen. You don't have to wait until your body dies to get it. You have it right now. In the future, you shall not come into condemnation, but you know what? Why? Because you've passed already. It's already done. It's a done deal. You've passed from death unto life, and if you're born again, look, you've passed from death unto life. Leave that death behind. Don't be celebrating that death and dying in darkness. Be promoting and exalting life. That's what we should be doing and getting excited about and preparing for. All this preparation of all the darkness and all the wicked things, dark things, we should never be spending our time doing that. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 54, the Bible says, So when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? That's the victory over death and hell and our full ultimate salvation, even of our bodies when the Lord comes back. And this is the mindset that we ought to have as believers. Now this fascination with fear that many people have, and it seems to be emphasized in Halloween with the haunted houses and the scary movies and things like that, is also not something that we should be participating in as believers. It's not an area that you ought to be trying to make yourself fearful. Fear, unless you're fearing the Lord, is actually sinful. We shouldn't be afraid of everything. We're commanded not to fear. We're supposed to fear not what man can do unto you. We're not supposed to fear the things even that Satan or the devils can do on us. We're not supposed to be afraid because we're supposed to have our full confidence and trust in the Lord, in Jesus Christ. We have our full confidence that we have no reason to fear. But the only fear we should have is the fear of the Lord, so that when we fail, we're chastised of the Lord. Obviously it's something that we should be fearful of, but from anyone or anything else, we ought to have no fear. Now look, none of us are perfect. I'm not saying that, like, I just walk and every single day of my life I never have any fear. I'm not making that claim. Okay, but what I'm not going to do is intentionally try to put myself into fear and, you know, love the adrenaline rush or whatever that comes from being scared and being put into fear. It's not an exercise that I believe we ought to be doing. The Bible says in Revelation 21 8, and many of you that go out soul winning use this verse, I use this verse a lot, to show people the, you know, how really any sin is worthy of a punishment of hell. Because not everyone believes that or understands that. Revelation 21 8 is a great verse that lists off many different things so that people can understand, look, it's not just murderers and rapists that deserve to go to hell, it's literally anyone who commits any sin that earns that punishment of hell. And that's often why we go to Revelation 21 8, but the very first words there as it lists off these various things of people that will have their part in the lake of fire, it says, but the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and whore miners and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death. But it starts off saying, but the fearful, the fearful have their place in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. Now obviously we're not those things if you've already accepted Christ and you've been washed of all those sins, God doesn't view you as fearful, as abominable, as a sorcerer, as a liar, as any of these things because you have been washed, you've been sanctified, like 1 Corinthians 6 says, you've been justified. So Christ has made you clean, Christ has made that to be washed away from your account so that God doesn't see those things about you. But anyone who's not saved, of course, all of these things, you could have any one of these things on this list and you are deserving of that lake of fire. And fearful is on that list, showing us that, hey, being fearful like that is a sin. And I had you turn to 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse number 7, the Bible says this, for God hath not given us the spirit of fear. So that's not from God. When you get fearful, that's not of God. What spirit has He given us? But of power and of love and of a sound mind. That's what God gives you. God gives you power, God gives you love, and God gives you a sound mind, a clear mind, a rational mind. Those things come from God. Those are all good things that ought to be exalted, not the fear. God hasn't given us the spirit of fear. Verse 8, be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord nor of me as prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God, who hath saved us and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. Jesus abolished death. Let's not glory in death. Turning to Deuteronomy chapter 18. And I frequently will preach kind of once a year on Halloween, not necessarily every single year, but as our church grows, I just want to make sure people understand why we take this stand. Because it's also important, just as a side note in general, and look, you know, families, parents with kids, it's important to understand why we believe what we believe. You should always know why. Why is it that we believe what we believe? It's not enough for kids just to grow up with the rules, but then they're