Whatever is noble…

How joyful people think! That is the name of our New Year's Series. My name is René, another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes. Good morning! Quick show of hands, how many of you have seen the movie or the musical Wicked? Anybody? It's the majority of people, just like it was last night. So the success of the musical and the movie have also prompted a rediscovery of the original Wizard of Oz book by L. Frank Baum, a classic American fairy tale, right? Well what's interesting is the changes from the Wizard of Oz book into the movie. Now this was retained in the musical but for some reason they changed this in the movie. In the original, the Emerald City is just a normal city. It's like a beige and gray industrial city.

Why is it called the Emerald City? Well because everybody has to wear green tinted glasses and for some reason nobody catches on to this that the only reason the Emerald City looks emerald is because of the lenses everybody is wearing, right? And there's a psychological truth behind this. You and I are all wearing lenses. We all see the world through our own paradigm. Now your lenses were made by childhood trauma and by adult successes and by failures and by things that your parents and other mentors said to you by your own self-talk. They're all constructing your lenses and a lot of people, if you believe all the latest articles by psychologists, are looking at lenses that are tinted with anger.

There's so many bad things in the world all the time or despair. Nothing's ever gonna get better or suspicion. Other people don't really like me. They're out to get me. They're out to con me or self-pity. I have done so many bad things in my life. So many things have gone wrong for me and you're just obsessed with all that or doubt. I don't think I have anything to offer anymore. My best days are behind me. Nothing's ever gonna get better or guilt. I don't deserve anything good in my life. There's a lot of people that are looking at the whole world through this lens. And of course this is prompted by what we often see in social media or on our news feeds.

It all kind of activates this part of our lens and whatever you're looking for, that's what you tend to see. And so just like the Emerald City wasn't really green but people were wearing green tinted glasses, the world may not be this bad but when you're wearing glasses tinted with this, it's going to cause despair in your own life. But the good news is the Bible says you don't have to live like this. You can think how joyful people think. You can see the world through their lens and that's what this series is about. As we go through a pivotal verse in the Bible in the book of Philippians 4:8 and a key concept in the series is this. You can't stop thinking about something by trying to stop thinking about it.

That's impossible. Like let's say you're thinking of a pink elephant, right? And you're and you tell yourself I'm gonna try not to think of a pink elephant, try not to think of it, I'm gonna try not to think of a pink... don't think of a pink elephant. All you're gonna be thinking about is a pink elephant. It's impossible to not to try not to think about something. That's never gonna work. But let's say you start instead to think about a delicious cup of loft coffee. In fact let me go back into my previous career of broadcasting and describe loft coffee, the taste, the aroma, the brown and white foamy latte art.

How many of you long for a cup of loft coffee right now, right? Now suddenly there's no pink elephant. The point is you can't stop thinking about something by trying to stop thinking about it. You have to replace it with something else. And if in your life you've been thinking I've been so anxious, I've been so depressed, I've been so angry, I've gotta stop being anxious, stop being angry, you can't stop thinking about a pink elephant. You've got to replace that with something else. And that's really one of the points Paul makes in the book of Philippians.

Quick recap on the background to this book. The book of Philippians was written by the Apostle Paul when he is in chains in prison. You could call him the least likely person to be joyful. He knows that he's basically on death row. And not only that but in the approximately two years before he writes this book, he's been beaten in a riot. He's been unjustly jailed. He's been the target of assassins. He's been shipwrecked. He's been bitten by a poisonous snake. He's been imprisoned and chained to a guard. But the whole book, it's a little letter to the Philippian church, the Philippian Christians. He's writing it from Rome. They're back over in Macedonia, which is northern Greece today.

And this little letter that you could read in 15 to 20 minutes, he talks about joy 17 times. It's just suffused with joy. How could somebody in that situation with this background, not have lenses full of anger and suspicion and self-pity? Well, because he's wearing a different set of glasses. And he describes it in our key verse for the series, Philippians 4:8. Here's how he sees the world. "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, you think about those things, you look for those things, you observe, you notice those things." And in the next verse, he says, "Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me," they've seen him live like this.

Remember, he's writing this to the people in Philippi. In the book of Acts, we learn that years before, Paul was unjustly imprisoned and beaten in that city. And yet, the night after he's arrested, in prison, in chains, what's he doing at midnight singing hymns of praise to God? So they've seen him do this before any of them were even Christians. He says, "You live like this, and what's going to happen? The God of what? Peace will be with you." Somebody once said, "Thoughts are like trains. They take you somewhere. They're not neutral. So where are your thoughts leading you? Negative thoughts cannot lead to a positive life.

