You see this story this past week? Citigroup accidentally credited $81 trillion to a customer's account instead of $280 later, reversing the transaction, the error detected within 90 minutes, was flagged as a near miss and reported to regulators. Despite improvements, Citi continues to face operational challenges with 10 near misses exceeding $1 billion last year. I'm not sharing that with you to get on Citigroup. Don't you wish that happened to you? $81 trillion credited to somebody's account. Now, that would have been impressive, and somebody caught it, and I'm confident you would, if you work for Citigroup and saw that on the ledger, somebody somewhere is probably going to be in big trouble. Would you say that somebody at Citigroup needs to be more careful? Let me ask you this question. Would you agree with me? It's really-- I'll make it statement form. Would you agree with me that, as we live our lives as Christians, that we need to be more careful, instead of less careful? Would you agree with that? I think, without exception, every single one of us would say, Yeah, I need to be more careful. And I want to today talk to you about five areas. I'm going to get to that in just a minute.
I want to listen, I want you to listen, if you would, to just a couple of passages that say something about that very thing. First Timothy, four, beginning in verse 12, Paul would tell Timothy, "Let no one despise you're youth, but be an example to the believers in Word and conduct and love and spirit and faith and in purity. Till I come, give attention to reading the exhortation to doctrine, do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of hands of the eldership. Meditate on these things. Give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all. Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this, you will save both yourself and those who hear you." There's a whole lot in these passages that's very important, and there's a lot of very important things that I'm not about this morning. Not talking about that this morning. I just want to call your attention to the words that I've highlighted and the essence of what they're saying to Timothy. Gotta be careful, and especially verse 16, that I think every preacher needs to pay special attention to. Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. You've heard me say before about these passages, that I believe that these passages are, that this verse is stated like it is, because of the importance of each of the ideas. If I don't take heed to myself, I can promise you that whatever I stood in this pulpit and said to you would have-- would be taken less seriously if I didn't take heed to myself. That doesn't mean that everything I do is perfect. It doesn't mean that I don't make mistakes. What it means is, is that I have to be seriously aware of myself. Because if I stand before you and I tell you, this is what God said that you ought to do, and I don't do it, how much value is that for you? Now, it may be the truth, and I hope that it would be, but how much better is it for you and me when we look at this together, and you can look at me as an evangelist and say, Well, it appears as though Kenny's trying to do that.
There are a lot of men, maybe that's not an accurate description, that there are some who have stood in pulpits like this for years, and at some point they've made a grave mistake, or they've made multiple mistakes. And for many of them, they forfeited the right to stand before a group of people and talk to them about what God said. For some of them, they've overcome it, and they have eventually made their way back into the pulpit. And all I mean by that is I'm not stating whether they should or shouldn't, because we all make mistakes. I realize that. But what an older preacher said to a younger preacher, you better watch yourself. You better take heed. You better be careful. Some translations use those words, be careful, not just simply about what you preach, but be careful about how you live. And you need to keep doing it. You need to stay with it.
Little earlier in the same chapter, Paul would say this, "if you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed." That's a commendation you see, to an older preacher, from an older preacher to younger preacher, say, you know you've done this, Timothy. And then just a little bit further down in that letter that we just read, he says, You gotta keep doing that. You gotta continue in that. But it's not just to those who may preach the passage that Ron just read for us from Ephesians five, see, then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise Redeeming the time because the days are evil, Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. That's not just to preachers. That's to everybody. As a matter of fact, Paul says this what I want you to preach. You need to tell everybody that they need to walk circumspectly. I'm going to circle back to that word at the end of the lesson. But in your translations, it probably says, See, then that you walk carefully or accurately. It may say circumspectly, like it does in my New King James, but it says, If you'll walk carefully, you won't be a fool, you'll be wise. There are all sorts of signs about being careful. If you were around here five or three years ago in 2022 there were few Sundays where I hobbled up and sat down, if I recall, and stood leaned against this table right here because I let a lawn mower land on my foot. The problem that it was, it was running when it did that, and so I today stand before you feeling no other ill will from that, with a man who has nine and a half toes, but who very easily could have stood before you with only one foot because I was not careful. There are others in this audience who have lost digits because they weren't careful. One of the greatest and costless mistakes we all make is not paying careful attention, and I cannot think of a way in which it can affect us more than in a spiritual sense. And I want to talk to you about that for just a few minutes this morning.
