Jerry's talking about when people walk in a room, everybody thinks everybody's looking at them. And we had an old couple from Arkansas, some hill folks, who went to town. It had been a big city. They sat down at a restaurant, and all the walls were mirrors all the way around. They sat there and started to eat a little bit. And he looked up, and he said, I don't want to tell you this, but he said, every time I look at that couple over there in the corner, they're staring at us. And he said, I've about had enough of it. And he said, I think if they keep looking, I'm going to go over and tell them something. And she said, well, they're still looking. And he said, well, I'm going. He started to get up. She said, no, sit back down. They're coming over here. Amen. Amen. I'm going to talk to you tonight about some houses. I got three houses I want to talk to you about. Kind of like the three Hebrew children, a little boy went to Sunday school with his mom, he came home, she said, son, what'd you learn today? He said, we learned all about three houses over in the book of Daniel. He said, the book of Daniel? He said, yep. He said, we learned about my shack, your shack, and a bungalow, amen? Amen. We may get down to that before we're done here. If you got your Bible, turn to Acts chapter 16, and we'll get started. Father, we thank you for your mercy. Thank you, dear God, for the good preaching we've heard tonight already. Dear God, if we had to go home right now, and we'd have to say you stirred our heart, we'd have to say, dear God, you met with us, and I thank you for that, dear God. I pray, Lord, God, for your blessings on Brother Jerry. Always tries to bring, dear God, what you'd have him to bring, Lord, and I believe he does. I pray, dear God, now you'd help us, Lord, to preach. I pray you'd give us the words to say. I pray you'd give us the power to say it, Father. And, Lord, I pray first that what we say would please you, and then, dear God, that it might be a help to your people. In the precious name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen. Acts chapter 16, what? Can we turn it on? I didn't want nobody to hear that prayer. How about that? I might wanna drink one or two. Thank you. Amen. Acts chapter 16, the Bible says this, down in about verse 29, it said, then he called for a light and sprang in and came trembling. This is the jailer there. And sprang in and came trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas and brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? What a question. And they said, repent, and believe, and be baptized, and join the church of Christ. No, they didn't say that. Make nobody mad here. And they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved in thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house, he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes, and was baptized, he and all his straight way. He said, thou shalt be saved in thy house. First house I want to talk to you about tonight is your household. This here is all the people in his house. When he's talking about a house here, he's talking about the guy's family. And everybody in his house, and he said they could all be saved if they'll do this, if they'll do what you did. But you know, God gives you a household. He gives you a family. And you know, you can absolutely destroy that if you don't do right by each other and don't do right by the Lord. You can destroy that house. That's the first house. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 3, and let's look at another one. We'll run a little scripture here. 1 Corinthians chapter 3, look at this. Verse 11, after you get saved, look what the Bible says. Let me get verse 10. According to the grace of God which is given unto me as a wise master builder. Here's a builder. I have laid the foundation and another buildeth thereon, but let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid which is Jesus Christ. He is the foundation. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, those are all good works. You know, every one of those things I just mentioned will go through the fire? Amen. But there's some bad works in there too, like that wood, hay, and stubble, they'll all burn up. Every man's work should be made manifest, for the day shall declare it, because it should be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. You got another house, you say, what is it? It's your spiritual house. When God saved your soul, He gave you the foundation, it's Jesus Christ, and you're supposed to be building a spiritual house on that foundation. You say, Brother Jim, I don't know how I'm doing. Well, I don't know how you're doing either, but by now, you ought to have something on the slab. You ought to have something on the foundation. You go by and you see people putting in a foundation, and they pull a concrete slab, and you think, boy, that's encouraging, somebody's gonna build. But you go by a year later, And