Human beings are composed of two very basic components, a mind and a body.  The ideal we all strive for and would like to possess is a sound mind in a sound body.  Many people realize this, and today there is a big movement afoot to become physically fit and healthy. There is a huge health industry which has grown up here in North America, and I know it is also in Australia.  I saw a lot of evidence of it down there, too.

Fitness regimens are touted.  There are a lot of different fitness programs, different health programs, weight training, aerobics and yoga and also good diets to keep our body healthy.  But there is also a trend toward self-help mentally and emotionally.  There are a lot of self-help books in the book stores.  There are books on how to de-stress, how to meditate, how to prioritize in life and how to gain self-control.  A lot of these are very wise writings and programs that would help us have a sound mind and a sound body.  Just because the advice comes from the world, that does not necessarily mean it is all wrong.  However, having said that, it is just as correct to say that the world is also playing with half a deck.  They do the best they can with what they have, but they do not have the mind of God working with them.  Therefore, we can say they are playing with half a deck.

THE SPIRIT IN MAN AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
Turn to I Corinthians chapter 2.  Read verses 6 to 11.  There is a differentiation made here between the mind and spirit of man and the mind and Spirit of God.  To be complete, as Mr. Herbert Armstrong used to say, man needs both components in his mind, the spirit of man and the Spirit of God.

Continue reading in I Corinthians 2:12.  “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.  These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.  But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”  That is why I say they are playing with half a deck without knowing.  They cannot know the spiritual things of God.

In concluding these thoughts in I Corinthians chapter 2, verse 15:  “But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.  For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?’  But we have the mind of Christ.”

We who are blessed with a bit of the Holy Spirit have some of the mind of Christ dwelling in our human mind.  Therefore, we have both components.  That gives us a huge advantage, because we can now understand the spiritual things of God.  We can apply human reason to the things and experiences we have in life and combine it with the reasoning of God.  We can come up with the correct answer.  For those in the world without this spiritual component, it is impossible to understand the things of God.

The world has the basic human reasoning ability, but the world also has something very special from God.  They have basic human rights.  Now these human rights would fall into a couple of categories.  The first, and the most important, is God’s gift of free will.  All mankind possesses the right of free will.  It is the right to choose.  Therefore, with the free will comes the right to choose from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Therefore, they have the right to pick good as well as evil.

When we have the Holy Spirit of God, we forsake half of that right.  We have free will, but we are to choose from the tree of life.  And when it comes to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we can choose good.  In other words, not everything the world does is evil.  There are good things that the world does.  There are good things that the world provides, and we can partake of those good things.  With the Holy Spirit within us, we can determine which are good and which are evil, thereby choosing the best of the best.  This is what explains the co-existence in the world of good and evil.

We hear and see this every day in the news.  We see tremendous acts of kindness.  We see acts of selflessness by people.  We see people willing to lay down their lives for their fellow man.  In the same news broadcast, we will see horrific acts of cruelty, man upon man.  There are many examples we could look to, but I am just going to mention a couple.

HARD HEARTS
For instance right here in the Reedsburg, Wisconsin area a week before the Feast of Tabernacles started, there was one of several shootings that took place in the United States.  In this particular one, it was a school shooting.  There were two other very terrible school shootings in the United States in the last couple of weeks.  A month or so ago there was a terrible one in Canada.  From Quebec, Canada to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Westin, Wisconsin to Missouri the other day, we have seen young people have their lives cut short.  The world asks, “Why?”  What is going on?

Some have chosen from the tree of evil, and they have the right at this time to choose either good or evil.  By the same token, the year 2006 has been called the greatest year in the history of philanthropy.  There has literally been a string of billionaires who put their fortunes together to battle man’s ills, specifically for children.  Much of the money is designated to help children around the world.  They include AIDS victims, poverty-stricken people, people suffering from malaria, young children dying around the world from terrible disease and malnutrition.  Quite a number of billionaires have now put their money where their mouth is and signed up to fight this.  As a matter of fact, the fund of money has grown so large already and is getting added to almost weekly that it supersedes most of the government’s ability on the earth to do philanthropic deeds!  So 2006 has been called the greatest year in the history of philanthropy.