If you're on your device and you're always looking at whatever is upsetting and alarming and outrageous like so many of us are, guess what that's going to do to you? You're going to become upset, alarmed, and outraged. And even if you just look at things that are average, you're going to be average. Paul's saying, if you want a better life, put on a different set of lenses like this. Now, as we saw last weekend, one of the key words in this verse, really, really key here, is the word "whatever." Say whatever with me. "Whatever," Jamie Rasmussen calls it, the power of a biblical whatever. I love that. "Whatever" is a powerful word. It means Paul's not telling you, you need to watch your thoughts so much that your thoughts become so strict that they become limited.

He's saying there's an infinite variety of things that fit into these categories. Whatever fits into these categories, not just religious things. Whatever is true and noble and righteous and beautiful and excellent. You can think about whatever. Listen, your life is like a treasure hunt looking for these things all around you. Bless you. Bless you. I'm licensed to do that. Don't try it at home. You just look at, you know, it's a treasure hunt, and you're looking for these things. Now, last weekend we looked at the idea of whatever is true. Well, you always ask yourself when you're thinking about things, "Yeah, but is that true?" Is it true? Because miserable people tend to believe lies and joyful people focus on the truth.

This week we're going to focus on the next description, whatever is noble. Say noble. Noble. Now, here's the problem with preaching about this. It's fascinating. The word noble in the Greek is semnas, and semnas doesn't have an exact match in English. How many of you speak a different language? Can I see a show of hands? You speak a different language. Probably a lot of you speak Spanish, or I know somebody who speaks French here German. You know if you speak another language, there's not always an exact match, right? In fact, sometimes there's really good words in the originating language that the language you're translating into just doesn't have.

I see somebody here who's Swiss-German speaking and German speaking, so there's a German word called felnve. And there's no equivalent English word. It's kind of the opposite of homesickness. It means longing for a distant place that you've always wanted to go to on a visit or a vacation, and you want to go to. But you haven't gone there yet. That's a great word, right? Felnve. There should be a word for that in English. It's like what you all think about Tahiti and the Rockies, right? That felnve, but there's not an exact match in English. Well, this word is kind of like that with Greek. There's not a precise match, so translators try to translate it with words like noble and honorable.

So what I'm going to do is give you a sense of what this word means. Originally in Greek, it was used to describe the Greek gods because they were imperturbable. They weren't bothered by what was going on with human drama, right? Generally speaking, they were kind of above the fray, cool, calm, and collected. Well, by the time the New Testament is written, 2,000 years ago, the word had evolved to describe any human being, man or woman or child, who was this way, who was seminars, dignified, not easily provoked, steady, honorable, principled, calm. You get the general sense of what this word means, kind of that cool, calm, collected, principled, stick to your ideals, kind of a kind of a, you've encountered a seminars person probably.

Have you ever thought to yourself, I'm going to tell this person about something I did in my past that is very alarming, and I know it was bad, but I feel like I need to unburden myself of this thing, and you say, you tell this to somebody, and you kind of flinch thinking they're going to just think I was a terrible person. And they respond with calmness and with wisdom and dignity and they make you feel honored even for telling them this thing. That's a semnos response. You see what I'm talking about? Now look at this. This is kind of the opposite of what's happening in our culture right now, isn't it? Our culture is a culture filled with trolls online and people who are undignified, easily provoked, hyper-reactive, crass, and unethical.

And Paul is saying, I know you're being pulled by the catnip of the hot take, but instead look for what's noble, dignified, calm. So let me suggest a thought experiment here, and I'm going to be doing this throughout the series with these different words. And what I want you to do is to take that, I put it in your notes, take that and do this this week. Do it with each other. This week, think about and look for and notice people who are noble. For example, just to help you out, you could put it into these categories, historical, personal, fictional, biblical.

When I think of historical categories, I think of the first name that pops to my mind is Abraham Lincoln. I mean, what an example of this word semnos, dignified, and calm, and collected, principled, ethical man. Mother Teresa would be another great example. I think of a man named Desmond Doss. Are you familiar with his story? They made the movie Hacksaw Ridge about this guy. So Desmond Doss was a Christian man, very principled. He was a pacifist. He didn't believe in guns or knives or any other weapons, didn't believe he should wield or own any of them. Yet he also believed that World War II was a just war and that the Nazis should be defeated because they were evil.

