Interesting study. I enjoyed putting this together over the last couple days working on this. Proverbs 29 verse number 15. It took me a while of studying to come up with a kind of a starting point, a verse to get our mind thinking this direction. The word neglect we'll see here in a few minutes does show up five times in the Bible. Our English word neglect and there's some other words that are translated from the Greek words, the same Greek words, but that word neglect shows up five times, but I didn't find one verse that kind of encapsulated the whole of the idea we're sharing this morning, and then as I was reading and studying yesterday, the Lord brought this verse to mind, and at first it doesn't seem to make sense, But if you look with me at Proverbs 29 verse number 15, that's where we're gonna begin this morning. There we see the Bible says, the rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. Let's open with a word of prayer this morning. Lord, we love you. And we thank you for the opportunity, Lord, we have to be in your house this morning. We thank you for your word and what we can learn from it today. I pray you'd help the thoughts that, Lord, you've given me from your word to come across clearly as I share them this morning. We pray for the rest of the day in your house to be a great time of fellowship, looking forward to the ensemble being here this afternoon and singing for us the time of fellowship around the meal today during lunch. Lord, just a great day to be in your house and we're excited to be with other believers today. Lord, pray bless this time in Sunday school this morning. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. So we look at this verse, Proverbs 29 15, the idea of neglect may not jump to the forefront of our mind initially because this verse obviously deals with parenting and raising children. Very clearly that's the context, that's the interpretation of this verse. It is specifically dealing with the correction of foolish behavior through the rod and reproof. We know also from the book of Proverbs that foolishness is bound in the heart of a child and you want to get that foolishness out. And this verse says if you want them to have wisdom, the rod and reproof give wisdom. The rod and reproof refers to both physical and verbal correction. A couple weeks ago, Pastor talked about this idea a little bit in his sermon on praise. And in that sermon, he was telling us the idea of balance. You know, sometimes it's all correction and sometimes it's no praise, or sometimes it's all praise and no correction, and we need both. But when we go into the correction side, you have options when it comes to correction. There is physical correction through the rod, there's verbal correction through reproof, and you need both. You can't do it with just the rod, you can't do it with just reproof. That's why they're both in the verse here, and we need to find that balance as Christians and as parents when it comes to raising children. However, something that, as we're looking at this idea of praise and punishment and rod, reproof, correction, and finding balance in there, something that we all can agree on is that something needs to be done with children. You don't want to leave them to themselves. That doesn't work out very well. Everybody can see that. Everybody can understand that. Now, unfortunately, there are some parents that seem to not understand this. But everyone around their child understands that leaving the child to himself is not a good thing. Letting the child do whatever he wants is not a good thing. There are homes that are run by two-year-olds, and mom and dad jump, too, whenever the child wants his way. And that lasts until he's an adult in prison. because he wasn't taught to deal with his foolishness. He wasn't taught wisdom. He wasn't corrected. So we can all look at a child and understand leaving it alone and not taking a responsibility towards that child is not good. It brings about destruction. It brings about ruin in the relationship. It harms the child. It harms the parents. He will not be pleased with the way that a child ends up if he is left to himself. It will always cause chaos and destruction. So that's the interpretation of this passage, what the verse is talking about specifically, raising children, giving correction to give them wisdom and warning of what happens when we don't fulfill that responsibility. Now we're gonna pull from that interpretation and application for our lesson today on this idea of neglect. Because what's happening here is there's a parent that has a responsibility. a parent that has an obligation. And if they neglect that obligation, bad things happen. Things get worse when you have a responsibility and you don't fulfill it. Or when you have an obligation and you neglect it, things always progress towards being worse. A child left to himself, and you can take that and apply it to a ministry left to itself, or a car left to itself, or a house left to itself, or a bedroom left to itself, or whatever you want to apply it to. It's going to get worse if it's neglected. And that's an application we can understand from this verse. If there's something you're supposed to do, you neglect it to your own peril. I already told you the English word neglect shows up