there ain't nothing on the slab. Weeds growing up around it, material all over the yard. You got thinking, you know, they're not ever going to build on that foundation. Ain't nothing. It's discouraging. When you got a spiritual house you're supposed to be working on, you ought to have something up now. You say, well, I'm not as good as so-and-so, and I'm not. Well, you ought to have something up. At least a wall somewhere, a section of something. Something spiritual you've done, if nothing else, reading your Bible through. Did you know that you can absolutely destroy that spiritual house by not doing right? That's two houses that could be destroyed. Let's look again in Isaiah 64. And we will get to the text here in just a minute. Isaiah 64. Man, I went too far there. Are you there? Isaiah 64 verse 8. But now, O Lord, thou art our Father, we are the clay, thou art our putter, and we are all the work of thy hand. Be not wroth, very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity forever. Behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people. Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire, and all of our pleasant things are laid waste. Well, there's the house of God. Now, I got enough sense to know what the church is and what the house of God is, but this place here was a house where they worshiped the Lord. where they praised God and it was burnt to the ground because somebody didn't do right. They started worshiping idols and the children of Israel didn't do right and it got burnt to the ground. Did you know all three of those houses right there, you can burn to the ground if you don't do right, if you don't live right? And so I'm gonna preach about that for just a few minutes tonight. Don't burn your house down, amen? Now the jailer's whole house was baptized. I don't believe they dunked his house. They dunked his household, the people of his house. So you know what the house is. He said his whole house was saved. Then Isaiah said they lost their beautiful house to fire. And it was lost because they wouldn't serve God, they wouldn't do the right thing. Your house is your family, your home, your marriage, your life, spiritual and physical. But just like a house in a fire, you can lose it all. I told a friend of mine, Billy Brooks, I said, I want to preach a message on burning your house down. Because I saw that, that thing jumped out at me in Isaiah there, and God gave me a thought on it, and I said, I want to preach a message on don't burn your house down, can you help me? And he's a retired fireman, almost 30 years. And he knows what he's doing. He knows what he's talking about. He's taught that stuff all over the country. And I said, can you tell me some things you can do to keep from burning your house down? And he said, you know, a spiritual house and a regular house, they have a lot of things in common. He said, and you could burn both of them to the ground if you want to. And I said, OK, what should I do? He said, here's the first thing you need to know about house fire. He said, first off, you ought to work. work to prevent it. I mean, before anything else, go through your house and work to prevent it. See if there's something you can do. The Bible says, see that you walk circumspectly and not as fools. Be careful how you walk in this life. Be careful. Watch what you're doing. You know what he said, number one? He said, go through and remove the hazards. He said, you go through that house and you see some hazards, you get them out of there. I don't care if it's in your spiritual life, if it's in your marriage, your family, or if it's in your church. He said, if it's a hazard, you get rid of it. I can't see a receptacle here, so I'll give you this switch. But you walk in your house and you see a switch or a plug and the wall's burnt black two feet above it. You know something needs replacing. That's a hazard. Something needs to be fixed. You can't leave that like that. You'll burn your house down. He said remove the hazards. You see a curtain hanging over a gas heater. Duh. You want to get that out of there, you know that's going to cause a fire sooner or later. And whether it's your house or your spiritual house or the house of God, you better remove the hazards, you'll mess them up. You know what I've seen? You won't like this, but I've seen it. I've seen the internet and Facebook destroy homes. I can name you four or five. I've seen internet and Facebook. Somebody hook up with somebody over here they haven't seen in 20 years. I've seen it burn a home to the ground. I've seen it burn a match to the ground. It's a hazard. If it's a hazard, you better remove it. Amen. Get rid of it. You don't like that, will you? You'll burn it to the ground. I couldn't list them all. If I start trying to think of the names, I couldn't list all the homes that have been damaged by that. Remove it. Better than losing your home. This is crazy. But I've seen video games almost destroy