never instructed, well, why is that rule even in place? Oh, yeah, we don't celebrate Halloween. Yeah, but why don't we celebrate Halloween? Understand these things because, you know, there's other people who, like Jehovah's Witnesses, that, well, they don't celebrate, like, anything. But it's like, well, why, though? And then, you know, we don't want to get lumped in with, oh, yeah, you're just like Jehovah's Witnesses. No, we're not, actually. We're nothing like the Jehovah's Witnesses. Now, they happen to get that one right about not celebrating Halloween, but they don't even celebrate birthdays and stuff, and that's just weird, right? Like, it's not like we're irrational or unreasonable with this stuff. We need to reason through the Scriptures, but it's kind of like if you see, you know, it seems like it should be so obvious to me, and I think it is, but some people don't like just accepting what's obvious oftentimes because, for whatever reason, you like it. Look, I grew up celebrating Halloween as a kid every year. I'd go out, get dressed up, go trick-or-treating, and all of that. So, like, I understand what it's about in general, and I know what we did. All I'm saying is that a believer and a Christian shouldn't have participation in that because of all the overarching theme of Halloween itself, without even having to go back to the origins and Sam Hain and all this other stuff, right? Because, obviously, things can change over time, and, you know, some people tell us, well, you shouldn't be celebrating Christmas, and you shouldn't be celebrating Easter, and all this other stuff, but it's like, look, we shouldn't be celebrating Santa Claus, but is there anything wrong with celebrating the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ? Like, I just say, is there really anything wrong with picking a day out of the year and saying, hey, we are gonna, even if it was some, you know, some other people celebrated something else on that day, so what? I mean, find a day where you can't find someone who celebrated something wicked on that day. I mean, good luck. There has been a lot of civilizations, a lot of cultures all throughout history have done different things. So, if we're literally celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, I don't see how there's a problem with that, okay? Same thing with celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Again, it's not about the bunnies and the eggs and all that stuff, it's about Christ. So, those are not things that we should just, like, oh man, I can't worship, or I can't participate. Look, it doesn't have, Christmas isn't just decorating a bunch of skulls. Okay, Christmas isn't like, you don't just see people hanging up ghouls and goblins on Christmas. It makes sense, right? You see where you can kind of draw the line and use rationality to look at the scripture and be like, look, if the Bible's saying over and over and over again, all these various things that literally embody Halloween as a whole, maybe we should have nothing to do with it. Proverbs 23, 4, I love this, not Proverbs, Psalms. Proverbs 23, right, famous passage. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. There's just one more verse just kind of giving more insight into fearfulness being a sin, and hey, look, we have no reason to fear. Even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'm not going to fear any evil, right? I'm not going to be afraid of that. And we shouldn't be afraid, and we shouldn't make ourselves be afraid of the evil either. Deuteronomy 18, so what else goes on in Halloween? There's, you know, trick or treating, and I preach this in the past before, which again, it's kind of, I consider that a minor thing, like there's so many things that they may seem pretty little in the grand scheme of things, but we ought to still take a look at it and think about it, I mean, and you know, things have changed, cultures have changed, but trick or treat, like, you've got to think, why do people even say that? Well, trick or treat, it literally, it's saying, what do you choose? Do you want to give me a treat, or do I give you a trick? Right, am I going to do something to you for not giving me what I want? Now, I know, in our culture today, kids aren't literally like extorting people, but that's where it comes from, and it is what it means, right? Just because you're not, just because you're not putting any force behind that statement, right, as a kid, you're still, you're still being taught, hey, you give me a treat, or I'm going to give you a treat, like that is, that has an effect overall. It may be subconscious, it may be subtle, but it's something that, look, if we love the truth, and we love righteousness, we should avoid that stuff, which, by the way, is also why I am completely against, and I preach against the Santa Claus stuff, and at Christmas time, I think this is, I think this is even worse than the trick or treat, is, well, if you're not good, then you don't get any gifts. Because if we're going to celebrate anything about Christmas, it should be that Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners, and that salvation is a free gift. Right, so when we celebrate a holiday, and you give gifts to people because you love them, it is, it should never imply your work has to