Amen. I don't talk on the phone much, but matter of fact, I hate talking on the phone. Matter of fact, sometimes it bothers me just to hear it ring. But it's kind of hard to get an unlisted number when you're preaching the pastor of the church. But at any rate, sometimes it does. Is this water up here for us? Who's this? It's full. No, I ain't tasting that. Ain't got that much faith. I was telling the guys a story, and I'm gonna preach a message, I think, that I preached on the reservation when I was out there. And so you guys probably already got the notes on it, but I think it's the one the Lord would have me preach, I'm not sure. But I'm gonna preach it, but if y'all had of got it and done something about it out there, I probably would have to preach it again. But here we go anyway, going around again. I heard of a young man, and y'all may have heard this too, He got him a date with a girl to go eat supper at her house for the first time. So boy, he wanted to do it up right, so he went to the drugstore and asked the pharmacist. He said, I need a one-pound box of chocolate and a two-pound box of chocolate and a three-pound box of chocolate candy. He said, son, what are you gonna do with all that chocolate? He said, well, I'm gonna see a new girl tonight. If she lets me hold her hand, I'm gonna give her that one-pound box of chocolate. And said, if she hugs me, so I'm gonna give her the two-pound box. and said, if she lets me kiss her on the jaw when I leave, I'm gonna give her the three pound bucks. And he said, well, that sounds like a pretty good plan. He got over to supper and the girl's daddy asked him to pray over the meal. And he jumped up and started squealing and walking up and down the hall praying, screaming, crying out to God. And he finally said amen after about 10 minutes. And that girl looked at him, she said, I didn't know you was that religious. And he said, I didn't know your dad was the pharmacist. Amen. Amen. That'll fix your wagon right there, buddy. If you got your Bible tonight, I want you to turn two or three places. And I'm gonna preach a pastoral message tonight. This ain't something an evangelist would preach, but I'm not an evangelist anyway. So if you got your Bible in Acts chapter 16, and maybe it'll be a help to your church, maybe it'll be a help to your people, I don't know. If nothing else, maybe it'll be a warning. Acts chapter 16, and then 1 Corinthians chapter 3, and then we'll go to one more. Acts 16 and 1 Corinthians chapter 3, and we'll get set in here. All right, let me see if I can find, Corinthians, is that in the New Testament? No. Father, we thank you for your mercy, We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ and dear God, Father, we need you. And Father, they don't need to hear from me, they don't need to hear another four points in a poem. Dear God, they need to hear from heaven and I pray, dear God, you'd help us to preach tonight. I pray you'd give us the proper words to say and I pray you'd give us the power and the touch to say it, Father. Lord, we know what this will amount to, dear God, the best we can do. We know what it will amount to without your touch. Please, dear God, help us tonight. We don't deserve that, but we pray you'll help us in Jesus' most precious name. Amen. Acts chapter 16, a wild thing happened. Some people got saved. Amen. And then verse 30, it says, and brought them out and said, serfs, what must I do to be saved? The jailer wanted to be saved. And they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in the house. And if you come down there in verse 34, it said, when he brought them into his house, he set meat before them and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. If you read a little bit further down through there, you'll see where his whole house was baptized. Now, I don't believe they took his house of wood and brick and dunked it underwater. I don't believe his whole house was saved like that. But I believe his household was saved. His family, his home. But his whole house there, that thing there is your family. That's the people you love in the house. But that's a house right there that you can absolutely destroy. I've seen homes and families busted up and tore all to pieces. But as one of them, 1 Corinthians chapter 3 says this, verse 11. Says, for other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he had built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire. There's another house. That was a spiritual house. You shouldn't have been building it ever since you've been saved. Jesus Christ, the foundation, you've got a good foundation. And the thing about a foundation, when you go out in a neighborhood and you see somebody just poured a new slab, it's encouraging. Because you think, wow, somebody's fixing to build right there. Somebody's going to build something. That'll look good. But then you go by six months later, and it's grown up in weeds and material all over the place, and still nothing on the slab. That's discouraging. But since you've been saved, you're supposed to be building a spiritual house. And you may not be perfect yet. I doubt that you are. I know the rest of us are. And you may not be in your walk with God where you ought to be. But by now, you ought to have something on the slabs. You ought to have a wall up. You ought to have something up that people can see that you've been building on. That's a spiritual house. Did you know you can destroy that too? You can shoot that in a million pieces too. Got one more if you'll turn there to Isaiah chapter 64. Isaiah chapter 64, I'll read you one more. And we'll get it down there in verse... Let me see if that's the one I want. That's the one I want. Yeah. Watch this, verse eight. Everybody there? Brother Mike says, what's the first word? Amen. But now, oh Lord, thou art our father, we are the clay, thou art the potter. We sing that, don't we? And we are all the work of thy hand. Be not wroth, very sore, oh Lord, neither remember iniquity forever. Behold, see we beseech thee, we are all thy people. The holy cities are wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. And our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste. There's another house. It's been burnt to the ground. It's the house of God. I understand the difference in the Old and New