At the same time, other people are gunning down children, starving children in Darfur and in other places and blowing children up in the Middle East, while the world has the freedom at this time to pick and choose.  That is the primary cause of all of these things. They can pick and choose without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, without the Spirit that helps us.  Because of this, we see that without that guidance, mankind has picked and chosen to the best of their ability and put in place laws that they feel will not harm the self-esteem of school children.  But this means they have put laws into place that prevent parents and teachers from using corporal punishment.  They have put laws in place that prevent teachers from even speaking harshly to their children.  In some nations, you can actually lose custody of your child for speaking harshly.

I remember attending the Feast of Tabernacles in Denmark.  There was a woman who had a young son.  I believe he was 8 years old at the time.  I saw him punching his mother and pulling her.  She was in pain from it.  It was actually hurting her.  I was not really aware of the laws of the land when I went up and grabbed the young boy’s arm and told him to stop doing that to his mother.  She quietly pulled me aside and said thank you for saying that.  I cannot do that, or I am in danger of losing my son.  She was from Norway.  These are the kinds of laws that mankind has put in place, thinking they are doing the right thing.

Our schools are told that they must treat all students equally, the gang member as well as the honor student.  It is a situation we have gotten ourselves into using mankind’s wisdom, choosing from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Another example is without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, laws have been put in place to protect freedom of expression.  These laws help us to gather here today in safety and in peace to keep the holy days.  But they also make it possible for violent television programs, explicit movies, violent and explicit computer games, and strange and weird ideologies that could be voiced on the airways and put in newspapers.  This inflames people against one another.  The laws have to protect both, because mankind does not know how to separate the good from the evil properly without stamping on the true rights of the individual.

Another example: without the guidance of the Holy Spirit laws have been put into place to protect our individuality.  Therefore, all lifestyles are treated equally.  All religions are tolerated, even religions that espouse violence.  It is a sad state of affairs, but the world knows no better.  They feel if they pick a religion, they will have stomped on the rights of some people.  Therefore, all religions are okay.  All lifestyles must be okay.  It is a conundrum they live with.  Like I say, it makes it possible for us to meet on the Sabbath in peace and safety and gather for the Feast of Tabernacles, but it also leads to a host of societal problems and ills.

The list is as long as your arm, but let’s look at a few of them.  It has led to the hardening of hearts throughout the western world, throughout the entire world actually.  It has cheapened the value of human life.  It has made disrespect for authority common.  It has caused moral confusion everywhere.  Broken families have resulted.  Corruption at all levels, both in the corporate world and in the governments of the world, is so common today.  You cannot seem to trust anybody.  It has also led to all kinds of unnecessary poverty.  You could go on and on to what has happened to our countries because of this confused sense of duty.  We are making everybody equal and all ideas equal so that we are fair.  We are paying a terrible price.

We in the last era of God’s Church live amidst this chaos, both benefiting by the freedoms we have but saddened by the realities of the situation we face.  We also feel it is almost hopeless to try to help the world, and indeed at this time it really is.  But we know that shortly it will come to pass that the world’s ills will be solved.  In the meantime, we have a job to do.  We live in the midst of this chaos, and it often rubs off onto what should be a beacon of light and hope to the world.

LIGHTS TO THE WORLD
We are to be lights to the world, and lights to one another and our brethren around the world.  Let’s look at a few scriptures to back that up.  Read Matthew 5:13-16.  We are to be like a city on a hill, all lit up.  Sometimes you can see from the sky aerial photos of cities at night, and they are like glittering jewels.  If you have ever had the chance of traveling in the American West or the Canadian prairies or in the vast distances of Australia, you can often see a city for hours before you arrive there.  Why?  It is because of the lights.  We are to be like a city on a hill that cannot be hidden.

Read Matthew 5:43-48 please.  God sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.  The unjust, the poor people of the world, are doing the best they can with these crazy laws. We are to know better.  We are to love out of a pure heart and to love even our enemies. We are to especially love the brethren.

Turn to John chapter 15 please.  Read verses 9-17.  Here at the Feast of Tabernacles we have the chance to all be together, with the hand of Satan stayed and the abundance of the surrounding land before us.  We have the abundance of our second tithe with us.  Because of that and the fellowship we can enjoy, we really do have an abundance of love at the Feast of Tabernacles.  We want to take some of that, of course, with us when we go back home.

If you would, go back to John chapter 13.  Read verses 31-35.  How does that city on a hill shine brightly for all to see?  It shines by our love for one another and by our love for our fellow man.  We have out-going concern for this suffering world.  That is how we are known, brethren.