be good enough for me to give you a gift. That is not what we want to teach our children. Because if we're going to teach them that at the time of the year that we're celebrating a Lord and Savior Jesus Christ's birth, if that's tied in together, but then we're also teaching them, well, if I'm not good enough, then I'm not going to get the gift. You are literally teaching them a works-based salvation subtly. You're teaching them that works have to be involved in order for you to receive a free gift, but no, my friend, salvation is completely free. It has nothing to do with your good works whatsoever. You don't have to be good enough for God to give you the gift of salvation, and we should never be trying to teach our kids that way at all. Look, parents, I understand to have that little carrot to dangle out in front of your kids to make them to try to do good things so that your life can be a little bit easier, but don't do that. Definitely not at Christmas, not with the thing of a gift, okay? How about you just use a punishment instead? If you want your children to obey you, just say, look, obey or else. There are consequences for your actions. And that goes year round, not just around Christmas, but at Christmas I'm going to tell you that I love you, because I do love you, and at Christmas we're going to celebrate what Jesus did for us, and how are we going to celebrate that? Well, oftentimes it's through giving gifts to each other. We love what Christ did, we love our family, so we're going to give the gift. And even if you weren't that good this year, I still love you, and I'm going to give you a free gift. It's still available to you. So you see how these things are somewhat similar, right? We don't want to go down that mindset and have that be an influence in our life, and there's so many things out there in this world that are like that. There's so many things, and we're inundated with this stuff all the time. But if we're treating things seriously as we should and always scrutinizing, look at our life. I'm not saying this to beat anybody down, but just to have a little bit more insight and knowledge and to think about it a little bit and just say, hey, and if you determine that, you know what, I think Pastor Bruce may be onto something here, I think this may be right, then praise the Lord, you'll change, do something different. The whole purpose of these sermons is to just open up your eyes a little bit and maybe think about things that you probably hadn't thought about. I never thought about why do we celebrate Halloween as a kid, because it was just done. It was just something from the time I was born that you just did. You just do it, why? Because everybody does it. Was that a good reason to do something? Just because everybody does it? That's what a lot of kids say about a lot of dumb things and a lot of sins. Well, everybody was drinking. Everybody was smoking. Everybody was, you know, yeah, kids are impressionable that way, but parents, let's not continue that while just everyone's doing it. And even church, when we go to church, well, just because everyone's doing it. No, that's not why we go to church. That's not why we do what's right. And explain why do we do these things. They have a good reason for it. So trick or treating, and then ghosts and spirits and things like that that are often, again, go hand in hand with this. Deuteronomy 18, look at verse number 9. The Bible says, When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the combinations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consultor with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. Now, I'm not going to go in depth on all the definitions of these things. If you don't know what they are, you can look them up later. But they all have to do with the spirits and the ghosts and the devils and this type of thing. This is what that's all about. And the Bible's saying, look, the people of the land, the Canaanites, they were doing all this stuff. This was normal for them, but I don't want you to learn their ways. Don't be like them. These things are wicked. They should not be among you talking to His people. Look, this is not for you. You shouldn't have these people among you. This isn't something that you should play around with or think it's not that big of a deal. They all did this, and I got angry, and that's why they're not in this land anymore. Verse 12 says, For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord, and because of these abominations, the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God. For these nations which thou shalt possess hearkened unto observers of times and unto diviners, but as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee so to do. Not suffered thee so to do means He hasn't allowed it. He's not allowing you to do it. He's saying, don't learn their ways. And we could do the same thing today. Don't learn the ways of the unbelievers when it comes to celebrating death, when it comes to celebrating Halloween. Just don't learn those ways. Don't participate in those ways. Those are not for us. It's not for the Children of Light. And the last place I'll return is Proverbs chapter 3. One other aspect, of course, I said I would get to this later, is dressing up, right? Dressing up as whatever. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong in general with people dressing up in costumes and playing around or whatever. I mean, kids have different costumes. They'll play in some from time to time and just have fun, you know, and just whatever. One of them had like a mouse costume or something like that where they just goof around, right? So, it's not that the reason why Halloween's wrong is because people dress up in costumes. That's not what I'm saying, okay? It's everything else. It's the more important things, the fear and the death and everything else. But there is problems with some of the things that people do dress up as anyways. I mean, you could say, well, what if my kid dresses up like a, I don't know, I mean, showing my age a little Power Ranger or something, you know, who cares? Captain America, whatever, right? Like, I'm not saying that that's just some horrible thing, but when you think about a lot of the things that people do dress up as, I mean, just even historically, I'm sure even to this day, there's a lot of, and it's getting worse and worse, especially among adults that celebrate Halloween, it gets really weird. And you get a lot of immodesty and dressing up as devils and everything else. Like, it gets pretty bad. And I think one of the worst things, and people will say it's okay even if it's just for a day, is when the people cross dress. And you got a woman that wants to dress up like a man character of something or some movie or whatever, or a man that wants to dress up like some type of a woman, when the Bible teaches very clearly that all that do, you know, when a woman shall not wear a man, neither shall a man wear a woman's garment, for all that do show our abomination unto the Lord thy God. It's abominable for men and women to cross dress. It's what the Bible says. And that, again, that ought to be something that's apparent, but in our crazy, weird, twisted world today, everything's just becoming acceptable and normal, or at least that's what they're trying to push it as. But all the more reason, we need to be not just so flippant about everything. Oh, what's a big deal? Oh, what's a big deal? Oh, what's a big deal? Oh, what's a big deal? Well, it is a big deal. When God says something is abominable, you better believe that's a big deal. And we ought to have a higher standard in view that says, look, no sin should just be trifled with or played with as it's not a big deal. All sin is a big deal. All of it is. So why would we want to in any way associate ourselves with something sinful? We should be striving to live a life that's pleasing to God in all that we do every day. We should be able to ask ourselves every single day, would God be pleased with me today? The things that I did. When I went to work, the conversations that I had, whatever I spent my time doing, is God pleased with what I did today? And I think that's, you know, an appropriate way as Believers, we ought to be thinking and saying, hey, today, the things that I did today, is God pleased with that? The way that I'm raising my children, is God pleased with that? The way that I'm teaching them, the way that I'm instructing them, is God pleased with that? Whatever I do on the job, is God pleased with that? The conversations I have, is God okay with that? And we know there's going to be plenty of times where we should be able to say, yeah, you know what? He's not. Because we're not perfect. But just because we're not perfect, it's not an excuse to just say, well, whatever. No, I mean, your heart needs to be right and just continually working to try to improve, to live separated, to live sold out, to live for the Lord. And to me, a real easy place to start is just like, you know what? October 31st is going to come and go, and I'm not going to have anything to do with that. In fact, I'm going to come to the chili cook-off, and we'll have a good time here, we'll praise God, and just enjoy some just wholesome fun, and enjoying each other's presence. The Bible says in Proverbs 3, verse number 5, Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes, fear the Lord, and depart from evil. Fear God, depart from evil. Let's not have anything to do with the evil. Let's not glorify the evil. Just stay away from the evil. You know, we live in this world, but we're not supposed to be of this world. We are supposed to be different. You know what? People say, oh, yeah, this person doesn't celebrate Halloween. Can you believe that? So what? So what? If someone wants to mock you and ridicule you because you don't want to go and worship Satan on a day, then whatever. They could mock you and ridicule you. If they've called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? And that's what Jesus said about himself, because people were saying that the works that he did were after Beelzebub. When he was casting out devils, he cast out devils in the name of Satan. And he's saying, look, if they're saying that stuff about me, you better believe they're going to say that stuff and more about you. And whatever. Right? Let them believe whatever they think. What matters more to you? Does it matter more what man thinks about you? Or does it matter more what God thinks about you? And that's all I encourage you to do is to take a healthy look at Scripture and say, is participating in