So what's he going to do about that? Well, he decides to serve in the army as what he coined the phrase conscientious participant, not conscientious objector, conscientious participant. And he would serve in the army as a medic, but he refused to go through any weapons training or anything because he said, "Well, that's against my beliefs." And his personal belief was that a Christian shouldn't bear arms, all right? So he stayed principled. Well, how do you think the fellow soldiers approached that? They mocked him. They bullied him. They said, "Well, first time we get into war on the battlefront, we're going to make sure you're the one who's killed." When he prayed by his bunk at night, every single night, people would throw boots at his head.

His commanding officers tried to get him dishonorably discharged for mental illness, which didn't work. And through it all, he remained cool and calm and collected and devoted to his faith. Well, his whole battalion is part of the massive deployment on Okinawa. And they are assigned to climb what was known as Haksa Ridge, a 400 foot tall cliff. And they climbed it up it, and when they got to the top, the whole thing was booby trapped. It was an ambush, mortar shells, grenades, machine gun fire had the battalion pinned down. And so Desmond Doss' battalion was ordered to retreat, and they all fled back down the cliff, except for Desmond Doss.

Why? There were 75 soldiers that were so injured, still alive, but so injured they couldn't move. They were no longer mobile. So he stayed there. He alone stayed there and grabbed one of the injured men, lowered him down on an improvised mountain climbing rope that he just made himself out of ropes because he had done that in his past, lowered him down to the medics at the bottom of this big cliff, and he went back and got a second guy, did the same thing. A third guy did the same thing. A fourth guy, not 10 times, not 20 times, not 30 times, not 40 times, not 50 times, not 60 times. He single handedly rescued all 75 men, one at a time.

Meanwhile he is injured by machine gun fire, injured by grenade fragments, but he keeps going, he can barely crawl, he keeps going. When they finally, when he finally lowers himself and they put him on a stretcher to get care, he notices that one of the guys he had lowered is still there waiting to be evacuated. He rolls himself off the stretcher into the mud and says, "Take him first. I told you I'm not leaving anyone behind." It took him years to recover from his injuries, but he became the hero of not only his own battalion, but the nation for his principled stand. Harry Truman gave him the medal of honor, but at the ceremony at the White House he said, "I was only doing what Jesus told us to do, do unto others as you would have them do unto me." I call that nobility.

So there's historical examples. There's personal examples, people you know or things that you've recently seen. I mean honestly I think of my mom, a very noble person. Just yesterday I saw the Halpin family. I don't know if you saw this, but they're a family that lost their entire family home in Altadena in the fires. And yet, at the side of their burned down house, they all gathered together, the mom and dad and their adult children. They prayed and then they sang a hymn. Watch this. La la la la. Reggae nachéri le tare alle lulia, le tare alle lulia. Mi a bremero isti par tare, alle lulia, alle lulia. Alle lulia, alle lulia, alle lulia. Amazing. That's nobility in the semnost sense, remaining cool and calm and collected and faith focused even in trial.

I read an interview in the Los Angeles paper this morning since this video has gone viral with one of the adult children that was singing this. And he told the paper down in Los Angeles, he said, "Praying and then singing a hymn has been our family's tradition through every family milestone, whether it's sad or joyful. Whether somebody has lost a loved one or our house burns down or somebody has just had a baby." He said, "Our tradition is we pray and then we sing a hymn." And he said, "It's so on our family's DNA that that's just what we did then." That kind of steadiness is biblical semnost nobility. I mean, I think of the firefighters that are down there fighting. They're noble in my mind.

But these don't even have to be real examples when Paul says, "Whatever." They can be fictional examples. I think of Aragorn in Lord of the Rings. Whenever I read that or watch one of those movies, I think that's a noble person. And of course, there's so many biblical examples, right? There's Ruth, there's Boaz, there's Esther, there's Tabitha in the book of Acts, there's Daniel and many, many more. But here's what I want to point out. When you fill this in your own way, and I could go on and on, these are just examples, what happens when you start to think of these people, there's a word for it. The word is ennobling. It makes you more noble to even think of examples like this, doesn't it?