a marriage. I've seen a husband God gave a good godly wife who loved him and loved the Lord, and all he wanted to do was stay up at one o'clock in the morning playing video games and ignore his wife. And I'm thinking, go look in the mirror, stupid. You was lucky to get one. If God gave you a wife, thank God for it, take care of her. Spend some time with her like a nerd in there watching videos all night long and playing games. Man, is that all you got? You won't like this either. But I've seen hunting and fishing. I've seen them tear them up. They spend all their time in the woods or all their time on the lake. No time with their family. No time with their kids. Kids raised or slept. The wife neglects it. Hey, I like hunting. I love fishing. I like all this. There's nothing wrong with any of this stuff. But you get that isle of culture where it takes up all your time for your family, you burn it to the ground. You better be careful. I've seen sports do it. I've seen mom and dad just, they don't even have a home. A home's just a motel where the kids come change clothes. Nobody lives there. Mama hollers supper time, all the kids go get in the car. Nobody cooking. Nobody doing nothing. And mom and dad pass each other on the highway, waving at each other, taking kids to T-ball practice and upward basketball. We can't be at Revival this week. We got road ball. We won't be there. We in a tournament. Listen, your kid, bless your heart, your kid can't hit a ball hardly. He can jump as high as he can, you couldn't slide a cigarette paper under his shoes. He got a $150 Nike's and can't jump that high. He can't hit, he can't run. And you're going to waste all God's time, revival time, running off to ball games when you ought to be in the house of God? I've seen it tear homes up. I've seen that thing tear churches up. I've seen that thing burn churches to the ground. Don't burn your house down. I've seen the ministry mess up homes. I got a couple friends right now, one of them just died. I got a friend, he spent so much time in his ministry, he forgot he had a wife. He forgot he had kids. Listen, God gave you a wife and kids, you need to take care of her. You spend some time with her. God put her in your life. You spend some time and take care of her. Nerds, your ministry ain't that important anyway. Amen. Hey, I've seen make a dollar cost folks their home. In-laws can burn a house down. My soul, in-laws can cause trouble. I probably would not say that, but anyway. He said remove the accelerants. Remove the hazards, get rid of the accelerants. Get rid of something that you know will really get a fire going. Sometimes in-laws are that. Amen. I know I told y'all this, but I don't care. As long as you laugh, I'll tell you. But there was a couple on a train, and they was taking a train trip across the country, and some thieves got on the stop, and at gunpoint, they robbed everybody on the train. They took their jewelry, they took their cash, they took their gold, they took everything they had that was worth anything. And man, they stripped them. And then they left the train, and a guy looked over at his wife, and she was going like this. She pulled a necklace that long out of her mouth. And she had both her gold earrings and her fanny rack band. She had them all in her mouth. He said, what did you do? She said, I knew what they was going to do. She said, I put them all in my mouth so they couldn't get my jewelry. He said, boy, too bad we didn't have your mama here. We could have saved the luggage, too. Well, I better move on. Listen, you know what they are. You know what gets the fire started in your house. You know what the accelerants are. You know what the hazards are. You better be careful with them. Do you know what he told me? He told me, he said, most fires start from overloads. We was looking at one in a restaurant yesterday, wasn't we? Had about 20 things plugged into one outlet up there. He said, most fires start from overloads. Mom and Daddy, you know, there's nothing wrong with ball games. There's nothing wrong with fishing. There ain't nothing wrong with hunting. There's not anything wrong with PTA or 4-H or scouts or any of that stuff. Nothing wrong with that. But you can get so loaded down with good things that you don't have time for God, you don't have time for church, you don't have time for your family. You can get overloaded with good stuff. And you can burn that spiritual house down like that. You can tear it up. You can get loaded. No time for anybody. Well, I'll tell you what he told me secondly. He said, you should work to prevent it. Look for hazards, remove the accelerants, all this stuff. Then he said, use detectors. He said, your clock, you spring forward in the spring and fall back in the fall. He said, every time you reset your clock, change the batteries in your smoke detector. That's just a public service announcement there I made for you. Got nothing to do with the sermon. But he said, change them. That's when you change them. But you know what else a detector can do? It can detect a fire before it gets real bad. It can let you know that something's smoking, that might catch on fire. It can warn you before there is a fire so you can get it put out. He said, use detectors. This is the best one I know. Bible said it's like a mirror, like a looking glass, like beholding your face in a mirror. Do you know what a mirror do? A mirror is always current. It always shows you just like you are right now. This book right here will show you just what you are, just like you are every time you open it. It's the Word of God. It's the best detector there is. It will warn you about things. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. You better quit it. Bible says it's wrong. You better quit it. Amen. Prayer is a good detector. It will let you know when things are going on. You need to take heed to it. Holy Spirit is a good detector. He'll usually prick your heart during preaching, like right now. Like Brother Jerry's preaching a while ago. He'll prick your heart during the preaching, and the Holy Spirit's a good detector. Let's you know what's going on. But you gotta heed the warnings. He said you heed the warnings. He said you got a smoke detector in your house, and it's been chirping for two months. because the battery's dead on it. And it's chirping about every 15 minutes. I've been doing that for two months and you haven't changed it yet? What good is it to have a detector if you're not gonna take heed to it? If you're not gonna take heed to his preaching, if you're not gonna follow what the Bible says, what good is it to have a detector? And I don't know why you'd even have to say this, but he said, don't play with fire. You burn your house down. That sounds innocent, don't it? Don't play with fire. Don't put yourself in the wrong place where you can mess up. You're playing with fire. Don't get around the wrong person. Don't be talking about the wrong stuff. Don't get yourself in a spot where you can cause a fire. Young people, it's important. Don't get yourself in a place where you can mess up with a young lady. Don't you get in a spot where you can mess up her reputation, where you can mess up your church's reputation. You be careful that you're playing with fire. Bible said you can't take fire to your bosom without being burned. You gotta be careful. Don't play with fire, especially at church. Be careful with your relationships. especially the house of God. Well, Brother Jim, we're in the house of God, it's all right. Oh, no, it's not. There's times it is, there's times it's not. And you better know the difference. I know a couple that started going off to Branson, over where we live, every weekend together. And they got one of these missing churches to go to Branson. And I talked to her about it one day, I said, where were you Sunday? She said, we was in Branson. And just laughed. And she said, I'll probably be there next weekend, too. Just thought it was so funny. But she didn't think it was funny. She didn't think it was funny at all. And his wife started liking her husband. And before you know it, they run off together. And before you know it, two homes was busted in a million pieces. Be careful with your relationships, especially at church. Well, they're church members, it's okay. No, it's not okay. The Holy Spirit will warn you and conscience will warn you for a while. but you be careful with it. You need to heed the warnings. The preacher will warn you. He'll say there's things you better quit. There's things you should be careful of. There's people you better be careful of. How many times has he warned you? How many times has he warned you about the crowd you hang with? He probably never points you out, but he don't have to. All you gotta do is preach the book. Be careful who you're hanging around with. My mom, I was lost when I was a kid. But a teenager, I was lost. My mom let me run around too much. She let me go about anywhere I wanted to and let me go with almost anybody I wanted to. But every now and then, she would draw the line. They were real liberal, let me do what I wanted to mostly. But every now and then, she'd say, that one right there, you can't ride with him. I said, why? She says, he's dangerous. Sooner or later, she said, he'll get you killed, or he'll get somebody else killed. You cannot ride with him. Well, I'm telling you, brothers and sisters, there's people in this world, maybe even in this church, that you can't ride with. If you do, they'll take you down the road they're going down, and they'll mess you up. They'll mess up your family. If you're not careful, you'll burn your house down. Amen. In a good Bible-believing church, you're a target. The devil wants you. He wants your head. You are a target in a Bible-believing church. I said, okay, that's how you prevent them. What happens if a fire breaks out? He said, call 911 immediately. We