The title of this message is patterned after a statement in Jeremiah 10, specifically Jeremiah 10, verse 2, which says, do not learn the ways of the Gentiles. And I want to encourage us to ask a question. regarding the ways of the Gentiles, the ways of worldliness that are always impinging upon us in one way or another. Is your home a sanctuary for holiness to the Lord? Or are you celebrating the celebrities and their entertainments? That's the question I want us to consider. When you speak about things like this, you have to recognize that, you know, pastors aren't in everybody's homes, so I'm not really, you know, I don't have first-hand knowledge of things. But I do have first-hand knowledge from God about the difficulties that all families face. Pastoral care involves warning. It involves comfort. It involves encouragement. It involves instruction. It involves various things. But one of the functions that God demands of pastors is to warn, and in other words, to mark out what's dangerous, to name names. to deal with dangers within the heart, dangers within the fold of the church, and dangers from without in the culture that are pushing upon us. Every person in this church is not under the same obligation that your elders are. We're actually under obligation to warn. We have a different role. That means that we're going to be a little bit different. We're going to think of things differently. We're going to think of threats differently than the rest of you. And we are going to warn and we're going to exhort more than probably anybody in the church because that's the job that God has given us to do. And it's very important that we fulfill it. The Bible makes it really clear. that pastors are supposed to have watch over the souls of the people in their church, which is terrifying. in many ways. We don't control everything. What we can do is preach the Word and then do what the Bible tells us to do. It means that from time to time a pastor must cause disturbance in the congregation, in the hearts of the people, maybe to make people's stomachs churn a little bit and worry a little bit about where they might be. And sometimes when you're causing a disturbance in someone's soul, there's resistance. and...or perhaps even opposition and perhaps even worse than that. But the Bible makes it very clear what we're supposed to do. In 2 Timothy 4-2 there is this charge, I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His Kingdom, preach the Word, be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers. And they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables, but you be watchful in all things." What the Apostle is exhorting elders to do is very specific, convince, rebuke, and exhort with long-suffering and teaching. Why? Because it's important that you catch people before they go too far, because they'll become a time when they won't be able to hear you. And so it's important that there are warnings that come from pastors, and I want you to consider this message like that. Acts 20 verse 28 we find a very similar thing where the Apostle Paul is speaking to the elders in the church in Ephesus and he says, "'Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.'" also from among yourselves men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves." I think that we should apply that in two ways. There are actual people that will surface in our church who will do this kind of thing, and they will act like savage wolves. Secondly, there are savage wolves that are roving about to devour your souls. And these don't have names like they do with somebody in the church, but they come from the personalities and the messages that come from those personalities in the culture. There are savage wolves everywhere, some of them are in the church and some of them are broadcast into your homes, some of them may be even brought into your homes in various ways. But here's the question, is your home a sanctuary for holiness to the Lord or are you celebrating the celebrities and their entertainments? I want to bring you some warnings from the Word of God. Of course, the whole thrust of this message really is summed up in, do not learn the way of the Gentiles. In that passage in Jeremiah 10, he makes this command, do not learn the way of the Gentiles, but then he says, for the customs of the peoples are futile...the customs of the peoples are futile. We all live in the midst of a culture where the people have customs, customs of entertainment, customs of intellectual activity, various kinds of customs. We could document various kinds of patterns that people have. And what God tells His people is do not learn the ways of the Gentiles because their customs are futile. And then after saying this, And Jeremiah goes on and he describes different ways that are...the way that the Gentiles are adorning their lives and making their lives beautiful and exciting, and he's saying, don't learn those ways. Be very careful. Recognize where you live. In Psalm 105 verse 35, David laments the state of the people and he says, they mingled with the Gentiles. and learned their works." What does that mean? It means that there was an openness and an absorption of the peoples, or the Gentiles, and as a result They patterned after their works. There was a way of thinking that always translates into a way of living. And so David is lamenting the state of the people. I'll back to this one question. Is your home a sanctuary for holiness to the Lord? Or are you celebrating the celebrities and all their entertainments? In Leviticus 20 verses 22 and 23, Moses warns about walking in the statutes walking in the truths, walking in the principles of the ungodly. He says, you shall therefore keep all My statutes and My judgments, notice the contrast, Mine, and