In this sermon, the speaker discusses the potential dangers of video games, television, movies, and other forms of media in the home. He shares a personal anecdote about his son becoming violent after playing a violent video game. The speaker emphasizes the importance of monitoring and being selective about what media enters the home, particularly in terms of violence, sorcery, magic, and sexual perversion. He urges parents to be mindful of the influence of media on their family and to prioritize the presence of Christ in their homes.

As a Christian parent, your primary goal should be to pass the faith onto your children. All other things, such as a high moral standard, quality education, a strong work ethic, a respect and concern for others, as important as they might be, they are secondary. One of the ways that we can pass the faith onto our children is to create a godly environment in the home. Now, there's two ways that we go about that. We do that by first getting rid of everything that would pollute the environment, and then we bring in those things that are going to help create a godly atmosphere. And so, that's what we want to consider tonight, establishing a Christ-centered home. So, first of all, we've got to begin by getting rid of certain things in our homes. You know, the children of Israel would celebrate each year the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and leaven is, quite frequently in scripture, a type of sin. And so, at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, it was a time when God was speaking to them about being free from sin. And as the feast would approach, what they would do is they would go throughout their homes, and they would search in every nook and cranny for any leaven, and they would remove it from the home. And that's really something that we must do as well. We need to make sure that we have sin-free homes as much as we possibly can. And so, we want to consider together some of the things that might be polluting the environment in the home, things that we would need to go through our homes and purge out. And so, I've got a list of several things, and we'll just go through each of them in order, and then we'll come to the positive side of actually putting Christ at the center of the home. But let's begin with alcohol. The Bible does not strictly forbid the drinking of alcohol, but it certainly forbids drunkenness, and it certainly tells us to be wise and prudent in our association with alcohol. And I'm not a person that's really, you know, given over to legalism, but as I consider the presence of alcohol in the home of a Christian, I really do have to question whether or not that is a wise thing. I really have to question whether or not I'm sending the right kind of message. And I think that this is one of those things that it could be possible that even though we do have some liberty, that we would not exercise our liberty in this area at this time because alcohol is such a massive problem in our culture. We talked about it a little bit a while back when we were in the fifth chapter where Paul said, do not be drunk with wine in which is excess, but be filled with the spirit. And we gave some statistics and so forth at the time. But one of the interesting things, and I don't remember that we really highlighted it, one of the major problems among young people today is alcohol, drunkenness. And as a matter of fact, more and more, they're finding that kids younger and younger are getting addicted to alcohol. And one of the ways that it happens quite frequently is at home when the parents are away and the children break into the hidden stash and they start to dip into it. They start to experiment with it and they invite some friends over and pretty soon a problem begins to develop. And so this is one of those things that I think even though we could argue the case that there is liberty and some people will, I'm sure, write me a letter to tell me that they have liberty in this area. When liberty becomes a stumbling block, then we're not to exercise it. That's what the scriptures tell us. We're not to allow our liberty to become a stumbling block or an offense to somebody else and especially a child. And so for us as parents seeking to establish a Christ-centered environment in the home, I don't think it's wise or really ultimately will lend itself to the kind of environment that we want if we have alcohol in our homes. I think it's something that we ought to purge from our homes and just have nothing to do with it because the last thing I would want to do is be instrumental in leading my children into something as destructive as the abuse of alcohol could be. And if it was just that they felt because of its presence in the home that it probably wasn't that big of a deal and it was something that was okay because mom and dad do it and then they ended up in trouble through it, what a tragedy that I felt so convinced that I had to exercise my liberty as to end up seeing my own children suffer as a result of it. So I believe wisdom would say that as we begin to purge our homes, we would purge out alcohol. Drugs, I even asked myself the question, should we include that? I think that's a no-brainer. If you are bringing drugs into the home, then you probably got a lot of other problems that we've addressed throughout the course of Ephesians here. Now, television. I have made numerous comments from this pulpit about television, the vast majority of them negative, and I've been actually accused over the years of being a hard-nosed fundamentalist because I have criticized TV so often and yet I'm here once again tonight to criticize it, not only with you but to those listening