used to sing, you know I can call Jesus anytime, yes I can. He is always online. When I get in trouble, fighting for the right, well you know I can call Jesus anytime. Well I can call him anytime, not your friend. Call 911. Say, Lord, we're about to have a fire or a fire broke out. Would you help me? Don't call your friend. That's the worst thing you can do. Don't call your mama and your daddy. That's the worst thing you can do. Don't tell them all your family problems. Call the Lord. Dial 9-1-1. Talk to Him. And he said, whatever you do, don't try to put it out alone. He said, you need help putting that fire out sometimes. He said, don't try to put it out by yourself. Get you some help. And I know I told you next to the last time I was here, I told you about a cotton mill in Dyersburg. A guy, they put him running a machine, a terribly expensive machine. Y'all remember me telling you about that. And they run that thing, and he said, this thing, if it starts to wad up up there, that cotton, he said, you shut it down immediately, and you call the foreman. He knows how to fix it, and nothing will be damaged. Well, the guy didn't. He didn't run it an hour. And that thing exploded, and parts started going all over the floor, tore thousands and thousands of dollars worth of machinery up. And the superintendent came in and said, what did you do? He said, well, it just started to hang up a little bit, and I took a stick. I thought I could just knock it clear, and we'd be OK. He said, you idiot. You've destroyed this machine. He said, I did the best I could. He said, oh, no. The best you could have done was call the foreman. You tell me you'll make a mess sometime, you try to straighten it out yourself, the best thing you can do is call a foreman. You call him, he can fix it. He knows how to fix it. The best thing you can do is call Jesus. Call a foreman. Don't try, it might look small. It might look easy, like there's nothing to it. But sometimes, you know, the smoke alone can kill you. Don't try to put it out by yourself. Get the Lord to help you. Brother and sister, he'll help you with it. You know what he said then? He said, wait for help to come. Well, I got to do something. Wait for help to come. You called 911, didn't you? You called the Lord, didn't you? Bible says 1 Peter 5, 7, cast all your care upon him, for he cared for you. Did you call the foreman? Then wait till help gets here. I thought, men, men, men are some of the dumbest things on this earth. Can I get an amen, ladies? Men think they can fix everything. And they think even though they don't know how to fix it, they think they need to be doing something. And so they'll try. They'll make the biggest mess you ever seen in your life. And don't walk up to us after we've been working on something for two hours with instructions in your hand. Don't do it. That's the last thing we want to see is how to do it right. Amen. But listen, if a fire breaks out, don't get mad at God. If a fire breaks out in your family, your spiritual house, ain't what it ought to be, something happened and messed up a church, don't get mad at God. He didn't start it. Why would you get mad at God? Don't quit the church. They didn't start it. Don't quit on the preacher. He didn't start it. Be still. Help is on the way. You did call a fireman, didn't you? Well, then help is on the way. Don't burn your house down. Then as the fire breaks out, he said this. He said, when we get there, when the fireman gets there, he said, we save what we can. He said, when a fire breaks out, save what you can. You know what he said? He said, we go in, we'll save people first. Number one priority, you try to save people. And if you get all the people out, then you try to save some things. And then you do that, you move on from there, but people come first. You always try, top priority, save people. And then save as many things as you can. If you can get a TV out or a couch out or something else out, get it out if you can after help gets there. But first, you make sure you save people. Listen, God is always more important than people. And people are always more important than things. Make sure you get your priorities right. Try to save as many things as you can. You know what he said? If we get there and it's on fire, he said, we try to get the people out and save their lives. And then if we can, we'll save their stuff as much as we can. And he said, if it's too far gone, we can't save that. We'll hose it down, and we'll try to save the structure. If it burns everything else off, he said, if we can save the structure, they can rebuild. Yeah, go ahead. If you can just save the structure, your home, or your marriage, or your life, or your spirit, then you can rebuild. Yes, yes. You can go again. You blow it to a million pieces and burn it up. Nobody get no use out of it. But if you can at least save the structure, you can start over again. Amen. Save the structure. May be able to rebuild it. He