five times in scriptures, and we're going to look at these five things this morning and see what God says we should not be neglecting. Now, these five things are specifically given to us as things we should not be neglecting, but The application, as I said, goes far beyond this. Take these five things as an example, but really anything God has told us to do is something we should not be neglecting. If God said do it, we should do it. We shouldn't be leaving those things to themselves. We shouldn't be leaving those things alone. There are some, even though the word neglect doesn't show up with every command that God gives us, there are some catch-all verses that God uses, such as, "...to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." You know what you're supposed to do? You're not doing it, you're sinning. Just a catch-all there, so everybody understands that when God told you to do something, He expects you to do it. Whether therefore you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God. And again, that idea of just whatever you're doing, do it to God's glory. And that kind of encompasses everything. So as we look at these five topics today of what God has commanded us not to neglect, go ahead and let the Holy Spirit make some application in your life personally and say, you know what, this is something I know I'm supposed to be doing and I've been neglecting it. Just yesterday we had the first lesson in the second level of discipleship for the crew that's gone through. Some of the crew that's gone through the first lesson in our first study that we did was on prayer. And we were talking about it in the time there of Bible study that that's something that's often neglected. that we just kind of put it on the back burner because, well, we get to the point where, yes, I'm reading my Bible every day, but we can take prayer and kind of take it and leave it, but no, prayer is a command from God, and we have an obligation to do it, and we neglect it to our peril. So as we look at these things we're not supposed to neglect, let the Holy Spirit make some application in your life about what have you been neglecting. What have you not been doing that you know you're supposed to do that God has commanded you? So as we begin our study this morning, we're going to start by defining our word. What are we looking at? What are we talking about? What does this word neglect mean? We're going to look at the dictionary definitions, and then we're going to look at the Bible definitions of the word neglect. First of all, we can look at the Webster's 1828 Dictionary to see what it says about neglect. And the first definition given there is to let, to leave, or to suffer, to pass. The sense of the latter words is to leave something behind or to permit it to remain. This is the idea of leaving something to just continue naturally. That's this idea of neglect. Just leave it alone to let it run its course, to let it continue naturally. That's the idea. This is where you could do something, but you don't want to bother doing it. I could interfere, but I don't feel like it. I'm just going to let what happens, happens. A few weeks ago, well, for the last couple of months or so, we've been dealing with a problem with a couple of raccoons at our house that like to tear up our trash. And across the yard, wake up in the morning and there's trash across the yard. And there's times where when the trash is full and I'm not home, my wife will tie it up. She'll set it outside the front door so I can see it when I get home. And I'll come home and I'll see it. And I'll say, ah, I'm going to get that later. And then later, I'm picking it up all over the yard because I neglected it. I let it alone. When I could have interfered, I decided to let things just go the way they were. That's this idea of neglect, to just allow it to happen. That's one idea of neglect. Another definition that is given for neglect is to omit by carelessness or by design, to forbear to do, use, employ, promote, or attend to something. So I'm leaving it off because I'm careless about it, or I'm leaving it off because I'm intending to do so. Anybody ever try to cook something and let all of your water boil out of the pot? All right, because you neglected it. You forgot carelessly, let it go. You omit what you're supposed to do through carelessness. Anybody ever run out of gas? That's neglecting that you had something that you knew you should do, but carelessly you forgot to do it. You neglected it. There's also the idea of omitting it in this verse, omitting it due to design, omitting it on purpose. When we were getting ready to go to Belize brother Aaron came over to my house to drop off some tools. We were putting together a toolbox to bring and he pulled into my backyard and we were loading things up and he was getting ready to leave and I was giving him instructions on how to get out of the yard and I said all right if you pull around the side of the house this way there's nothing in the way and then you can pull right out onto the driveway And I told him and said, if there's any toys laying in the yard, go ahead and run them over so I can throw them away. That's omitting by design. I wanted them to be broken so I could throw them away. Leaving things alone intentionally, that's one