perform them that the land where I'm bringing you to dwell may not vomit you out. You shall not walk in the statutes of the nation which I am casting out before you. for they commit all these things, therefore I abhor them." What are the statutes of the nations? What are the statutes of the ungodly society that we live in the midst of? Well, I think we know what they are. I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to itemize them, but this culture has statutes of acceptability and the church will always be reacting or embracing. those kinds of statutes. In Exodus chapter 23 verse 24, Moses offers a very similar warning that the people of God do not do the things that the pagans do. He says, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them. And when you read, you shall not bow down to their gods, don't think of a wooden statue. Think of something really interesting and beautiful and compelling that you really like that draws sin, or maybe something that isn't necessarily sinful but has captured your heart. You shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do according to their works, but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars. so you shall serve the Lord your God." The gods of this age aren't wood and stone, they're digital, mainly. And they work themselves out in the way the things we see, the things we hear, and the way we begin to think as a result. And what Moses is saying is, tear them down. In the same way that Moses commanded the people to tear down the idols, the physical idols, the high places where the people gathered for immorality. and for personal success and happiness. He said, tear them down in the same way we should look at the idols of our own day and say, tear them down, get rid of them, expunge them from your house. The Jews had a practice, they would spread leaven all over their house. And then they would sweep it all up and burn it. The leaven was symbolizing sin. In other words, to do a complete inventory of your house and expunge anything that contradicts the knowledge and the glory and the beauty of God. In Deuteronomy 7, 26, Moses commands them to keep their very houses free. from anything that defiles, nor shall you bring an abomination into your house lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor for it is an accursed thing." Moses is speaking about bringing things into your house that do not comport with the glory and the love of God. And he says, don't bring them into your house. We have tremendous challenges in the culture that we live in right now because of the way that things are imported into our house and they sit in our living rooms and they talk to us and they sing to us, even though they come from another place. In chapter 12, verses 29 through 32, Moses warns the children of Israel not to do what the Canaanites do. Because why because he uses a very powerful word to describe why he says lest you be ensnared Lest you be ensnared Don't let them in they're setting a trap and you're likely to be ensnared The nicest people can be ensnared In chapter 13 of Deuteronomy, Moses warns the children of Israel about being led astray by family members in 13, 6 through 11. Moses is warning about very powerful and interesting people who perform wondrous things. And he says...Moses says that the Lord will send these alluring influences to you to test you. God will send these influences to you to test you. And some of them are family members. Go ahead and read Deuteronomy 13, you'll get an idea of it. You have these very interesting and powerful and compelling and almost miraculous people and they're part of your family. And Moses... is warning the children of Israel not to follow their family over the cliff of idolatry, because even your family members can cause you to do that. I mean, what you...I think we've seen this. Often when children grow older in a family, they begin to control where the family goes. But it's their idolatry that's charting the trajectory and parents often follow their children right over the cliff. Moses says this is a test, and I'll quote what the test is, whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. That's why they come into your life, to test you, to help you to know who you love, whether you love Him, love His ways, and hate everything that contradicts His ways. You know, syncretism was always the greatest problem in Israel and it's always the greatest threat to the church, mingling, mixing, embracing the ways of the Gentiles into the families and into the churches. And, of course, it happens in our minds first. So is your home a sanctuary for holiness? Is your home completely dedicated to holiness? David said, I will set no unclean thing before my eyes. I will walk in my house with a perfect heart. There's a law of nature that is never overthrown. There's a force of nature that cannot be contradicted. And here's that force, here's that law. Your family will be conformed to whatever you expose it to. Your heart will be conformed to those things as well. Everything you do, everything you bring into your home, grows affections, everything. And we should be very careful what we expose our family to because it will become a part of them and it will shape their affections. It will take them in a direction. It might become a tradition. What you watch will shape your identity. What you feed grows. You cannot contradict that law of nature. It's the way we're all wired. What we do, we love more and more, even if that's a bad thing, even if it's an irrelevant, silly thing, even if it's a worthless thing. The Bible talks about worthless idols. Wow, they're amazing, but they're worthless. Everything takes us in a direction because we're wired as human beings to continue to pursue what we are pursuing