over the radio. You know, when it comes to television, here's something that we really do have to realize that at best, parental discretion is seriously needed when it comes to a television within the home. Now, we're talking tonight about a Christ-centered home. Do you know that most homes in this country could truly be referred to as a television-centered home? Most homes, most people in this country have not just one TV but two, three, five, got them on in every room. Some people have them on 24-7. And the culture is addicted to television. And this is one of those things that, as I said, I think at best we need major parental discretion when it comes to what's going on with the television. Now, I think most of what you see on television is rubbish, but occasionally there are some decent programs. And yet even when you're watching a decent program, you know what I've found recently? I have found that the commercials, the advertisements are more polluting quite often than, you know, the actual program that you're watching. Just trying to watch the NBA playoffs recently. You know, the game is fine. It's the commercials in between that are just over the top. I can't believe it. I was back in New Jersey last week over at a friend's house, and we were watching one of the playoff games. And this particular friend of mine has been living in England for the past four years, and so, you know, he didn't have any television. And he's just recently back in the country, only back a couple of months, and he hadn't really watched anything. And so, we had gone over to his parents' house, and they had the TV. And so, we sat down and watched the game. And it was funny, as we were watching the game, and as the commercials would come on, I would notice that he would immediately turn away from the TV set. And rightfully so, he had to because of just the stuff that was, you know, coming out in the commercials. And, you know, again, there's so much that we really need to be discreet when it comes to television. Now, one of the popular programs today, I've read about this program in the newspaper. I want to read you a little bit about it from the Register tonight. Everybody's talking about it. I don't know if you've heard of it, but the new rage is the Osbournes. And, you know, I can't believe the longevity of Ozzy Osbourne. I mean, this guy has been corrupting people for a minimum of 30 years. He was corrupting me when I was a teenager, and he's still at it. And I'll tell you, man, this guy has hell to pay unless he repents because he has corrupted so many people. But now he's got his own TV program, and he is the ideal family man, according to many today in the media. And believe it or not, I was absolutely shocked by this. Dan Quayle recently made a reference to the Osbournes. You remember several years ago, Dan Quayle made a negative reference about the show Murphy Brown and, you know, the single motherhood thing and all of that. And he was just, you know, basically they assassinated him in the media over that. And then they finally came out and admitted that everything he said was actually true. Now, I don't know if Dan was just trying to get back in good grace or whatever, but he recently made a comment that the Osbournes was actually a pretty good show that set forth some good solid traditional values. Now, come on, Dan, give me a break. I mean, I can understand your desire to be relevant, but I think he's gone a little overboard here. But let me just read this to you real quickly because I want to make a point from it. So this is the article from the Register a few weeks back. Quick, which celebrity father said the following in his real life TV family? I love you all. I love you more than life itself. If you guessed Ozzy Osbourne, Rock God, Prince of Darkness, Potbellied Pop, you're right. This year's version of TV super dad is a lover, not a screamer. Okay, he's a screamer and an unrepentant bleeper. That means they have to bleep out most of what he says, but not a mean-spirited one. Much like Ozzy Nelson, who created the TV super dad during his 14-year run, The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet, the current Ozzy, the star of the latest TV family of the moment, the Osbournes, is at heart a gentle dude. He's also weirdly real, which given TV's history isn't so weird at all. Though households like the Osbournes with a mom and a dad and at least one school-aged kid are only one form of family in real America, they are standard fare on TV. And sometimes, if only because of sheer numbers, TV portrays this particular version of the family in a fairly accurate way. Okay, listen to what they're saying. This version of the family, mom and dad at home, kid in school, this show is a fairly accurate representation of what you find in the culture. Now, listen to what it says. It says, Ozzy and his brood hash out any number of real issues. Here they are. Staying out late, smoking pot, condom wearing, homework. Real families often discuss the same stuff. Which real families discuss this kind of stuff? Come on. You know, this is so ludicrous. You know, granted, the culture has certainly gone downhill, but I promise you, I guarantee you, the vast majority of American families do not sit around discussing pot smoking and the other things mentioned here. Well, maybe homework and staying out late, but you know, so Ozzy and wife Sharon are even solidly married during a time when divorce in real life is leveling off. And so, you know, this is the kind of stuff that the television is piping into our homes. Now, when we go out into the world, when we go out into the culture, you know, we're going to get bombarded and what can we do about