definition of neglecting it by design. So you can neglect something carelessly, you can neglect something intentionally, you can neglect something by just letting it continue the way it naturally continues, which that one's kind of the idea of a child left to himself. Just let them grow naturally and you see what his nature looks like. Another definition for this word neglect is to omit, to receive, or to omit, to embrace, to slight something. This is a very specific definition that is tied to one of our verses that we're gonna be looking at today. One reason I really enjoy using the Webster's 1828 Dictionary as a Bible study tool is that it is written and it is tied to our King James Bible. You'll look up a definition like this one And it will give you a verse in the Bible where that word is used in that way. And when I looked up this definition, this definition right here was tied to one of our verses we're going to be looking at later. And it's the idea of to omit, to receive. It's to fail to receive something that was intended for you. You've ever been somewhere and somebody, maybe a big crowd or maybe in a store or something, and somebody is trying to get your attention that you don't want to talk to. They're over there and you're omitting to receive the communication that was intended for you. Maybe it was the guy selling cell phone plans in the aisle and you're walking by like, No, look at that stuff over there because you don't want to catch his eye. The kiosk guys at the mall or somebody that you know that talks a lot and you're in a hurry and you see them in the aisle and I'm going to shop this aisle until they're gone. You're omitting to receive. You're intentionally going out of your way to not get what was intended for you. That's the idea there of that omit to receive, to fail to receive something that was intended for you. That's another definition of neglect. So those are the three given to us from the Webster's 1828 Dictionary. Just let it run its course to do something carelessly and forget about it or intentionally forget about something or to not receive something that was intended for you. Go to a little bit more modern dictionary. We have four definitions for the word neglect. That's from dictionary.com. We see, first of all, one of the definitions it gives us is to pay no attention or little attention to, to disregard or slight. It is a failure to give something the attention that it deserves or requires. You have something that requires attention, you have something that deserves attention, and you don't give it the attention that it deserves. It's very easy to do this in our relationships where Your children, if you have young children like mine, like Titus that likes to talk a lot, sometimes he'll be wanting to talk and I'm not feeling like it and I want to neglect the attention that needs to be given there or when somebody, a child is repeatedly... doing something they shouldn't do, and you don't feel like getting up and dealing with it, you're neglecting what you have a responsibility for, or even in a relationship. When you come home as a husband, and you can tell something is off in the air, the ions are out of balance somewhere, and you ask your wife what's wrong, and she says, I'm fine, or nothing, right? And there's that temptation to say, okay. Because you want to omit the attention that you know you want to give to something. You want to just take it at face value. Okay, she said nothing, I'm going with that. And you want to omit the attention. That's this idea of neglecting it. You have something you should be taking care of and you're not doing it. Another definition for neglect is to be remiss in the care or the treatment of something. When you have something you're supposed to be maintaining like a car and you're neglecting to maintain it or you're neglecting to care for it the way that you should. You know there is a way that you should care for and treat your vehicle if you want it to last a long time and if you fail to do those things you are neglecting your vehicle and it's going to cause problems down the road. You do save money by avoiding oil changes temporarily. It is going to cost you a lot more money later. And so if you're neglecting a care that you're supposed to be doing or a maintenance that you're supposed to do, it's going to maybe save you some stress in the short term. It's going to cause you a lot more stress later on. The overall theme here of neglect is that you have something you should be doing, you decide not to do it, and then things get worse. because you have neglected it. We also have the definition of to admit through indifference or carelessness. Sometimes we're just not doing something because it doesn't mean a lot to us, it doesn't matter that much to us. One example of this is maybe I used to sell true green lawn care products and a lot of people really don't care if they have weeds in their yard. It's a knock on the door, and they're like, well, I don't really care. It doesn't matter. And so they neglect their yard because it doesn't matter to them. I mow it when I have to, and I don't really care about having a nice yard. So they don't care. They leave it alone. They neglect it. And yeah, their yard gets worse, but it doesn't matter a lot to them. So that's one