I mean, when I think of people like this, it makes me, for example, want more and more to be a noble person and help those victims of the LA fire, as Adrian talked about earlier. You think about these things, and something changes in your character. And that's exactly what the Apostle Paul was talking about. Now, of course, it's not just coming up with names like this. It's thinking about these people. It's analyzing their character because you want to be a noble person too. So let me give you an example of what that looks like. And I want to zoom in on the person of Daniel.

In our culture, when we think of Daniel, we tend to think of Daniel in the lion's den, right? That's what we know about Daniel. And we imagine the snarling beasts and the breath of the lions and perhaps the fright of Daniel at first. What's going to happen? The suspense, the smell of the cave, it's dark. You know how much the Bible tells us about this moment? Zero. There's literally not one verse in the Bible that describes this moment. There's 153 verses up until this moment. And then the second half of the book of Daniel after this moment, all we know is Daniel got thrown into the pit and in the morning he's still okay.

So the point I'm making is the lessons we can learn from Daniel are from the 153 verses that lead up to this moment. How did he stay cool, calm, and collected when he was facing this? I see in his story three choices that cultivate noble character very quickly. First of all, of course, choose principles over popularity. And this is something he's 85 years old when that story about the lion's den happens in the Bible, and this is something he's been doing his entire life. When he's a young man, he is captured from Jerusalem, taken into Babylon, and he won't denounce his Jewish identity. He won't eat the Babylonian diet because it's apparently not kosher, stands up for his principles in a noble way.

When he's a middle-aged man, he confronts the next king and he says you need to renounce your sins by doing what is right and being kind to the oppressed. It may be then that your prosperity will continue. I mean, in the court of the king, he's standing up for the weak and the oppressed. That's nobility. And decades later, he's 85 years old and now he's serving a new regime, the Persians, and his enemies don't like a Jewish man in our Persian culture. And so they want to do an end. The problem is they could find no corruption in him because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. He's a noble person.

So they concoct a trap. They say to the king, "Hey, we've got an idea. We want to start the national day of prayer to you. In fact, let's make it a month. Anyone who prays to any god or a man during the next 30 days, except to you, O king, shall be thrown into the lion's den." And the king's all, "Well, that sounds good to me." They know something a king doesn't know. Every single day, three times a day, Daniel publicly prays to his god, to the god of the Bible. So what's he going to do now? Now, when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, so he knows, he knows, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. And three times a day, he got down on his knees, prayed, and gave thanks to his god, just as he had done before.

He's not starting anything new. He does the same exact thing. He's cool. He's steady. He's calm. He's collected in the midst of that threat. Now, in our society, are you ever going to be pressured to be killed for your faith? Probably not. But we as Christians face pressures to compromise all the time, pressures to indulge in, or at least approve tacitly of behavior that is not godly, just because that's how our friends behave, or that's how the people on our political side behave, or that's how the people on our cultural side behave, so we can be too lenient and approve or even participate and compromise.

A few years ago, I stayed for a brief time in a Middle Eastern country, and I can't tell you the name of the country, but it's a place where the secret police can throw you in jail for even converting to Christianity. And one night in the living room of a guy I was visiting there, I met a young man in his 20s who had converted to Christianity, which, again, that is potentially death or prison sentence in this country. So I said, "I've got to ask you, how do you do it? How can you be a follower of Jesus under all this pressure?" And he laughed and said, "René, here's the way I see it. We live in a country where it's hard to become a Christian, but very easy to be one." He said, "You live in a country where it's very easy to become a Christian, but very hard to be one." And I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "It's true there's pressure on us not to convert to Christianity, but once we do," he said, "For better or for worse, we don't have the sexually charged culture or the materialistic, money-oriented culture or the drug culture or the political culture or most of the distractions that you Christians have in America."

He said, "It's nice that you're praying for us, but to be honest, we pray for you." He said, "René, I need to ask you honestly, how do you Americans keep following Jesus with all the cultural pressure you face every day?" That's a good point. We all face different kinds of pressures, peer pressure, political pressure, you know, mental health pressures and so on, but noble people choose principle over everything consistently, right? Then the second ennobling choice I see here is choose to strengthen my spiritual core. That verse said, "Three times a day he got down at his knees and prayed just as he had done before." So when the story happens, he's 85. So I did the math and asked myself, "How many times would Daniel have prayed if he prayed three times a day, say, for 70 years since he was 15 years old?" It comes out to 76,650 prayers.