it? But we really ought to seek to guard our homes against this kind of stuff. And that's why I say, if we have a television, then parental discretion is seriously needed. You cannot safely just let your kids sit before a television today. You cannot do it. You know, TV is a part of an overall plan to alter society. Now, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but there is definitely some social engineering going on in our culture, and TV is making a massive contribution to it. You see, what television is doing is it's trying to reshape people's thinking. It's trying to reshape people's values. And it's taking totally bizarre, weird, abnormal, sinful stuff and trying to make it normal and acceptable and fun and cool and groovy and everything else. And, you know, if you're not buying into it, then you're just an old-fashioned weirdo. That's what's being communicated. And so with the television, we need to be very, very discreet. And today, you know, we don't have the, you know, 13 or so channels that we used to have when I was a kid. Now we've got hundreds of channels, and we've got all kinds of unbelievable stuff that can come right into the homes. And so should we have a television as a Christian family? Well, if we do have one, it should play a very minor role in the home. It should only be on occasionally, and when it's on, it should be monitored by us as parents. Now that takes us to movies and video games. Movies and video games, there's tons of movies. And now, you know, we've got the advent of the video store, and we've got the DVD and all of that stuff. And you can go out and basically pick up almost any movie and bring it home and watch it. Now, there's a positive side to it. And the positive thing is that you can be selective. The downside is that quite often we're not selective. We don't really monitor that like we should. But as parents, we have the responsibility to be careful about what we allow to come into the home through movies, through video movies. And we have kind of an unwritten rule in our home that we do not allow. Well, I'll tell you one thing we do not allow. We do not allow PG-13 movies. I found that PG-13 movies oftentimes are worse than R-rated movies. Some R-rated movies, believe it or not, I don't believe they should have ever gotten an R rating. Some are rated R because of violence or gore or something like that. Some great war movies, some, you know, movies that have historical significance and so forth, like maybe The Patriot or Glory or some of those kinds of movies, they're rated R, not because they have anything vulgar or obscene in them or, you know, any sort of nudity or anything, but because of the violence. They're movies that deal with the Civil War or the Revolutionary War or something like that. But those movies can actually be good and educational. But I'll tell you, the PG-13 rating, that, I think in almost every case, there's filth in it. There's perversion in it. And so, we just have that across the board that we don't have the PG-13 movies. And again, when it comes to these things, you see, as parents, we have to be involved. You can't just leave it up to the kids. Go to the video store, pick out anything you want, and then, you know, they go off into the den and watch the video and you go off doing whatever you're doing. And they could be in there polluting their minds. So, we have to be careful to help them. And so, we have to use moderation and wisdom when it comes to movies. There are some good movies. Still, occasionally, Hollywood comes up with something that's actually good. I remember seeing a movie a few years ago, Remember the Titans. And I thought, that is one of the best movies I'd seen in a long time. And so, you know, occasionally, you can find something that's good. And I don't think there's anything the matter with sitting down and watching a good movie with the family. But we have to be careful to make sure that we're not allowing garbage into our homes. And then, you have video games. Now, video games can be very dangerous. Many of them are extremely violent. Many of them are filled with underlying themes of sorcery and magic and those kinds of things. And then, some of them are also containing sexual perversion of some sort or another. So, again, it's important that you actually monitor this. You know, video games have ratings on them. I don't know if you realize that or not. My youngest son, he likes to play video games. And we allowed him a fair amount of liberty with that. But I would notice that every time he'd play this one video game, he would become extremely violent. And he would just start attacking his sister. And, you know, I'd say, what is he watching? So, I sat down with him or what is he playing? And he's playing this game Street Fighter where, you know, as a street fighter, you're basically just beating people to death. And, you know, he's sitting there for, you know, hours just, you know, kicking and punching and flipping and killing people. And then, you know, once he's off the video game, there's Kelsey. He's going to practice what he's been learning on his video game on her. And so, I had to just, you know, strictly forbid him. No, you cannot play this game. I'm sorry. And, you know, we had to bring it back to, you know, something more civilized, car racing game or sports or something like that. But these are things that, again, we have to purge our homes of these kinds of things. These things can create massive problems in the lives of our children if they go unchecked. Now, the question often comes up about music. Should a Christian listen to secular music? That's a question that's asked frequently. And I think with music, we