idea of neglect is that you just don't care about it. It doesn't matter to you. But even though it doesn't matter to you, the principle is true that when you neglect it, it gets worse. The final definition we have this morning from the dictionary for this word neglect is to fail to carry out or to perform your orders or duties or etc. This is at the heart of our lesson today. There's things that we should be doing. We have some obligations, some responsibilities, some commands from God that we should be doing And when we fail to do that, we fail to do what God expects us to do, we are neglecting God's commands. And as Christians, we should not want to be living in a way that we're neglecting what God has required of us. So that's this idea of neglect as an English word, understanding what it means and kind of getting those pictures in our mind of how we treat our responsibilities. Maybe it's carelessness, maybe it's intentional, maybe it's just I don't care about it, maybe it's I just forgot about it. But when we're not doing what we should be doing, We're neglecting things. We'll move on to the biblical definitions. There are four words in the Bible, in the New Testament, that are translated to our English word neglect. The first one is parakuo. I didn't write down the English translation, so I'm gonna take me a second to get these. Parakuo, and that is to mishear. That is by implication to disobey or to neglect to hear. That's one word that's translated as neglect, is that you're not listening to something. And this isn't just the not listening as you didn't hear it. This is an intentional choice to not listen to something. It's in contrast to the Bible word for hear. When you look up the word for hear, usually in the Bible, the word that's most often translated hear, means to listen with the intention of obeying. That's what the word means. When you hear, you're listening with the intention of obeying. This is in contrast to that. Neglect is to not listen because I don't want to obey. That's the idea and we'll see the verse that this applies in a few minutes when we get into these verses. With the idea of neglect, it's refusing to listen because you do not want to obey. A funny example of this maybe to get it in your mind of what this word means is when someone from my parents' generation is trying to explain directions to someone in my generation. We stand there and we smile and we nod, and we don't listen to a word they say because we're going to type it into our phone. as soon as they're done talking. And we're patiently waiting for them to be done. I see all the young people nodding over here. Olivia's like, yeah, my dad tried to tell me how to get home from college. And I was like, yeah, that's okay. I'll just punch in the phone and we'll get there. But we are neglecting the instructions because, hey, I've got something else that I'm going to do. I'm not planning on doing it that way. I maybe go the same way, but I'm just gonna look it up on my phone. That's this neglect to hear. I'm listening, I'm hearing what you're saying, but I have no intention of doing what you're saying, that's this word, neglect. Now this word's definition is very specific. to its application we'll look at in just a few minutes. Then we have the next word that is translated as neglect, and that's parothuereo. Parothuereo, I'm not gonna try to do that again. It means to overlook or to disregard, to neglect it. This kind of neglect is the out of sight, out of mind type of neglect. Something doesn't matter to you a lot, or it doesn't have a direct impact on you, so you don't bother yourself about it. You know, when you're at work, it doesn't bother you too much when another department's computer's not working. As long as it's not bothering you, hey, that's their problem. I'm not worried about it. It doesn't affect me. And when your department's having trouble, you want to go to the boss and say, hey, we need new computers. We need to get newer stuff so we can work and do well. There was a radio commercial when I was a teenager that somebody just came to mind. The radio commercial went, hey, boss, we need new computers. These aren't working. No, see it is still going, and then you heard, we need new computers. But you don't care about something that doesn't affect you, and that's this idea of neglect. You do care when it starts to affect you, but as long as it doesn't bother you, you could care less. We'll see that again, that definition very specifically in the type of neglect illustrated for us in the Bible. Then we have Afu-e-diya, and that is unsparingness, that is austerity, asceticism, and neglecting. This one has a very specific application as well. This is the religious practice of punishment and neglect of the body for the nourishment of the soul. This is seen in self-flogging, vows of poverty, vows of silence, penance, crawling on your knees, extreme fasts, and things of that nature that you see often in monasteries and depicted in Eastern religions or in the Catholic Church. That's this idea. of neglecting my body because it's good for me spiritually. And that is a word that is translated neglect in our Bible as well. Then the last one is ameleo, and that means to be careless of, to make light of, to neglect, to be negligent, or to not regard. It