in the moment. We're always becoming who we are, and that's why it's so critical that we let the Word of Christ dwell richly. That's why when Jesus said, if my words abide in you, Then you'll pray what you desire, because these things matter tremendously. And this is very graphically illustrated in so many ways. I'll use probably the most common illustration for how this works. It's most graphically illustrated by people who become addicted to pornography. It begins with some small morsel. And then that morsel grows a little bit more and a little bit more. And you turn around and you're devoured by it. But it always starts with some little thing that might be on the borderline, like maybe not all that bad. But everything is going in a direction. Everything in your life is a trajectory. We need to really understand that. I think the Bible makes that very clear. There's a poem attributed to an author by the name of Samuel Smiles and his...it's in a work that is called Happy Homes and the Hearts that Make Them. Sow a thought and you reap an act. Sow an act and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny. I think the Bible confirms that that's true. What a family watches, listens to, and reads is the most powerful shaping force in that family. Be very careful. Be very careful. My admonition is be like David. I will set no unclean thing before my eyes. I pray our whole church is like that. David said, I hate the work of those who fall away. It will not cling to me. A perverse heart will depart from me. I will not know wickedness. That's Psalm 101, verses 3 and 4. David said a very similar thing in Psalm 139, 21 and 22. Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate You? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with a perfect hatred. I count them my enemies." In Psalm 5 verse 4 and 6 we find a very similar thing. For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with you. You shall destroy those who speak falsehood. You hate all the workers of iniquity. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and the deceitful man. In Psalm 119 verse 104, David says, therefore I hate every false way. Do you hate every false way? Or do you play patty cake with some of the false ways that might not be all that bad? Solomon said in Proverbs 8.1, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate." Remarkable. Ephesians 5.11 says, "...and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them, for it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret." So is your household, every inch of it, set apart for holiness to the Lord? Is every occupation, every entertainment, everything you do, every trajectory, for holiness to the Lord? Because God desires a holy people. And that holiness is built one day at a time in a home and in a heart." Now Moses speaks of the lifestyle of the families going into the Promised Land. You know, Moses writes Deuteronomy in the last month of his life and he's preparing the children of Israel to go into a pagan land. They're going to see things they've never seen before. They're going to see idolatry like they've never seen it. They're going to see immorality like they've never seen it before. They've been in the wilderness for 40 years and the first generation has died off. They've not been in cities. They've not been in places like Canaan. And Moses is preparing the children of Israel for how they will function, how they'll survive in the midst of a pagan land. And he spends the book of Deuteronomy telling them how they ought to live in a pagan land. That's the thrust of Deuteronomy. He assumes that they'll be surrounded by things that are just astoundingly wicked, and what are they going to do about it? And he really, in many places in Deuteronomy, he's emphasizing family life on the one hand. On the other hand, he's emphasizing the worship of God, particularly in the tabernacle. Those are the two main thrusts of Deuteronomy, the functioning of a family, and also the functioning of the worship of God in the temple and the laws that they're to live by when they go into that pagan land. And here's what he says. By way of promise, he makes so many promises in Deuteronomy to his people who refuse the ways of this world. He says, and it shall be that if you earnestly obey My commandments, which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will give you the reign of your land in its season." And then he says this in chapter 12, verse 18, "'Therefore you shall lay up these words of Mine in your heart and in your soul and bind them as a sign on your hand.'" You shall teach them diligently to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up." You'll recognize that as a repetition of Deuteronomy 6 and a portion of Deuteronomy 4. He emphasizes this over and over again in Deuteronomy. Do not learn the ways of the Gentiles. don't operate by their principles and their philosophies, be a holy people. And let's ask ourselves, is my home a sanctuary for holiness to the Lord? Or is there a celebration of anything that contradicts it? Would you pray with me? Lord, You have issued very clear commands to help us in the ways in which we should go so that we would find ourselves in the blessing of Your ways. Your ways are pleasant ways. All Your paths are peace. Holiness is the happiest place to be. And so I pray, Lord, that You would use this warning to help us all to scan everything in our lives. Lord, we're coming up to a new year, and I pray that You would give us such a heart within us to love You and keep all Your commandments. so that there would be a heritage of holiness in the world after we're gone. But for now, Lord, I pray that all of us as a people would be like our Father David, who said, I will set no unclean thing before my eyes. Amen.