Jerusalem (both physical and spiritual) means the city of peace.  Zion in the Old Testament means Jerusalem, a permanent capital, a hill of Jerusalem, a mountain of Jerusalem, a conspicuous monumental guiding pillar, to glitter from afar especially as a temple.  Brethren, with all of our studies of the Church becoming the temple of God, we should be able to picture a spiritual temple on a spiritual hill making a spiritual city shine for all the world.

In the New Testament, Zion becomes Sion with an “S”.  It means a hill of Jerusalem, the Church, militant and triumphant.  We are the Church.  We are to shine militant and triumphant as a pillar, a guiding light to the entire world.  We should be so obvious because of our love for one another and our love for our fellow man.  What could possibly drop a basket over that light?  That is what Christ said.  We should not have a bushel basket dropped over that light, obscuring and putting out that light for the world. We are going to look at that subject today, and find out how our light can be diminished and how the light can be hidden from the world.

We want to first turn to I Corinthians chapter 3.  We use that often to discuss the temple of God, so we are just going to read the last verses of I Corinthians chapter 3.  We know we are the temple of God, the field of God, and we are to build holy righteous character.  But here we are told in verse 16:  “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?  If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him.  For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.”

Earlier in the Feast we heard a very fine sermon about the temple of God and the understanding that the Church had about the temple way back in 1985.  We saw how they dropped the ball right after Mr. Herbert Armstrong’s death.  The knowledge of this spiritual temple, this spiritual city on a hill, seemed to vanish.  God is once again trying to teach us what it is to be part of His temple and what it is to be a part of this city on a hill that is to shine forth as a guiding light to the world.

THE DEFILED TEMPLE
What does it mean, brethren, to defile that temple?  “Defile” comes from the Greek word phtheiro which means to waste, to wither, to shrivel or spoil by a process which leads to ruin.  So you can see in the case of a building, it would be a building that is let go, to fall apart, to disintegrate, to rot.  In the case of a field, you can see a fine farm field that has allowed to become a wasteland, where the crops wither in the field.  They shrivel in the sun.  They are spoiled, and they are leading to the ruin of the field.  This is what we can picture, and that is what it means to defile the temple.

We can go and point fingers and say that the Church, the overall huge building that God is building, has fallen apart into many, many pieces.  That is true, but we do not want to dwell on that.  We want to look at our own selves.  For each of us is also a temple for God, because the temple is where Jesus Christ dwelt.  He dwelt in Solomon’s temple in the Old Testament, and He dwells in each of us by the Holy Spirit we were talking about. The mind of Christ makes our mind a temple, a miniature temple, and one that we must take care of.  How can that temple get defiled?

How can our own individual temple for Jesus Christ get defiled?  It can be done in a number of ways.  It can be done the same way the world makes a mess of their situation, and that is by choosing from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  It is done by making wrong choices.  By using our free will and making a wrong choice we start to shrivel the garden of God.  This is the garden that we are (the temple that we are).  Our crops and our fruit begin to dry up.  If we continue to make the wrong choices, they shrivel underneath a hot sun, as Jesus Christ tries to show us where we are making mistakes.  If we refuse to repent, the garden can be totally destroyed and the building a complete ruin.  It is, therefore, important for all of us in the Church and all of our families who are set apart and sanctified by God to make right choices.  If we do not, the city on a hill begins to blink out.  This big city that Mr. Armstrong left to us in 1986 has had so many lights go out, it is pretty dark out there.  In some cases, in the city we come from we may be the only light or lights that there are left.  I am speaking in spiritual terms.

Turn, if you would, to Matthew chapter 6.  Verse 22:  “‘The lamp of the body is the eye.  If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!’”

How great a darkness it is if our light goes out, brethren!  The world is counting on being able to find people who know how to love one another, who know how to forgive, who know how to bear the fruits of the Spirit, and have a healthy garden and a beautiful temple for Jesus Christ to dwell in.  They yearn for this.  They desire it.  If our light is out, they cannot find it.  The world then is, indeed, an even darker place, full of hopelessness and despair.  Some day they will understand what it is to be released into the liberty of the sons of God, and they will see what a bright place this world could have been.  But in the meantime, it is our responsibility to be as bright a light to everyone as we can find.  Anybody that we bump into should be positively affected by us, not negatively.  It is a tall order, brethren, but that is what it means to be a guiding light.