carries the idea of not putting the importance that you should on something. That you have, you don't understand it's worth, you don't value it the way you should, so you don't care about it the way that you should. I was talking to somebody last week, we were down in Belize working, and one of the guys we were working with was talking about how When it rains in their area, they've got, they met a guy who always goes out to the river and finds arrowheads. This guy has several hundred arrowheads that he's found along the James River in Richmond. And we're talking about just how, I wonder how many of those that we've seen and just didn't know what they were. How many treasures or antiques or even fossils, things like that, have I just walked past without even realizing it was there because I didn't know, because I didn't value it, because I didn't understand what I was looking at. And that's kind of this idea is that I see something, I don't put the value on it, I should, and so I miss out on what could have been or what I could have had. That's this idea of neglect. We don't realize what we're seeing or we don't realize the value that's there. There's a man in the late 1800s who was a counterfeiter. He counterfeited money and he did so by hand painting banknotes. He would hand paint 20s and 50s and 100 pound banknotes and he would pass those off and he was caught when he put one of them down on a wet table and the ink started to run. and police raided his house and when they did they found what he was doing and the money that he'd been painting. It took him several weeks to paint one of these banknotes, hand painting them by hand, very talented, but in his house when they raided it they found a couple portraits that he had done that he had just laying around some portraits and those went into auction and sold for $5,000 a piece or a little more than $5,000 a piece. Just a painting, that's not worth anything. Let me take all this time to paint a $20 bill." And he had $5,000 sitting there in three different paintings that sold for $16,000 for the three of them. Just didn't realize what he had. He neglected what was there and went after something else that wasn't nearly as valuable. I hope you can see the application in that as well. We have so many things that have eternal worth. We neglect them for things that are so small. I'm going to put off outreach and soul winning where I could change somebody's eternal destiny because I want to spend this morning or whatever opportunity I have that's so temporal in its value, so small, it's like the guy spending all that time painting a 20-pound a bank note when he could be doing a $5,000 portrait. And we just, we neglect what is truly valuable for something that means so little because we're not treating things the way they should, not putting the importance that we should on things. So those are kind of some definitions of what this idea of neglect is. We're gonna go into the Bible now and see what these, what we're not supposed to neglect. And the first one's very important, Hebrews chapter two. You can go there with me. Hebrews chapter two, probably the most important thing that should not be neglected. Hebrews chapter 2 verse number 3, How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? This is a book of Hebrews written to the Jewish people to give them the example that Christ is better. The author here, Paul, just started the book by talking about how Christ is better than the angels. the Jewish people understood about angels is they were the ones that brought a message from God and they had a responsibility to follow that message and he's saying how much more if we're if we're responsible for the message that came from angels right now we have the message from Jesus the Son of God himself we have the Bible how much more responsible are we if we neglect those we understand it those that neglected the messages in the past they were punished they were they were judged by God but how much more are we in trouble if we neglect this great salvation He's teaching here about the idea of salvation. In this word, it's the word that we talked about of to be careless of something, to make light of it, to not regard it, to not value it. That's the illustration of the counterfeiter. The illustration of him, of just seeing this and saying, I'm not interested in that, I'm pursuing this instead. Neglecting salvation, that God's put salvation here and it's of eternal worth and it can change your life today and your eternity and give you a home in heaven, forgive your sins. keep you out of the devil's hell, and you say, well, maybe later I'm interested in this right now. That's neglect. Neglecting salvation. The worst thing a person can do when it comes to their eternal well-being is to neglect salvation. Neglecting a salvation is worse than any other sin. You know, there'll be many murderers in hell, but there'll also be many murderers in heaven because they did not neglect salvation. And God changed their life, and God changed their eternal destiny. Yes, we are punished for our sin, but we go to hell because we neglect salvation. You had an opportunity to have your sin dealt with, but when you neglect that, that puts you into a devil's hell. God sends the invitation for salvation. Do not neglect