need to use the same kind of wisdom and standard that we use with any other form of entertainment. There are certain movies that I would never watch and I'd never allow my children to watch them. There are, as I said, certain video games that I would never allow my children to play. And there's certain music that I would never allow them to listen to. And I would, you know, forbid them totally and completely. But I don't think that it's wise to just say that all music is bad and wrong and unacceptable unless it's Christian music. Or, you know, what is Christian music? Sometimes you've got Christian music. Sometimes my kids come home with Christian music CDs. I'm listening to them. I think, where did you get this piece of junk? Dad, it's Christian. You know, what? What do you mean it's Christian? How is it Christian? Well, it's Christian because these guys said they were Christians. But what are they singing about? They're not singing about anything that's Christian. So, again, with music, we need to use wisdom and we need to use that kind of a standard where there are certain things that we're just absolutely not going to allow in the home. And we, as parents, need to be responsible there as well. And then we have the internet. And the internet has many wonderful attributes, and it can be a great resource. But as you well know, it can be the main pipeline for filth and perversion and every other vile thing conceivable to come into your home as well. And I believe that out of prudence, that if you have internet access into your home, you ought to have a filter on it. And if you're not filtering it, you're just, you're setting yourself up perhaps for a fall, and you're also paving the way for younger people in your home to perhaps get into trouble. And so, be responsible. And you can go online and just, you can download a filter. And they work quite well, actually. And I think that's wisdom. And then finally, as we're talking about purging things out, we do have to come to the realm of literature as well, even though it's not so popular today to read. We do need to make sure the reading material around is reading material that, again, is going to be edifying if it would be picked up, or at least not going to stumble or lead someone into something that they shouldn't be into. And a lot of the fictional stuff today, a lot of the novels, the romance novels, a lot of the mystery stuff, or even the, I can't think of the word, but the Stephen King kind of stuff, that stuff particularly is downright diabolical. And I can't imagine anyone as a Christian having that kind of stuff in their home. But not just the bookshelf, but the magazine rack. I think there's more pollution in some of the popular magazines today than, well, there's just as much as you find on TV or the internet or anywhere else. You know, when you're in the market and all the magazines are there, and you just, you know, you can't help but see them, and you can't help but sometimes just read the various articles that are there in the magazine. And I mean, the stuff is just unbelievable. And so we need to be very wise and discreet and careful. And we need to purge our homes of anything that would be inconsistent with a profession of godliness. That's really kind of the bottom line. If this, in some way, shape, or form, brings sin, compromise, something contrary to what God has clearly revealed in His word into my home, then I am making a major mistake by allowing it to come in. Rather than allowing it to come in, I've got to purge it out. And you know, in some cases, some people, because they don't have the self-control that's necessary, they really ought to just take even more drastic measures and just get rid of some stuff. You know, you can live without a TV. It is possible. You can do it. You can live without a computer. Cheryl and I read our phone bill that came in the mail today, and we decided we can live without cell phones. It's crazy. You know, isn't it funny how things come along, and we just get so dependent on them? I was with a couple friends the other day, and it was, I think, our third trip to Starbucks. And I asked them, how did we ever survive before we had cell phones and Starbucks? What did we do with ourselves? But you know how it is. Things come along, and you just get so dependent on it. And this just, you know, but we don't need these things. The vast majority of people that ever lived on the planet lived without most of what we see as necessary. I've got to have this. So you can do it. You can live without TV. You can live without video games and these things, and you might be much better off if you were to do that. Now, that's looking at sort of the negative approach by purging things out. But now we want to talk about the positive, and that's just how do we practically put Christ at the center of the home. Well, remember, a moment ago, I said that you could, I think, safely build a case that the television is the center of the home for most Americans and Europeans as well. But you know what? In the Christian home, the Bible needs to be the center of the home. You know, it might be great to go out. You can still buy those really big Bibles. Just go get a really big Bible, take your TV out, and set the Bible right where the TV used to sit, and that'll be a statement. You know, we're gonna put the Bible at the center of the home. But you know, when you think about the Bible being the Word of God, when you think about it being the words of life, and you think about how little we really know. You know, I have been teaching the Bible for 20 years now, and you know, I still feel dwarfed in its presence. I still feel like I don't, I still, there's still