In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. In preparation for my well chosen remarks this morning, I visited a dentist who welcomed me with open arms and his usual instruments of torture. So, I returned home minus a tooth with his recommendations that I must keep ice on it and have cold water and all that. So, I spent about three or four hours yesterday afternoon spinning the dial on the TV.
Now, and I mean it, I just went from one station to four stations, one to the other for about three or four hours while I was nursing my Duke with ICE. You see, we take all this on faith. Anyway, here I am spinning these dots, and the thought that came to me, is this the world in which you good people live? Because just think of what we read here this morning about serving, not seeking your own. All of these things which we hold up as the commonplace.
We're not talking about holo I mean, being heroic. We're talking about being commonplace saints. Because remember, we're all called to that. Don't run away from that word. You either make that or you're lost.
Now, I tell you, I was overwhelmed with this contract. I've been up on this pulpit and talking about the world as being that is not a pluralistic society in which we live. Well, I never realized how how truly I was speaking. Those three or four hours yesterday were absolutely overwhelming. I don't know what I was seeing.
You know, it was just a shift all around. But it was almost the same no matter what channel you went on. These great dramas that people are experiencing in the real world. I guess it's the real world. I don't know.
I'm only saying this, if what I saw there is any representation of the real world, then the struggle of the Christian to be otherworldly is much worse than I ever suspected. Really, I can't emphasize it too much. But practically every ideal that is set by Jesus Christ is negated and contradicted. And not only that, but the contraries are held up as the ideals. How do you like that?
I tell you, it's a wicked world. And I've been thinking over preparing my remarks for this coming Sunday. And then again, the material I was gathering in focuses on the same thing. And, you know, I have time and again said, don't don't downgrade the pagans and say we're living in a pagan world. We're not living in a pagan world.
Remember, pagans, all the pagans that I know of, they had many of them a supreme faith in an almighty being. And any of you who have visited Rome or Greece, you must realize if you haven't, the tour guides will tell you. Every place you turn there's a temple or a monument or something to a god or a goddess. Those people were overwhelmed with the gods and their goddesses. We're living in a world that rejects all of that.
Rejects it. And you can't It certainly is not an idealistic world at all in the sense of which there are ideals and principles. For example, what do you hear so often? I've heard it two or three times in four hours. In a situation where there was a question of what to do, right or wrong.
What will we What will you be able to live with? Will you be comfortable with this? Does this make you happy? Oh, that's the beautiful one. I have to do this because that's the way I feel about it.
This is where I got this for three or four hours from all these different programs. I guess they were different, but boy they certainly had a lowest common denominator. Now, I've said many Let's Of course, that's exaggerated. That isn't it, but that is very much part of the real world. You know there was, I read some time ago, severe criticisms in England about the importation of, I think it was Dynasty or Dallas or one of those things, because they gave such a very false impression of American life.
And somebody in England, course, the one who was the man who was involved in producing these things for money, he said, oh, he said, people are not misled. They know this is just a fiction. Well, when you If I was thinking, again, I read some figures of how much time children spend before TVs. Now, this was all that was on for about three or four hours. Is this part of the menu that is being fed to our children who are spending about twice as much time before TVs as they are in the classroom?
And if so, what is the impact? I ask you. Where principles are thrown out, where the only principle is self aggrandizement, self fulfillment, self comfortable, self happiness, self self self. Marriages break up, extra marital relationship, you name it. Adultery, of course, Of course, the word is never used.
It's seeking your own fulfillment. Beautiful words. This is the world. This is the world we're living in. And it's much worse than the world that Paul faced.
Much worse. So, I say, all he had to face were pagans and Jews. But they all had a concept of a supreme being. They all had a concept that we had some kind of a duty to that Supreme Being. And many of them had a tremendous persuasion that your life had to be lived on some pretty lofty moral principles.
This was the pagan world of the West. I'm not talking about the Far East. Well, that's not our world folks. It is much worse, much worse. For one thing, that world I'm speaking of thinks so little of Christ and what Christ stood for that they don't even bother to reject it.
It's not even in their thinking. Now, once in a while you'll hear somebody say, the only thing we can do now is pray. I wonder what they mean. And so, the words of our Lord, the good news is to give us courage. Not to beat us down, but to give us courage.
To realize that Christ meant when he said, when the truth will make you free. But that's the truth that follows from being his disciple. And that's the truth that will make you free. That is the truth that will give you true happiness. That is the truth that will give you self composure and orientation in this world.
That's the truth with which, if you identify, you will know yourself. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.