that invitation. This idea of neglect shows up in a parable that Jesus taught in Matthew 22. Jesus answered and spake unto them by parables and said, The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his sons. He sent forth his servants to call them that are bidden to the wedding, and they would not come. Again, he sent forth other servants and saying, tell them which are bid and behold, I've prepared my dinner and my ox and my fatlings are killed and all things are ready come unto the marriage. But they made light of it. That's the same word as neglect in Hebrews chapter two. They made light of it and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise. They had the invitation from the king and they said, I've got better things to do. And that's this idea of neglecting salvation. So it comes to not neglecting what God has for us. The first thing we need to not neglect is salvation. Don't turn aside from salvation for another pursuit. Do not neglect salvation. Number two here, do not neglect correction. Matthew chapter 18. Matthew chapter 18. God's telling us not to neglect correction. Matthew 18 verse number 17. Bible says, and if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church. But if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Now, you know, the context of this verse is talking about church discipline, that when there's how God plans for issues to be resolved within church. Step one is for if someone has offended you, you go to the person that offended you. You don't wait for them to come to you. You go to them and say, hey, this is something you did that caused an offense to me. And then the goal is for reconciliation to happen. You're not trying to get back at them. You're not trying to make them apologize to you. You're trying to say, there's a break in our relationship. I want it restored. If the person refuses to hear what you've had to say and the problem persists, the offense remains, then you bring somebody with you. And another person goes to there, and that's where this verse picks up. It says, if he neglect to hear them, then you tell it to the church. And if he neglect to hear the church, then you treat him as a heathen republican. The step is to remove them from the church membership and to ostracize them, not because we hate them, not because we don't like them, but because we want them to get right. And that's the idea here, or the context of what's going on. This is the word neglect that means to refuse to listen because you don't want to obey. That's this word neglect and how it's tied to this verse, even in the Webster's Dictionary, they quote this verse when they use that word neglect. Good relationships can withstand correction. Good relationships between people who love one another and who love the Lord and want the best for each other and want to please the Lord can withstand correction. If you're so fragile that when someone tells you you did something wrong, you blow apart its immaturity. A good relationship, a mature Christian can withstand correction from one another. We know the verse, iron sharpeneth iron. We're intended to cause friction at times between one another to make each other better. And that is part of this idea of correction. My pastor used to say growing up that correction is like a grinding stone or a sharpening wheel. Whether it grinds you to powder or sharpens you to perfection depends on what you're made out of. That's the idea of when we have correction, what does it do to you? It doesn't say something so much about the correction as it does about your spiritual maturity. You know, correction is often just as hard to give as it is to receive. If you're spiritual about it, it is a lot harder to give correction than it is to receive correction. I try to have a spirit where somebody has seen something and they wanna tell me that I, even if it's you said this word wrong in Sunday school, it's actually pronounced this way. I'm glad that you can share that with me, and I want to have a humble spirit to receive that. For me to go to someone else and say, hey, you messed up here, is really hard to do. And when you want to blow up at somebody who's trying to help you by pointing out an error, you make it that much harder for them to try to help you in the future. Most of the time, correction within the church is motivated by love. They're doing it because they want what's best for you. We get it messed up, we don't say it right, we may misread the problem, but your church family, your pastors, they correct you because they love you. If we neglect correction, we continue in error. If we neglect correction, we continue in error. Anybody here ever ignored their GPS because they knew a better way to go? When I was coming home this Christmas, I got directions from somebody, and I listened. They said, you're going to have a lot less traffic if you go this way, this way, this way. And so I put my address in the GPS, and I started driving. And well, don't take that turn, because they said keep going here. And we made it home in about two and a half hours extra. But the GPS the whole time was like recalculating, recalculating. go this way, go this way. I'm like, well, eventually it's gonna catch up and it'll be wrong with me was the mindset with it. But the thing is, if you