said sometimes you get there too late. He said it's too far gone. Usually by the time I find out about a crisis in my church, it's World War III by the time I find out about it. I didn't find out about it when it was just barely smoking, or a little fire broke out. When I get there, it's a forest fire, it's a blaze. They never tell the preacher until it's out of hand, then they ask you to fix it. If you'd called for help sooner, we might could have done something. But sometimes it's too far gone. You know what he said to you then? He said, if it's too far gone and you can't save the house at all, he said, we'll just start hosing down the buildings around it. And you try to save the adjacent buildings. Woo, save those that are close by. If you can't save that family, save them close to him. If you can't save that one, save those that are close to him. Try to keep it from getting out of hand. You save everything close as you can. If you can't save the building, try to get everybody around it. Save them. That'll help. And then he said, brother and sister, that after they've done that, And he said, there's no saving anything else. He said, they'll just start hosing down the ground all the way around it, all the way around the house just to keep it from spreading. That way it don't get out, it don't spread anywhere. Trouble comes in your home, try to stop it before it spreads. Don't let the kids take sides, and mom and daddy take sides, and the in-laws take sides. Try to get it stopped before it spreads. Trouble comes in your church, you hear something you don't like, try to stop it before it spreads. People start taking sides in the church, and one side against, try to keep it from spreading. At least do that. Don't burn the house down. We need it. We need this house. Now listen, I've seen a bunch of homes destroyed. I've seen families destroyed, their physical house. I've seen spiritual house destroyed. People have to repent and start all over again. I've seen churches destroyed, burnt to the ground. Not literally, but burnt to the ground spiritually because somebody didn't do right. And what we'll do, we'll concentrate, your preacher will, he'll concentrate on trying to save people first. That's what he'll do. He'll try to save as many people as he can and he'll try to save some things. Maybe save that. And some of the fires we go to, Brother Cisneros, he goes to and I go to, we're purely arson. Mama started it. She didn't want to do right. Couldn't quit yapping. Sometimes we get to him, Daddy started it. He couldn't keep his big mouth shut. Always got to have the last word, ain't she? That's arson. Sometimes the kids start it. They're out of control. Nobody makes a mind. Sometimes they can better run to the ground. I've seen it. And every one of them, every one of them I go to, it got out of control. They didn't know it would get out of control so fast. And you know what they thought? They thought they could put it out anytime they wanted to. It's just a small thing. We can put it out anytime we like. And brother, sister, the ones I went to were burnt to the ground. Amen. And when you get there, brother and sister, all you can do is stand back and let it burn sometimes. He said sometimes they all just back off and let it burn out because there ain't nothing left to save. What a pity. What a pity that'd be if that was a life, if that was a home, if that was a church. Maybe you can save some things close by. We can't save you. Maybe we can save that one or that one. Maybe we can save that one. Maybe we can save this one. Maybe we can save that one or that one. We can't save you, maybe we can save them. Maybe they're friends, maybe they're neighbors. But most of the time, what a preacher has to try to do is just try to keep it from spreading. People take sides and it spreads all over the church. Brother and sister, that ain't right. Last, I'll close with this. You know what he told me? He said, most fires come at night while people are sleeping. That's when yours will burn, too, if you go to sleep at the switch. He said most of them come at night when people are sound asleep. If this church ever goes to sleep, that's when you start a fire. If you go to sleep in your spiritual house, that's when you'll burn it down. Quit paying attention, quit walking circumspectly, that's when you'll burn it down. You're not careful with your house, your family, if you're not careful, you'll burn it down. The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 5, 6, Therefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober. Say, Brother Jim, you talk about somebody else. Listen, there's not one person in this building that's exempt from what I just preached. Not one family, not one person. I don't care how good you think you are. There's not one person exempt from causing a fire and burning one of those three houses or maybe all of them. Be careful. Don't let your house be destroyed. Don't burn your house down.