No wonder he just went back to his room and started praying after that threat. Any 70-year-old habit is hard to break. Notice what the Bible says, "Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness." And I like these other translations, "Keep yourself in training for a godly life. Spend your time and energy in the exercise of keeping spiritually fit." It's just like working out. It's about getting into a routine, a habit, developing new neural pathways, as we said last week. So, question for you, what simple small habits can you start this week that will ennoble you? And remember, like any habit, these have to be specific, attainable, and measurable.

Like, "What I'm going to do is be a better Christian this week." That's not specific. It's not measurable. And I don't even know if it's attainable. Or this one is much better. I will memorize the key verse for the series, Philippians 4:8. I'm going to pray through it every morning. That's specific. It's very attainable. It's very measurable. Or how about this? I will look for at least one example of noble character every day this week. Very specific, very attainable, very measurable. Now, one important note, spiritual discipline and exercise. That's not a way to earn extra credit from God. God already loves you and blesses you 100 percent.

Here's why we discipline ourselves. Paul says, "In view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as living sacrifices." It's because God's already been merciful to you. You know, I don't believe in positive thinking as a replacement for God, but I do believe in positive thinking as a response to God. In view of His mercy, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. It's not rocket science. It's all about what you choose to put in your mind. So you choose principles over popularity. You choose to strengthen your spirit, your spiritual core. And you're never static, by the way. You're always changing. And the way you're changing is dependent on the content that you're pouring in.

Daniel praying three times a day. This molded him. So he was able to do number three, choose an "I don't have to survive" attitude. Say, "I don't have to survive. I don't have to survive." All the best workers, all the best world changers have this attitude, like Desmond Doss, like Abraham Lincoln, like Queen Esther, when she said, "If I perish, I perish." Like Daniel's friends, Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego, who when they were threatened to compromise, and they were threatened with being thrown into fire, they said, "Well, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, but even if He does not, we want you to know we're not going to serve your gods or worship this image of gold you've set up." In other words, we're going to do what's right and not just save our skins.

This is why Daniel has this attitude. This is why when he's thrown down into the pit of lions, he's calm, he's steady, he's noble. See, what I'm trying to do this morning is to demonstrate what it means to think about whatever is noble, all the possibilities on that chart, and thousands more. And as you do this this week, talk to other people and say, "What did you put down? What are some examples of nobility that you've seen lately?" I was talking this week with Mark Spurlock when I was doing this for myself on Tuesday, and he said, "Oh, Laura and I just saw a movie about a true story called the 6-triple-eight about a women's black women's battalion that was the only black women's Italian assigned to Europe during World War II."

He said, "It was so ennobling, it's so moving, and it made us want to tackle important things in a noble way." And so, Laura and I watched it that night, and it ennobled us. So share your ideas. The whole—what this does is it helps you have a lens where you are looking for what is true, noble, righteous, pure, beautiful, admirable, and excellent. And that changes your life experience. Now, of course, if you're thinking about whatever is noble, the primary central example of this in Scripture is our noble Savior, Jesus Christ.

He taught us nobility, didn't he, when he said, "Bless your enemies. Forgive your enemies. Pray for your enemies." That's a noble, cool, calm, collected, principled behavior. And then he practiced it when he was arrested, he was noble, and even healed somebody who was injured who had come in the party to arrest him. When he's on trial, he's noble. When he's being tortured and mocked. And then when he's being threatened with death, he remains noble. He's more noble than the nobles, even though he's wearing a crown of thorns and theirs as a crown of gold. And then on the cross, in the ultimate example of noble sacrifice, he gives his life for you and me, so we can be forgiven, so we can live again.

And when you place your trust in Jesus Christ, something inside of you happens. And I can't describe it exactly, but you know you're not only forgiven of your sins, but you are ennobled because you think of Jesus Christ and his character. And you realize that he is standing right beside you all the time. And when you grasp that, it makes you want to move forward into your life as a noble, cool, calm, principled, courageous character because you are following your noble Savior. That's how joyful people think. And so let's focus on our noble Lord and Savior in prayer right now. Would you bow your head with me?

Heavenly Father, help us to respond to life with nobility. Help us to trust in you even in the pressure. Help us to see nobility in others. And help us especially to follow our noble Savior, Jesus Christ, who sacrifice, saves, and empowers us. Again, we pray for all affected by the fires near Los Angeles. We pray for their strength. We pray for the churches there to be noble agents of good, to be islands of stability in a time of chaos. And it's in your name, Jesus, we pray all of this. Amen.