ignore correction, you remain in error. So do not neglect salvation. Do not neglect correction. Number three, do not neglect compassion. I'm just going to read this verse for you, Acts chapter 6, verse number 1. And in those days when the number of disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Understand the story here is that the first deacons being instituted within the early church, they were seeking to take care of one another in the midst of persecution. Certain people had been giving money and land to help meet the needs of others within the church. Understand historically what we're dealing with here. This is a primarily Jewish church. A lot of Jewish people had been saved. You have some that weren't Jews, because you see in this verse there's Grecians and Hebrews. But it's majority Jewish, and as a majority Jewish church, there was probably a majority of Jewish leadership. And there was, as things were being distributed, we talked about neglect of not caring about stuff that doesn't affect you personally. those that were distributing, they saw the needs that were closest to them and they met those and it was brought to the attention and said, hey, these people need help too. And then it was corrected. It was addressed. There was correction given. They responded to it. And then those needs were able to be met. The deacons were put in place to oversee that, to make sure everybody got what they needed. This was not racism or bias on the part of the early church leadership there. They just overlooked some things that they neglected it and then was brought to their attention and they corrected it. So do not neglect compassion. We need to learn to see the needs of those around us. Let's not neglect to have compassion. The book of Jude tells us that having compassion makes a difference. We need to have compassion. Take a personal interest in your church family. Let the plights and joys of others affect you. You say, well, that's happening to them. That doesn't bother me. Well, be personally interested in them and then it will bother you. Have a personal interest in those around you. Don't just show up at church to be here to get something for yourself and leave. Develop a relationship. That's why we have things like Pray and Play Night and Fifth Sunday Fellowships and things so you can become personally invested with your church family so that when somebody is hurting, you can hurt with them. Because that's one thing we have in the church. Weep with those that weep. Rejoice with those that rejoice. See the needs of others. And we do that by being personally involved. Because if we're not personally involved, it doesn't bother us. And if it doesn't bother us, we're not going to do anything about it. So do not neglect compassion. Number four here, do not neglect nutrition. I'm keeping them rhyming, I couldn't come up with alliteration, so I rhymed them all here. Colossians 2.23, it says, which things have indeed a show of wisdom and will worship and humility and neglecting of the body, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh. This is a verse speaking critically of the outward displays of spirituality from man's religion. It talks about holy days and Sabbath and those that want to remain in bondage to the law. They were being abusive to their physical bodies in order to achieve some sort of spiritual benefit. Now, there is an area for us as Christians to neglect our bodies, and that we call it fasting, as for a period of time that we fast in order to pray and seek the Lord. Now, understand the physical deprivation of fasting is not some kind of magic trick or trump card that forces God to do anything. That's what these people treat. Well, if I beat my body, it helps my spirit. I put my flesh in subjection so I can pursue the Lord, but it's not like, hey God, I did the fast, now you have to give me what I want. That's not how this works. Here, this bodily neglect in this verse is being spoken of in a negative sense. We do not want to make an idol out of our bodies. Some people do this, and the way that they control their diets and they go to the gym, they've made an idol of their flesh, but there is biblical precedent for taking care of your body. After all, your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. It is the outward representation of Christ to this world, and if you neglect your body, if you neglect your nutrition, you're not going to be a good testimony to the Lord. So, again, something we've been commanded not to neglect when it comes to the Word of God. Last one we see in the Bible this morning that the Bible says specifically not to neglect, and I title it, Do Not Neglect Administration. In 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse number 14, Paul tells Timothy, Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which is given thee by the prophecy, by the laying on of hands of the presbytery. And so if you remember from our class on spiritual gifts, the administrations is the ministry where you get to use your gift. And we dealt with this in detail some months ago. And if you want to review that, or if you didn't hear it, all of the messages with the notes are available online. But just in summary, you have a gift, God wants you to use it. Don't make light of it. Don't treat