this day that's coming up would God be pleased with me? Or is God not going to care? Now look, this is my last point. We don't have a rule in this church that says you cannot go and celebrate Halloween. We don't make those kinds of rules for you. That's weird. That's a little cultish, okay? You choose whatever you want to do with your time and your life. And if I haven't been convincing to you today and you think, I still don't think there's any problem with this, then go ahead and do whatever you're going to do. I'm not going to endorse it, but I'm also not going to look down on you if you come back to church next week and you come to hear more of the Word of God either. You choose to do what you're going to do. That is not some sin that's like going to get you kicked out of church. If you want to know what that is, read 1 Corinthians 5 because there still is a standard in church. And 1 Corinthians 5 outlines that, okay? You decide for yourself. Does it make sense or not? And at the end of the day, there's so many little things in the Bible, I think, people freak out over and want to make a big deal out of it, but is it really a big deal? Like, one day out of the year, you just change, like, you know what, I'm not going to do this anymore. Is it really that big of a deal? Like, the Bible talks about men with long hair and women, yeah, men aren't supposed to have long hair. Like, is it really that big of a deal just to get a haircut? Whatever, right? Like, these are things that you just will easily just check out and be like, oh, if this is going to make God angry, then I just won't do that. Like, no problem. Done. And even if you're uncertain, you know, just err on the side of caution. That's what I try to do, at least. I mean, again, I'm not perfect, but it's like, if I'm still kind of up in the air, I'm like, I don't really know if this is right, I don't know if I should be doing this, I don't know if God's going to be happy with this, then just don't do it. I mean, at the end of the day, what are you really sacrificing? A bag of candy? Go to the store after Halloween. You could get a really good deal on some candy if you want the candy. And then you don't have to participate in the rest of it, right? That's it. And if it really is that big of a deal to you, talk to me. Maybe I could get some candy for you, okay? If that's going to be the big deal breaker for you, or how about this? How about this? Hey, bring someone to church next week. And I'll give you this. And look, people, this is good stuff, okay? This is not being handed out at most doors on Halloween. This is way better than the double bubble, all right? It's way better than the, I don't even know what the, a tootsie roll, okay? Way better. All right, let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you so much for this church and for everyone here today, dear Lord, and I pray that you would please bless our church. Lord, help us to be able to look at your word and analyze our own life against what your word says. Lord, help us to be able to apply the truths from Scripture and to do so without clouded judgment, Lord, even if there's something that we may enjoy or like in this world, if it becomes evident to us through your word that it's not something that will be pleasing to you, Lord, help us just to be able to eliminate those things. Lord, open up our understanding from your word so we can make more applications day to day, that we can be confident that as we go about our daily lives that we're doing things that are pleasing in your sight, Lord. We do love you. Please help us as we endeavor to continue to strive against sin, and Lord, please help us this afternoon. We go out and try to preach your word and lead other people to Christ. Lord, we love you. To Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Alright, we're going to sing one more song before we're dismissed this morning. Brother Peter, please lead us. Alright church, you can open up your handles to song number 262. Song 262. The light of the world is Jesus. Song 262. Alright, let's sing this out in verse. The whole world is lost in the dark piece of sin. The light of the world is Jesus. Like sunshine and new day his glory shone in. The light of the world is Jesus. Unto the light is shining for thee. Sweetly the light has dawned upon thee. Once I was blind but now I can see. The light of the world is Jesus. The darkness and living Jesus abide. The light of the world is Jesus. We walk in the light when we follow our guide. The light of the world is Jesus. Unto the light is shining for thee. Sweetly the light has dawned upon thee. Once I was blind but now I can see. The light of the world is Jesus. He dwellers in darkness with sin kind in eyes. The light of the world is Jesus. Go watch at his bidding and life will arise. The light of the world is Jesus. Unto the light is shining for thee. Sweetly the light has dawned upon thee. Once I was blind but now I can see. The light of the world is Jesus. On the last copy of the sunlight in hand we were told. The light of the world is Jesus. The light of the light in the city of hope. The light of the world is Jesus. Unto the light is shining for thee. Sweetly the light has dawned upon me. Once I was blind but now I can see. The light of the world is Jesus. Nice to meet you.