How many times? How many times has one mistake led to a life of disaster because somebody wasn't careful. How many times? One mistake can lead to total disaster, and I think that's why so many admonitions are in Scripture that help us understand you need to be careful. This is, this is a lesson that if I gave you, if I gave each of you, I said, Okay, I'm just going to sit. I want you to sit for five minutes, and I want you to get out a piece of paper, pen. I want you to come up with your own list of five things in which a Christian needs to be careful. Every one of you could give me that list, every one of you. That's how easy this lesson was for me to put together. And I mean that, but that's okay, because I think what I'm about to tell you is really important, but you could put this together, and I'm going to share it with you this morning, five areas in which we ought to all be careful. And I can guarantee you, I believe, without exception, that every one of these will resonate with you, every one of these. So I'm going to share them with you this morning. Just thinking about life and thinking about how easy these things are to see, but how careless we sometimes are. Let's think about this this morning.
First of all, we need to be careful about information. Here is a profound statement. This is something that will just-- you just ought to remember this right. Information informs. Aren't you glad you came? Information informs. And we all know the speed at which we gather information. The term real time means real time. The term speed is almost hard to define anymore in terms of the quickness and the speed with which information comes to us. And if we aren't careful, because we can, gather it so quickly and we begin to as we gather, we begin to assimilate that, that I'll get to in just a minute, but because it comes so quickly, we really need to be careful about what it is that we take in. This passage, in Luke 18, as Jesus is telling a parable, He begins by saying, "therefore, take heed how you hear." I think he implicitly says, you take it in. You're hearing it. You're hearing what the word say. So implicitly, he's saying that, but explicitly, he says, Be careful how you hear that. It's not just what you hear, it's how you hear that as well. And I think what he's saying is you need to just not just hear it, but you need to understand how you're hearing that. It's not the what of it, it's the what and the why and the how, all that is important. And Jesus said that it's how you take in this information. And we all know this, that godly information can, not always, but godly information, typically, if it's processed accurately and applied accurately, it makes godly lives, it causes a person to live a godly life. And so may I say this? This is just one of those Kenny just feels like he wants to say this. Okay? I think all of us need to limit. All of us need to limit the stuff we read. I try to think of a more, a better word than stuff, but stuff seems to work, and we just need to limit the things that we read, because the information comes from such an a non eternal standpoint. I put it lightly, I put it nicely. It just comes from this worldly viewpoint, and it's written a lot of it anyway. It's written by people who have an eternal perspective. And I could talk about this for a long time, and I would need it myself, but you understand what I'm saying here, right? How much stuff do you read that is of no value, or is bad value? How much stuff do you read that's hurting you rather than helping you? And to make a what I think is a timely application, I've already alluded to it a time or two this morning in my lesson, but you know, some of what Barry was talking about yesterday was digging deeper into Bible study. And I can tell you the things that he was talking about, and the approach that you take, and how you look at Old Testament passages, and how when you read something in the New Testament, you need to read it and go back and look at those statements made, but go back in the Old Testament, and look at the context of all that. And I'm going to tell you, I want to tell you the thing that crossed my mind as he was talking to all of us about that is, is that takes time. That's not going to come easy, but that's that will come if we're willing to take the time and and instead, and I'm talking to myself about this, instead, I spend too much time in things that really have no value to me, not spiritually. I think I need to reshape that. I think I need to readjust that you may need to too. Take heed. Take heed what you read.
And then I want to see just this: Be careful about meditations. When I was preparing these charts, I typed that word meditations in. It came up medications. And I thought, well, you need to be careful about that too. I said, I'm glad I caught that before I put this up. What do you think about? Proverbs 23 says, "For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he." Well, every time I read that verse, it just kind of it tugs at me, because I know what I read and I know what I think about. I know what I think about all the time. I don't mean that I'm constantly evaluating that and that I remember everything but I know what my patterns are. I know what I like to do, and I know what shapes my thinking. So you are what you think. So the question is, then, what do you meditate on? Well, Paul answered. Paul says, here's what you ought to meditate on. Philippians four, "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's any virtue or if there is anything praiseworthy. Meditating on these things now, we could break all that down, but I don't think that's necessary. I think there's another time and place where but you know, don't you don't you know, and don't I know what we ought to be thinking about. And he doesn't write this to people of the world. He says, Finally, brethren, whatever things. And he goes on this list. He says, Brethren, this is what, this is what you ought to do. Now, this is not trivial. I hope you don't think that this point is, well, that's, that's a pretty good idea. No, it's not just a good idea. He says, This is what you need to do. This is what you need to meditate on. He says, meditate on these things don't don't meditate on things that are really not valuable to you. Meditate on these things. So you and I know what is included in this list, and we know what isn't. So he says, then you need to be careful about that. And all of us, I think could do better about that. Maybe we ought to. There's a lot of things I could say about this too. Maybe we just need to make more time for meditation. And I know we're busy. I know we're busy. I get tired of hearing that. If you want to know the truth, I get tired of hearing people say, I'm busy. I know you're busy, I'm busy, but are we too busy for what God wants us to be? We can't be too busy for that. If we're too busy, then we're too busy, and we need to meditate on the things that God wants us to meditate on.