so much of it I don't know. And how can I get to know it if I'm distracted by all these other meaningless, time-wasting things? But in a Christian home, the Bible ought to be the center of the home. And the song Dan did from Deuteronomy, that passage there where God is giving Israel instruction for home life, and basically God tells them, this book is to be the center of your life. It's to be the center of your family. It's to be the center of your home. When you rise up in the morning, you're to be talking about it. When you walk along your way, you're to be meditating on it. When you sit down at the dinner table, you're to be discussing it. When you go to bed at night, it's to be the last thing on your mind. That's what God said to Israel with the old covenant. Now, Paul says in writing to the Corinthians that the old covenant, as glorious as it was, did not compare in glory to the new covenant. Now, we have the new covenant. We have the full revelation. We have the complete understanding of salvation, and yet we are negligent of our Bibles. And far too often, the Bible is not the center of the home for the Christian, but many of the things that are the center of the home for the non-Christian are likewise the same in the Christian home, and that should not be the case. The Bible must become the center of our homes. That must become the rallying point. That must become the thing that we spend our time getting to know and understand, discussing it together, sharing it with one another, teaching it to our children. And so, the Bible must be put at the center of the home. And then we have worship and praise, and we have been blessed exceedingly with an abundance of praise music. And, you know, there are certain forms of secular music that I enjoy, but, you know, I find myself not really feeling like that's where I want to spend my time listening. You know, if I'm in a market or something, and an old Beach Boys song comes on, or a Beatles song or something like that, you know, oh yeah, I like that song. But then to go out and buy the CD and stick it in and listen to it, it's like, you know, what a waste. You know what I mean? It's like, it just doesn't do anything. Somebody recently loaned me one of the, you know, Beatle greatest hits thing. And I was driving somewhere one time, and I listened to the whole thing with the exception of one song. I refuse to listen to it because it's blasphemous. But, you know, even as I listen to it, and I like music, and I've been involved in music, and I like the Beatles and so forth. But, you know, as I finished listening, I thought, you know, so what? Big deal. So what? These guys wrote a bunch of songs, and they're, you know, throw it out the window. Who cares? Because it doesn't, in the end, you know, although it might entertain you, although it might make you feel good, you know, quite often a lot of the secular music for me, and probably many of you, it brings back memories that I really don't care to remember. That's one of the negative aspects of it. But, you know, in the end, it just doesn't, it doesn't edify, does it? It doesn't build you up. It doesn't bless you. It doesn't leave you with anything meaningful. You know, as good as the Beatles songs were, I mean, come on, I want to hold your hand. You know, what is that? And, you know, the great classic Paul McCartney song, Yesterday, and you think how profound, how poetic, how deep. Then you realize when he first wrote it, the lyrics were actually scrambled eggs. And so you think, wow, deep, Paul, scrambled eggs. But that wouldn't sell, so he turned it into Yesterday. And, you know, sometimes you can, you know, you can listen to an artist, and, you know, you get into their lyrics, and, wow, what did they mean, you know? And you think there's some real deep, significant, you know, even spiritual meaning to it, and then you read an article where they just say, well, you know, I was stoned when I wrote that. I don't know what it meant, you know, and you're like, oh, great. Well, you know, I was deceived. So God has blessed us with the opportunity to praise him to music. And he's provided us with an abundance of praise music, and that ought to be what we're listening to, really. That ought to be what is being piped into our homes. And then I was commenting a few moments ago on some of the Christian artists that don't seem to be saying anything, but there is some great music today by Christians. There's some great Christian music, and there are some people that are very gifted. And I'll tell you, you know, there are certain people, like The Cry even, that we, you know, they're friends of ours. They're here with us every Monday night. I'll put Jean-Luc as a songwriter, singer, up against anybody. The guy's incredible, and his songs are deep, and they're powerful, and they have substance to them. It's not just good music, but there's something edifying in it. And there's my favorite female singer at this time is Cher Youngward, and I listen to her CD all the time, and man, she's, you know, she's saying things that are truly profound. She's not just putting words together that rhyme. She's saying things that actually are meaningful. And so these are the things that ought to be coming in to our homes and influencing our thinking and the thinking of our children. And then we've got Christian literature. Christian literature, you know, we have more Christian literature available to us in this country than any other country in the world, or, well, England would be another example, but English speaking, out of all the languages in the world, there's more literature, Christian literature, in the English language than any other, than in any other