We need to make sure that the light that comes into our eyes is good light.  Turn, if you would, to Mark chapter 7.  Read verses 14 to 23.  If you were to go back to read the whole chapter, you would see Jesus Christ is talking in this discussion about not handling food and utensils properly, thereby possibly letting in contaminants into the body and defiling us.  He says, no, it is not what goes into your mouth that defiles you.  It is what comes out of you.  But you know, brethren, when you are talking about light, you are not talking about physical food.  You are talking about something that passes right into your heart and soul.  It is something that gets into your mind and can reside there and must be dealt with.  That is why Jesus Christ talks about the lamp of the body being the eye, and why we are told here that a fruit of the wrong spirit is an evil eye.  What is He talking about?  Is He talking about people who are just physically blind and who do not have a chance to make it into the kingdom of God?  No.  He is talking about spiritual light.

THE MIND’S EYE
The example I like to use to describe what light does to us is “the mind’s eye.”  You have all heard the expression “the mind’s eye.”  We all have a mind’s eye.  If I were to close my eyes right now and want to visualize things in my life, things that have happened years ago, I could literally smell cut grass from when I was a child.  I could smell the grass as my father cut the grass.  I can smell my mother’s apple pie baking.  I can smell my mother’s facial powder just by closing my eyes and meditating.  I can hear my father’s laughter, and he has been dead since 1969.  For those of you Down Under in Australia I can still feel that baking sun and what it is like to be parched and looking for water.  That happened to me down there.  I can still sense that just by closing my eyes.  I can smell coffee brewing. All of these are stored in my mind.  All these are stored away in my mind and can be brought forth whether I am blind or not.  I could lose my sight today and those would all work and maybe even work better.  It is a fact.  The mind’s eye is that powerful.

In the senses that take in all of these sights, sounds and memories that form in our minds, the two main senses we are using are sight and sound.  That is why Jesus Christ so often talks about having an eye to see and an ear to hear.  In the mind’s eye what is really working is imagination coupled with our experiences.  They are the things that we have taken in through our eyes and our ears and our nose and our sense of touch.  In our imagination and our mind’s eye we can, at the drop of a hat, recall the good, the bad and the ugly that we have seen and experienced throughout our entire life.  That is how marvelous the mind’s eye and our imagination are.

If we make the same choices that the world does, we are filling our memory banks with the bad and the ugly when we choose from the evil side of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The world gets one result when they do that.  We read about the shootings in the paper.  We read about the bombings in Iraq.  We read about the ethnic hatred in Africa, and we say they have made bad choices.  Look at the result!  But, brethren, have we not in the last several years in the body of Christ had shootings, had bizarre incidents, had a huge increase of anxiety, depression and hopelessness.  I know this for a fact from the people I have counseled.   Brethren, we are not immune from the same results.

If we put the same things in, we are going to get the same results the world does.  But we are supposed to have the mind of Christ dwelling in us to help us make the right choice.  We are supposed to feel like we have an obligation as Church members and as the called and the begotten with the Holy Spirit.  As the family of Church members who have been sanctified and set apart, we have an obligation to choose the tree of life and anything good that the tree of knowledge of good and evil can produce.

There is fine music in the world.  There are some fine books in the world.  There are some fine areas of study in the world. We should have the wisdom and the knowledge to understand which is good and which is bad.  With the passing of all the crazy laws that we talked about at the beginning of the sermon, the world has an excuse.  They don’t know.  They are trying to the best of their ability.  Some very hard-working decent people are trying to find ways out of the morasses we find in this earth.  They are dealing with the wars, the devastation, the famines and the disease.  We have some very kind, some very brilliant and now some very wealthy people working on these problems without the mind of Christ helping them.  We are to be their guiding pillar.  We are to be the world’s conscience.  We are to be the people that know better and which of the fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is okay to take. We should understand what the tree of life is.

We should be an example in our families and in our personal life of that very thing, the tree of life.  They should be able to tell by our love for one another, by our love for our neighbor, by our love for people we have never even met halfway around the world.  We should love the people in Darfur, the people in Bosnia, the people in Uganda.  They are no less of a human being than we are.  We have just had the good fortune to be born in a good country with lots of physical plenty.  We have the even greater fortune of being called into the knowledge of the truth.  That applies to the children.  You do not need to have the Holy Spirit to have the knowledge of the truth, if you come from a family with anyone in that family having received that Holy Spirit.  You are set apart.  You are special. You have the ability to know right from wrong.  You should know how to make the right choice.  We all have that wonderful blessing.  It is a gift from the mind of Jesus Christ.  It is a marvelous gift.