Third, be careful about associations. You knew this was coming, right this, this might be first on your list. Tell just think about some things you ought to be careful about. You ought to be careful about who you run with. Oh, that's right. Proverbs, 13, verse 20, "He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed." This proverb is clear. This proverb is clear. Wise associations help make you a wise man. If you are a companion of fools, what that of me says is, that's what you'll become, and when you're a fool, you'll be destroyed. I'm not the one who said this. This is what the wisdom writer said, and we all need to hear it right? We're talking about associations. Who do you run with? Who are your friends? Are there people right now? Listen, are there people right now that you need to run from because it's not going to be good if you stay with them, it's not going to be good if you keep doing with them what you're doing with them, it is not going to be good. Hear me. Hear me strongly, clearly and loudly, if you're running with people with whom you need to disassociate. You need to do that. I'm not suggesting that we just abandon everybody who's not what they ought to be. I'm not saying that at all. You know what I'm saying. Don't minimize this by saying, Well, I don't understand quite what you're saying. Yes, you do. You do. The hard part's not just hearing it. The hard part is doing it. But if there are people that you associate with that you need to get away from, you need to do that. Because what this says is, if you don't, you're going to become a fool. You're going to begin to do things that they're doing. Okay, that's what that says. So learn that lesson.
We need to care, be careful about destinations, the places we go. Say a lot about us. You remember a week or so ago, I'm on imma give you a follow up. Remember a week or so ago? I told you about that time when I was a junior and senior in high school, I went to the pool hall. Remember that? Remember me tell you that story? Well, my mother listens to these live stream broadcasts. I knew she would. It was kind of true confessions for me to tell that story, because I knew she was going to ask me. She said to me the other day, she said, Who was that Frank guy you were talking about? Well, that's the guy at the pool hall that I knew his first name, but I didn't know his last name, she said to me, she said, Well, I didn't think you'd ever told us that story. I said, No, Mom, I didn't tell you that story. She said, Well, did you think that, she put dad in under the she put dad in the corner, she said, Did you think dad might be disappointed? I said, Yeah, I sure did. I didn't tell him because I didn't want him to say, Kenny, you shouldn't be there, because I knew that's what he was going to say. And deep down, deep down, deep down, as deep down as a 16 year old, deep down can be, I knew that wasn't the best place for me to be, and I kept trying, as I told you, I kept trying to just kind of let that go. You know, I was there for good reason. I'm helping these guys. I'm giving them something they want to hear and as I look back on that, that wasn't a good place for me to be, and that's just a simple choice that I made, but I think about a proverb like this, "Ponder the path of your feet and let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or to the left. Remove your foot from evil." Careful means careful, not foolish. And I think all of us can evaluate, right? We can evaluate the places we go. I don't have all the answers to this. I don't have any answers for you. You have to decide that for yourself, just like I have to, but I have to still ponder the places I go and think about, is this a good place for me to go? Now, I will tell you. And I think, I think those of us who are older in this audience this morning would agree with this. It is easier for me now than it was when I was 16/17, years old. It is easier. And if you're a teenager, if you're a 20 year old, or whatever you're but you're younger than me, which is a lot of you and you struggle with this idea of I need to be more careful about where I go. I'm going to tell you, I think that's going to get easier for you if you'll allow it to, and if you'll decide what you're going to do based upon is that really where I ought to be? Am I careful to go to the places where I need to go? Because if you're not careful, it could rise up and bite you. And that's why I mentioned it to you this morning. Be careful.
And let me mention this last one again, this is very easy to add, you need to be careful about conversations, how you use your your mind, and how you use your mouth, how you talk, becomes such an important thing. And there are all sorts of applications to this. Obviously, the passage, when I think about how I use my language and how I communicate, and why I communicate, and what I communicate, when I think of all those verses, when I think of all that this verse that I'm about to show you always comes to my mind first, always. If I gave you enough time this morning and I said to you, what verse Do you think I ought to point out to all of us about how we use communication, how we communicate, what comes out of our mouth? Can you think of a verse, where would you go? I think some of you, in your mind, you're going where I'm about to show you, Ephesians four, "Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth." Let no. "Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth. But what is good for necessary edification that it may impart grace to the hearers." Everything about that statement is good. Let no corrupt proceed out of your mouth. That's good. But what is good for necessary edification. That's good. That it may impart grace to the hearers, that's good. But that's not what sometimes we do because we're not careful, and that's why I would include this to say we need to be careful. Proverbs, 13, "he who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he opens wide his lips shall have destruction." How definitive is that? "He who guards his mouth preserves his life, he opens his wide his lips shall have destruction." I mean that image is clear, right? You guard it, you preserve life. You open wide his lips. I think we all understand what that's saying. Open your mouth wide. You have destruction. That just means you're not careful with what you say.