language in the world. We've got everything, and so we have no excuse for ignorance because God has allowed for an abundance. And I would encourage reading, reading the Bible, of course, but read about the Bible. Read Bible encyclopedia. Pick up a Bible handbook. Pick up a commentary and study a book with a commentary. Pick up a Christian biography, a missionary biography. There's so many great books that will educate you in various ways, but also build you up at the same time. And now today, there's even great Christian fiction, and a lot of the Christian fiction is sort of a combination of historical accuracy with fictional characters weaved into the various histories, and there's some really good stuff out there. You can learn, there's a series that was written several years ago by an author named Bodhi Taney, who did the Zion Chronicles and the Zion Covenant, and she chronicled the whole history of the Jews going back into the land, and it's, she's a historian, and so what you get is the history of what happened, but then there are fictional characters interwoven to make the story a bit more interesting, but so you're getting entertained and learning history at the same time. And then she did one also that was similar to it, but it had to do with the plight of the Jews during the reign of the Nazis. And so, you know, there's tons of things out there that we can be using to build ourselves up in the faith and to, at the same time, bring about that entertainment element and the educational aspect and so forth. We just have to step out and take advantage of these things. And then, of course, in a Christian home, a Christian home should be a place of fellowship. It should be a place where, you know, there's activity going on. Jesus is the center of the activity. You have friends over. You have family over. You get together and, you know, you might get together and play a board game or watch a sporting event or eat some food or whatever, but, you know, the Lord's the center of it all. And as you just open your home up as a place of fellowship, you're establishing a Christ-centered home. And then, of course, finally, the home that is a Christ-centered home is going to be a home that's full of prayer. Remember, the temple was designated as a house of prayer, and our homes ought to be designated as houses of prayer as well. Open up your house for a prayer meeting. Invite friends to come over once a week or twice a month or something like that, and just spend some time praying together. That's how you put Christ at the center of your home. And if you put Christ at the center of your home, you're going to have a blessed home life. You know, sometimes people say, well, you know, if I just, you know, if we just spend time reading the Bible and praying and listen to praise music and stuff, you know, and my kid will be a freak. You know, he won't know how to relate to the world. You know, he's going to be maladjusted, and you know, we want to give him the balance and all of that. You know, that's not true. You can be absolutely confident. You raise your family with Christ at the center, and they will be the most well-adjusted people in the world. You know, sometimes even with guys in ministry, pastors and, you know, teachers, preachers, and so forth, sometimes I see a tendency, and sometimes I'm tempted to do it as well. You know, you want to relate to people. You want to connect with people, and so you start thinking, well, you know, I probably ought to brush up on this, or you know, if I knew a little bit more about that, or you know, maybe if I was a little more hip or cool here, you know, and you know, these things come to your mind. You kind of get swayed sometimes and sort of move in this, and you know, you think, well, it's all because if I do that, then I'll relate, and I'll be able to serve God more effectively, and so forth, and you know, I think about this kind of stuff, and you know, Pastor Chuck always comes to my mind. Now, I know Chuck pretty well. He's a pretty well-adjusted guy. You know, he does well anywhere, everywhere. I've never seen him in a situation where I thought, oh, poor Chuck, you know, raising a Christian home. He just doesn't know how to, you know, relate here. You know, I've never seen anything like that at all. As a matter of fact, here's a guy who, you know, never has gone to, I think he did go to a couple movies, but you know, he felt really bad afterward. You know, he's never had a drink of alcohol in his life. He's never taken drugs. As he mentioned a few weeks ago, he was drugged to church and drugged to these different places, but you know, and yet, you know, I look at him. I think of all the kinds of people that he's, God has used them to impact these people. He didn't have to become a drug addict to reach the drug addicts. He'd say, oh, wow, there's a bunch of hippies coming here. Let me grow my hair long and get some bell-bottoms, you know, or, you know, wow, there's a lot of people of alcohol here. Let me get out of the bar and just test this out and see, you know, so I can relate. Say, hey, I know what it's like. I, you know, no. All of that is to put the emphasis on the wrong thing. That's, that's to put the emphasis on me and think that I'm going to save somebody. God saves people and guess what he uses? He uses godly people to do it. So don't worry because some people will tell you, oh, you know, if you, if you do this, man, you're going to disconnect yourself from the world and you'll be a weirdo and you'll be, you know, you'll just be so out of touch that you won't be able to relate to anybody. Nonsense. We need to have Christ at the center of our lives. We need to have Christ at the