If we use that mind of Jesus Christ combined with our human mind to choose wrongly, why should we be immune to the bad results the world gets?  God will help us through our troubles a certain amount, but when we continue and continue, God has no choice but to remove His hedge from the Church.  That is why we see the opposite of the fruits of the Holy Spirit in the Church.  Where is the joy?  In Revelation 3 it says we are poor, blind, wretched, naked and miserable.  It is talking about our era.  Christ never lies.  We are miserable.

We have a greater degree of understanding here, but we are still coming out of our misery, brethren.  Where is all of this coming from that keeps us down and robs us of joy?  Where is this coming from that makes us anxious, worried, afraid and selfish?  Often, brethren, it is what we put in our minds.  It is what we take into our lives.  These negatives are going to bear negative results.  If we want positive results, we have to put in good things.  That means make right choices.

Let’s read a description of our era of the Church in Revelation chapter 3.  Read verses 14 to 18.  When our eye has taken in enough garbage and when enough of it has gone dark (remember what it said), how great is that darkness.  There is a very good reason Christ said the Laodicean era needs a healing of eyesight.  There is a very good reason He said our generation of the Church would be poor, blind, wretched, naked and miserable.

Christ, being God, also understands that He needed to vomit us out to teach us a lesson.  And, yes, our eyes need to heal, but He also fully understands that we are the first generation in Church history to face the onslaught of every tool that Satan has in his arsenal.  There was no television more than fifty or sixty years ago.  There was no Internet more than maybe fifteen years ago.  Movies were mostly benign until probably in the 60’s.  Most of the time movies had a good outcome where you could understand good from evil if you were watching it as a young person.  Good usually triumphed.  Now we have a plethora of bad images coming into our minds if we allow it all the time.  It is mostly from what we see and what we hear, which are the two most important aspects of our mind’s eye and our imagination.  It is not our sense of touch, brethren.  It is not our sense of smell.  It is sight and sound.

FAR-OFF VISION
Physical sight and sound affect our spiritual sight and hearing because we are physical human beings.  I have a definition of television and movies.  We will say far-off vision because television means far away vision, and the Internet would have to be included.  Here is my definition of far-off vision (of television):  Television, the movies and the Internet are the use of light to convey the thoughts and imaginings of one person into the minds of another.

I have a definition of audio:  Audio, recorded sound, would be the use of sound and vibration to also convey the thoughts and imaginings of one person’s mind into the mind of another.  The effect can be either good or evil.  A song or a TV program or Internet images can be inspiring. I remember somebody e-mailed me the best pictures of 2005 last year.  Most of them were so inspiring and uplifting.  There was a fireman carrying a baby out of a burning building.  They were such things as that.  They were so inspiring.  If somebody wanted to send an e-mail to somebody of the worst images of 2005, they would be horrific.  So we can have them inspire us and enlighten us or cause negative things in our imagination and darkness.  It is really determined by what we look at and what we listen to.

We have had some marvelous special music this year.  It was so inspiring I really enjoyed being the speaker after one of them, because I actually got pumped up listening to wonderful music.  You can easily think of what it would have been like if we had had a horrible rock band playing something awful and then getting up and doing a sermon.  It would have ruined the whole thing.  What is the difference?  The difference is in what we heard.  It is like that with what we see and what we listen to all of the time.  Everything that comes into our mind has to be dealt with.

I read statistics that the average TV-watching American child by time they reach 18 sees over 100,000 people get murdered!  Does that have an effect on that child or not?  That should not be the case for the child of a Church member.  We are going to get the same results if we have the same input, brethren.  It is a given.  It is not rocket science.  We need to make sure the use of sound and the use of sight is always good in our lives.

DEPRESSION IN THE CHURCH
God’s end-time Church has suffered violence.  We have been racked with anxiety and depression.  There are many people in God’s Church who think of suicide!  Can you imagine that?  How is that possible with the Holy Spirit?  We have been racked by fear and discouragement, and a lot of it we have allowed in our own lives.

Brethren, it is time to admit it.  We are known by our fruit, just as we are known as the Church of God if we have love for one another.  We will also be putting a bushel basket over God’s lights if we cause hurt in the Church and evil to be extant within it.  It is a given.  We need to be honest.  We do reap what we sow.  God is not going to be mocked. He said we reap what we sow.  He is ready, willing and able to forgive, but we have to be making effort to go in the right direction.