it carelessly. Use it. Be intentional about it. This is the same word for neglecting salvation. It's just not to value it the way that you should. And God's given you a spiritual gift for you to use, but we pursue other things instead. That's neglecting our gift. It's just like those who left the invitation unread, a gift that sits dormant was worthless from God in the life of the individual that doesn't use it. If you have a gift from God and you do, and you're not using it, there was no point in God giving it to you. So don't neglect that. So quickly this morning as we wrap up, what do we do to overcome neglect? In Revelation chapter 2 verse number 5, this is an admonition given to the church, one of the churches of Revelation, it says there, This kind of gives us a pattern of when we have something we know we're supposed to be doing, or we have been doing in the past and we fell away from it, How do we get back to that? That's what neglect is. You knew what you're supposed to do from God, but we've been leaving it alone. We've been letting it sit by itself. We've been letting it continue naturally, and it's been getting worse, so how do we fix that? We do these three things. Remember, repent, and return. Remember, repent, and return. Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen. Remember what God has commanded you to do. In 2 Peter 1, verse number 12, The Bible says, Wherefore, I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of those things, though ye know them and be established in the present truth. What he says there, that word not be negligent, he said, I'm not going to neglect to tell you what you already know so that you can continue to do the truth. That's what he's saying there in that verse. We know what we're supposed to do, but we need to be reminded or remember what God wants us to do. We go to the Lord in prayer, we read our Bible, we listen to the message of church, and when something comes up and you say, you know what, that's what God wants me to do and I've been neglecting it. We remember that, we take note of that truth, and then we repent. Remember? Repent. Repent for your failure to heed to the things that God wants you to do. We have lots of things that we treat as if they were mistakes instead of sin. I saw a t-shirt once. Somebody was going to buy it for me. It said, I've never been wrong. I thought I was once, but it turns out I was mistaken. And that's kind of our attitude with a sin like this. Well, it wasn't murder. I just haven't been praying the way I should. But when you treat something as a mistake, you can't go to God and get forgiveness for it. Because you have to recognize it as sin if you're going to confess it and have forgiveness for it. So you need to recognize sin in your life, not dismiss it as something that's not that big of a deal. God told us to do it. To him that knoweth to do good, doeth it not. To him it is sin. It's sin when we're not doing what we're supposed to do. And so we have this admonition from the Lord to repent, to go back. Repentance is a change of mind that results in a change of behavior. A change of mind that results in the change of behavior. Without a change of behavior, there has not been repentance. And so we need to see what we've done wrong, remember that, repent, and then number three, return. Go back to what you were doing. There's a verse, very interesting verse in Matthew 23, where Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees. He says to them, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye pay tithe of the mint and the anise and the cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. So we see that verse, they've been taking their herbs that they gather and making sure they're pulling their tithe out of their herbs and they're giving that to the Lord, but they've forgotten to worry about judgment and mercy and faith. But it's interesting what Jesus told them. He says, these you ought to have done. You should be paying tithe out of your herbs. But don't neglect the other one. It says, but not to leave the other undone. If God told you to do it, we need to go back and do it. Go back and return. Yes, there's areas where you've been obedient, but there's areas where you've been leaving it alone. You've been leaving it undone. God says we need to return to that, to not leave it undone, and that's how we overcome neglect, is to remember, repent, and return to what God wants us to do. Let's go ahead and close in a word of prayer this morning. Lord God, we love you. and thank you for your word and what it can teach us, Lord. Lord, it's so easy, Lord, just to become spiritually lazy, to become too busy, that we start to neglect, just leave things undone. It's very easy to leave things undone in our lives that ought to be done. Lord, I pray you'd challenge us this morning, maybe from one of these five, in Your Word that You've given us this word neglect and warned us about. But maybe in another area, Lord, that we've failed to do what we know we ought to do. I pray we would overcome that. We'd remember, God, what You've commanded us to do. We'd go back to those things. We'd repent of our failures. Lord, that we can live lives that please You, Lord. We ask this all in Christ's name. Amen. All right, thank you. I dismiss this morning.