I'm going to tell you another story that you've heard. I can remember working with a young woman. She didn't work directly in the department I was in, but I had to deal with her on a fairly regular basis, and she had gained a reputation for gossip, for telling everything she knew about everybody. She just gained a reputation for that, I mean, to the point where it was, it was hard to even deal with her professionally. It was hard to even have interact with her, because you just knew that while you were there for a few minutes, you were going to hear more than you wanted to hear about things you shouldn't even know. And I vividly remember going to her office one day and seeing an unbelievable amount of post it notes on her desk, on her computer monitor, on the desktop that was, that was below where she had her that was above where she had her computer screen. It was clear because she didn't have any the times before that, but she had all sorts of sticky notes. And so I did what I-- what you might expect me, that I kind of walked around, kind of I was kind of just looking at what was on those sticky notes, because I thought well soemthing's going on, and everyone of those notes had scripture about how you use your tongue every one of them. Every single one of them. And it was, it was unbelievable. And I noticed while I was there, and while we were discussing something that had to do with our-- the work we were doing there, there was none of what it used to be. And I didn't ask her. I wasn't about to say, man, who what happened to you? I was glad, but it was clear that either she, either somebody had gone to her and told her, You have a serious problem, or she figured it out on her own. But what was clear is that she changed, and that passage that we just looked at, Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, she understood that. And not only did she understand it, for that few minutes I was in her office, I noticed from that point on, when I had any interaction with him, she was a changed person. She was who I think God wanted her to be. Because here's what happened, she stopped it. She stopped it. Now we haven't covered everything that relates to the tongue and the mouth, and we've not covered that. And I'm not saying that all this is about gossip. I'm not saying that at all, but that was one apparent, not apparent, that was one clear example of what somebody was doing that she shouldn't have been doing. And she made a change. I think she went from being careless to being careful. She figured it out. Pay attention to every word that proceeds out of your mouth. You do that? You pay attention to every word that comes out of your mouth? Do I? Every word? Do you pay-- do you pay attention to every single word that comes out of your mouth? Just do a little personal inventory. It'll help you. If you let it, it'll help you.
Let me make a final point. I'm going to go back to this passage I started with. This is the passage that one of the verses that Ron read from Ephesians five. He says, "See, then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise." The word circumspectly is it's not archaic, but it's not a word that we use much. You don't go around talking about well, be circumspectly today. You don't say that. Act circumspectly today. Now, what do you do? So be careful. Pay attention. You get on the playground. Be careful. You go outside and climb a tree. Be careful when you cross a road. That's the word we use, but he said, See then that you walk circumspectly. And I love this word because it adds an element to the idea be careful. The idea of circumspectly is be careful and look. Be careful looking all around you. That's the idea. And I think he uses the term because it expresses in greater detail don't just be careful about what you do. See then that you walk looking circum around, spectly glasses, look looking around, see then that you walk looking around. Why? Because you don't want to be a fool. Another way to say that, I think, is live your life with your eyes wide open, don't dim your eyes, don't close your eyes, don't put your hands over your eyes, as if you don't know what you ought to be doing or saying or thinking or meditating. You know. You just need to do it, right? Don't be a fool. Be wise. I realize. I know that this lesson in terms of some deep theological thought, that's not what this is about, although these deep theological thoughts I think. This is about doing what you ought to do, because you want to be careful and serve God in a careful kind of way, so that you don't live a foolish life, live a life that is spiritually sound. May God help us to do that. Appreciate, as always, your kind attention.
If you're in this audience this morning, and you need to give attention to your life and your relationship with God, or maybe the lack of your relationship with God. You need to be careful. You need to be careful because at some point in time, your opportunities will no longer exist, and how you stand before God will be a decision that you make. He doesn't want you lost. If you're lost, it'll be because you're lost. You made that decision, not him, and this morning, as as lovingly as I know, how I would just simply tell you he wants you to tell you he wants you to be saved, and he wants you to be saved according to what he says. You need to believe that Jesus is his son. You need to be willing to repent of your sins, like we talked about this morning, confess to the world that Jesus is Lord and you're going to live for him, and then you need to be baptized, because without that, your sin is not going to be forgiven. I want you to hear that. Until you're baptized into Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, your sins will not be forgiven. That's according to scripture. Now, God can do what he wants to do. I'm not trying to be God. I'm trying to express from what I still understand the Bible. I'm trying to express what God wants me to express as an evangelist, I think what he says is you need to repent of your sins, and you need to be baptized into Christ for the remission of those sins. And I would encourage you this morning, if you're here in this audience and you've never done that, you need to do that, and we would love to help you do that. If we can help you this morning, would you come while we stand and while we sing?