center of our marriages. We need to have Christ at the center of our families. We need to have Christ at the center of our home because that's where the blessing is. That's where the power is. And as we finish up here tonight, here's the final word on putting Christ at the center of your home. Make your home, we've looked at, you know, the negative and the positive, but this is the gist of it. Make your home a place where Christ is welcome anytime. A place where he could just show up unexpectedly and feel comfortable. That's what a Christ-centered home is. A place where, you know, the doorbell could ring and Jesus would be standing there. You say, oh Lord, come on in. Not, oh Lord, what are you doing here? Wait, wait, just stay right there for a second, okay? Slam the door. Honey! Oh Lord's here. Get that video out. You know, throw it in the trash. You know, I mean, think of it like that. I mean, you know, because in reality, Christ is with us. He wants to be with us. He doesn't want to just come and knock on our door. He wants to live in our homes. But I wonder if some of us haven't driven him out of the home. I wonder if we haven't grieved him by the things that we've allowed at times. You know, I'll confess, I've done that at times. I can think of times where I have brought things into my home that were not pleasing to the Lord. I brought them in for the sake of entertainment. Oh, but it's so funny. You know, as I sat there trying to laugh, I thought, you know, this isn't funny anymore. And I was grieving. I knew the Lord was grieved. And I've repented of that. And I've, but you know, just having done it, I just can't believe I did that. But I don't ever want to do it again. But you see, we can do that. We can grieve the Spirit of God. We can quench the work of God. We could actually drive the Lord out of our homes by bringing things into our homes that he's just not going to be comfortable with. And therefore, he's not going to stick around. Don't you want a home where you sense the presence of the Lord? Don't you want the kind of home where people come in and it just feels different? God's there. His presence is there. Well, we can have that kind of home. If we purge out the leaven, if we get rid of those things that pollute the environment, and if we bring in those things that help create a godly atmosphere, make the Bible the center of your home. Make praise and worship and prayer the center of your home. Make fellowship the center of your home. Make growing in your knowledge of God through all the resources that he's given us, make that the occupation within the home, and you're going to find blessing. Teach the kids about the great heroes of the faith. Don't let them cling to the world's heroes that are passing, but introduce them to real heroes, men and women who loved God and served God and gave their lives for Him on the mission field or as a martyr or something like that. Teach them about God the creator. Teach them about God's creation. We have so many wonderful books that talk about the wonder of the human body or the wonder of nature and how God has so beautifully put everything together. Teach them those kinds of things because, of course, they will go out into the world. They will go to school. They'll have friends. They will be influenced in other ways, and if we're not putting that strong godly influence into their life at home, then how are they going to stand when they get out there and they've got everything working against them because that's pretty much what's happening out there. Everything is designed to undermine the reality of God and His authority in this world, and we have got the responsibility of creating a safe environment where they can become strong and go out and face the world and be victorious over it. May God help us to do that. Let's pray. Father, as we come to the conclusion of this series, Lord, we've seen a lot of things regarding the family, regarding the relationship between husband and wife and parent and child, and Lord, we pray that you would just help us, Lord, to really be serious about our families. Help us to be committed to one another in our marriages. Help us to be committed to our children. Help us, Lord, to be responsible to raise them in the things of the Lord. Lord, may our homes be places where you could comfortably dwell and bring your blessing, and Lord, tonight as we are here, Lord, maybe we're being reminded of areas of failure. Maybe we're seeing where we've compromised and allowed sin to come in and where we've actually polluted our environments. Lord, we pray tonight that you would forgive us. We pray, Lord, that you'd set up a new standard in our hearts. We pray, Lord, that by your Spirit you'd lead us to do a house cleansing like the children of Israel, Lord, that we would just purge our homes of any leaven, and Lord, that you would help us to implement those things into our home life that are going to build up the family and the faith. Lord, thank you for your mercy. Thank you that it's new every morning. Thank you that when we confess, you're faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us. And so, Lord, renew us in our commitment. Lord, maybe our hearts have become hardened and we have become desensitized. Things we used to flinch at, turn away from, maybe on the TV, now we just sit and watch it. Lord, restore to us that sensitive spirit. Lord, that we would not watch anything that would grieve you. Lord, that we would realize that you're in us, and as we sit and behold those things, you see them as well. So help us, Lord, to be holy, set apart for you completely. Be glorified in our homes, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.