This sermon emphasizes the critical need for holiness in our lives, highlighting the prevalence of sin in our culture and the importance of separating ourselves from worldly influences. It addresses the impact of sin on the church, marriages, and our relationship with God, stressing the urgency to put on the whole armor of God and renew our minds in Christ. The speaker challenges lukewarm Christians to seek true holiness and warns against the deception of worldly pleasures that quench the Spirit of God.

You will not truly understand God until holiness becomes part of your life. There's a desperate need in our culture today for holiness. You've heard me talk about this before. What God calls an abomination is filling our video screens and nobody seems to care. It's entertaining the church. What God calls an abomination come out from among them. We entertains us. We love it. We enjoy it. We wonder why we have no relationship with God. Because we have no holiness. And I truly believe that's one of the dilemmas in our culture today. Many are not truly hearing from God. I'm not talking about walking around hearing these little thoughts of God. I'm talking about spending time in the prayer closet. Broken and humble and seeking Him. Seeking the face of the Father. That's holiness. That's being set apart. No, we're not going to look like the world. And if I hear another adult tell me that they're trying to do all these little things to make Christianity cool, Christianity will never be cool. It's not cool. It looks different. There's a distinction. There's a different nature. There's a different character. There's a different spirit guiding it. The spirit of this world or the spirit of Christ within you. They do not look the same. They shouldn't look the same. There's a distinction. There's a separation. Come out from among them, my people, and be ye separate. The seriousness of sin. The great cry in the church today is, but make me feel better. Shane, make me feel better. Encourage me. No, no, no. The great need in the church today is to talk about this issue. Sin is destroying the church. It's destroying marriages. It's quenching and grieving the Spirit of God. That's why the Bible says all these things to do. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lust. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Abide in me, Christ would say, so that you do not fall. Paul would tell the believer, I warn you, I beseech you, brethren, present your bodies as living sacrifices. Guard the Word of God. Cherish the Word of God. Proclaim the Word of God. Hold fast to the truth of God's Word. Why do they say all these engaging terms? Because sin is sent to kill, steal, and to destroy. That's the true problem today is we love the world. Let's be honest. My flesh loves the world. But my spirit says, don't you dare go there. And if you quench and you grieve the Spirit of God within you, you will be deceived. You will be led astray. It's that simple. It's that easy. It's that quick. And do you know who dislikes these messages? More than anybody else? Lukewarm Christians. Oh my gosh, they hate the heat of conviction. When I come out and say we should not be filling our mind with witchcraft and vampires and the occult and all these shows that we're watching, who are you to say, oh my God, we love these? No, that's an abomination in the sight of God. The day you begin to glorify witchcraft and sorcery and vampires of the day, sir, like Samson, you wish not that the Spirit of the Lord has departed. You know not that the Spirit of the Lord has departed from you. Well, Shane, I'm just not convicted in that area. You're not convicted because your face isn't buried in the Word of God. As James McDonald, I heard him preach that two weeks ago. I said, I got to remember that line. Now, I hear that all the time. And I go, that's a good point. I'm just not convicted about that like you are. Yeah, because you're not set towards God. You're set towards Sodom. Your face isn't buried in the Word of God, putting on worship, seeking hard after Him, repenting and praying. Of course, you're not convicted because you have a different set of guidelines guiding you. The Prince of this world is guiding you. And that's why I said, Lord, I don't want to talk about these things. I just talked about Potter and vampires and Twilight and all these last year. I don't want to do it. I just want to get general. But these are the things affecting our culture. And I know I'm stepping on toes, but we have to step on some toes because these things are abomination. Think about it. Think, I'm not angry. I'm passionate. I'm upset. I want to weep because we glorify these things. They're good witches. They're good vampires for the love of God. You've got to be kidding me. Just omit it and stop trying to defend it as if the Word of God does not say anything about this. It makes me sick and it makes me sad because these people are deceived and thinking it's no big deal to wonder why they have no fellowship with God. Why they're not broken and humble. Why they're not seeking heart after him. Why they don't know anything that I'm talking about because they're filling in their mind with a bunch of garbage and they justify it as if I'm not convicted in that area. Well, you should be. Guys, I'm just saying it in love. It's one thing to say, yeah, I know I shouldn't be watching these things, but to actually try to defend it as if God doesn't care. You have dating shows and reality shows that are a stench in the nostrils of a righteous, holy, pure God. Nobody seems to care. You've got the B-next store coming out. You've got swapping wives. You've got all... Come on, church, wake up for crying out loud. Have sex with the prostitute. Burn her and then take the money. Something is seriously wrong in our culture. Yeah, there's video games I just described. You can do that. I have a five-year-old son. Here, son, play this game. After you are intimate with her, take the money back and burn her. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that great? And we all laugh. We should be weeping over the condition of our culture. And it's the church doing it, folks. It's the church many times proclaiming Christians. There's no holiness. There's no distinction. They're not set apart. I'm not talking about gray areas. I'm talking about this is sick and perverted. And until you realize it and turn to God and say, Lord, I don't want this. And if it's not, then there's something wrong in your spirit. I cannot believe what they can do on a video game. It is absolutely alarming. When I was 12 years old, you'd have to go find a magazine buried out in the desert somewhere. Now you have the most disgusting filth a click away that you have ever seen in your life. It's getting more and more and more and more perverted. The need for the church to come out from among them, be separate, has never been greater. Yeah, you can call me a fanatical. You can call me lukewarm. You can call, or don't call me lukewarm, but you can call me a Jesus freak. You can call me all these things, but don't call me lukewarm. Because you will be labeled. You will be scorned. When you stand up for righteousness, when Elisha, Elisha, all he did was call the people back to God. That's all he did. Return to God. Oh, backsliding Israel. Return to God, your wickedness, your idols. Return to God. The wicked King Ahab said, Oh, you troubler of Israel. Do you realize they killed the prophets? They stoned them. Hebrews says something very alarming. The writer of Hebrews says without holiness, no one will see the Lord. See, there's a holiness. What I've been talking about today is sanctification as a believer, becoming more holy. But there's a holiness to salvation. If without holiness, it means nothing we do. It's what Christ did on the cross. It's what theologians call imputed righteousness. We take on the righteousness of Christ by accepting and believing and repenting of our sin. And now we can stand before God holding and in right standing because of what he did on the cross.