The body of Christ has been shriveling, has it not?  It has been wasting away on the vine, has it not?  This beautiful temple that we were left by the Philadelphian era has been shattered into a bunch of pieces, has it not?  If the evidence is there, we need to put the shoe on and wear it.  We saw the definition of defiling.  All of these things mean we have been defiling the greater Church and our individual temples.

PURSUING A SOUND MIND
Can we do anything about it?  Yes, we certainly can.  There is still time, but we need to get serious about our calling.  As we conclude this sermon, let’s look at a few scriptures that back up what we have been saying and scriptures that give us hope and direction on these things.

Let’s turn to Isaiah chapter 33 first.  Verse 14 is where we will start.  “The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness has seized the hypocrites:  [I’ll put my name in there.]  ‘Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?  Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?’”  That means to dwell with the Holy Spirit.

Verse 15:  “He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, he who despises the gain of oppressions, who gestures with his hands, refusing bribes, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed, and shuts his eyes from seeing evil:  He will dwell on high; his place of defense will be the fortress of rocks; bread will be given him, his water will be sure.”

That is how we enter the spiritual place of safety, and there is no physical place of safety. We want spiritual help in time of need.  We want that spiritual hedge that only God can provide.

Turn to II Timothy chapter 1:6.  “Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.  For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”  It is speaking of a sound mind in a sound body.  If Jesus Christ is in us, what have we to fear?  Even if we have to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters, what have we to fear?  We are to have a sound mind because love overcomes fear.  Perfect love casts out all fear.  But when we are putting horrific images in our minds and listening to horrific thoughts, it is no wonder if we are anxious, nervous and afraid.  We reap what we sow.

Turn to Psalm 19:7.  “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the statues of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are pure and righteous altogether.  More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.  Moreover by them Your servant is warned, and in keeping them there is great reward.”  When we make sure that our eyes are being enlightened, there is great reward.

Turn to Psalm 38:9.  “Lord, all my desire is before You; and my sighing is not hidden from You.  My heart pants, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes, it also has gone from me.”  This is a good prayer to pray when we are discouraged and down, and ask God to anoint our eyes.  Because if we are feeling that bad, the light in our eyes could be going out.  Our lamp may be getting diminished.  We need to pray that God would reverse it for us.

We are part of the hope of the world, brethren.  The world wants to be released into the liberty of the sons of God.  We need to show them that eternal life is worth having.  If we are miserable, downcast, naked, poor and wretched, who would want an eternal life of that?  They need to see us and say I want what you have, and I would like it eternally.  I know we are making strides, brethren, but we can do better.

Turn to Psalm 101:1.  “I will sing of mercy and justice; to You, O Lord, I will sing praises.  I will behave wisely in a perfect way.  Oh, when will You come to me?  I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.  I will set nothing wicked before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me.  A perverse heart shall depart from me; I will not know wickedness.”  It starts by putting nothing wicked before our eyes.  It is shutting our eyes to violence and bloodshed and not listening to horrible lyrics.  It is a choice.

Turn to Psalm 119:33.  “Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end.  Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law; indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart.  Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, for I delight in it.  Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to covetousness.  Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in Your way.  Establish Your word to Your servant, who is devoted to fearing You.  Turn away my reproach which I dread, for Your judgments are good.  Behold, I long for Your precepts; revive me in Your righteousness.”

God can revive us.  He can help us have the strength to turn away from worthless things, so we do not have to look at vanity, and we do not have to look at evil.  He will give us the strength, but He wants to see if we have the will.  Is that what we really want?  Because He says we will reap what we sow.  He has to be true to His word as well.  Are we working on it?

I want to conclude with Philippians chapter 4.  I would like to start in verse 8.  Philippians 4:8 will conclude the sermon.  “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things.  [Put them into our imagination.]  The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace with be with you.”

We need to do all we can, brethren, to clean up while we have time.  We need to take charge of our own imaginings and our own mind’s eyes.  We need to take charge of the lamp that fills our mind.  Resist the black light that seems to be so pervasive.  The light that we have should be a guiding light to the entire world, but before that, brethren, we have to be a guiding light to our brethren who have lost their way.  They do not know how to properly love one another.  They are filled with all manner of anxiety, fear, desperation and selfish pursuits such as the place of safety.  We need to help them realize that they can be part of this, but there is not much time left to make the right choices to use our free will in the pursuit of a sound mind.