Testament. I understand that. Nowadays you can't preach without straightening out somebody on something. I understand what I'm talking about. But brother, there's a house of God and it's been burnt to the ground. And it was burnt to the ground because God's people wouldn't be righteous. They worship false gods and they burn it to the ground. So there's three houses tonight. You've got to give an account for your family, your household, your spiritual house that you should have been working on since you've been saved, and then the house of God. I'm going to preach about that for a few minutes tonight if I can. And like I said, the jailer's whole house was baptized. And they said the whole house was saved. And Corinthians said we're supposed to be building on a foundation. Then Isaiah said they lost their beautiful house to fire. And it was lost, like I said, because of sin. Now listen, I will preach for just a few minutes tonight, if I can, on don't burn your house down. Don't burn your house down, amen. This one wound up burnt to the ground because somebody wouldn't do right. Your house, your family, your life, your church, your spiritual life, you can burn any, you can destroy any one of those. I'll preach about that in just a few minutes and get out of the way. Boy, I'm dry on cracker juice tonight. A dry sermon, amen. Now I got the wanting to preach this and I got to thinking about fire and how do you do that? I really want to put something together because the Lord put it on my heart. I got to reading around, comparing scriptures to scriptures. So I called my friend Billy Brooks in Dyersburg, Tennessee. He's almost a 30-year fireman. He just retired over there. He knows everything there is to know about a house fire. He knows everything there is to know about how to handle one and what to do. So I called Billy, and I said, give me some pointers. Give me some tips on what to do so that you don't burn your house down. And here's what he said, and I'll start right there. He said, number one, you ought to work to prevent it. First thing, he said, work to make sure you don't destroy something that God's building. Bible says, see that you walk circumspectly and not as fools. In other words, we're to walk careful. Be careful, mom and dad. Be careful, brother and sister here in the church. Be careful with your spiritual life God's given you. Watch. You know what he said to do first? He said, work to prevent it. He said, go through. First thing, he said, and remove all the hazards. He said, you want to inspect your home, your church, whatever it is, your spiritual life? He said, go through and remove any hazards. Now, if you go through your house tonight, and you got a receptacle on the wall right there, and the wall's black that far above that receptacle, you know something's wrong there. Something needs to be fixed. You need to remove that. and get something in its place. You go buy a space heater. You got a gas heater there on the wall, wintertime coming, and the curtains hanging right out on top of the plane. You don't have to be very smart to know that needs to be removed and needs to be replaced. He said you need to get those things out of there. Remove the hazards. Say, what are they, Brother Jim? I don't know what they are at your house, but you know what I've seen? And here you go, old time preachers. You're a dinosaur. You need to catch up, brother Jim. I'm not looking to catch up. Matter of fact, we ain't going the same direction. How will I ever catch you? We're not going the same direction. But I've seen internet and Facebook completely destroyed. I've seen kids ruined because of things they can see and do. I'm telling you, it'll burn your household down. It'll tear up your spiritual house, and it'll ruin your church. Remove the hazards. You say, well, I'm not getting that out of there. No, and you're going to have a fire, too, one day. He said to go through and remove the hazards. I've seen it burned to the ground. You better get rid of it. It's better than losing your house. Amen. You wouldn't believe this, but I've seen video games almost destroy a marriage. Now, there's probably nothing wrong with video games, although I don't play them. I don't have time to play them. But there's probably nothing wrong with most of them. But I've seen video games almost destroy a marriage, have to cancel, lock in a husband because he wants to set up all night long and play video games and ignore his wife. Look around you. Look at these people in these seats. You guys look at each other. It's a miracle you got one. It's a miracle anybody married you. And you sit up all night messing with a stupid video game and ignore her, the one job gave you? You fool! You'll burn your house down. People are crazy. Oh boy, here we go. I've seen hunting and fishing destroy homes. I've seen, I've seen, you know guys with deer season starts up in Arkansas. Some of them you don't see for two months. And their wives are just whittled to a deer camp. I like hunting. I like fishing. But I'm not always looking for a chance to go out with little boys for two to three days. I never have been. And my wife, she probably wouldn't like it, but she wouldn't stop me if I wanted to do it. I don't have a desire to do it. Man, God gave you a wife and a family, why don't you try to spend a little time with them? But sports is a wonderful thing. I love to play sports. I play all kinds of sports. I like it. But I've seen, I've seen them get so busy that mommy and daddy don't even get to speak to each other. They just pass each other on the highway going back and forth to soccer and team work. Don't even have a home anymore. You say, well, I want my kid to be popular, and I want my kid to get out of the scholarship, and blah, blah. Why, he's never going to play ball. Look at him and her. They're not going to play pro ball. They jump right now. As high as they jump, you can slide a cigarette paper under their shoes. They can't hit. They can't run. They can't catch. Yeah. Why don't you make sure you spend a little time with him in church? The kid got on a $200 pair of tennis shoes, he couldn't jump. Can't shoot, can't hit a ball. It's just something for mom and daddy to go to the game and holler and scream about. That wouldn't holler and scream in church to save your life. Nothing wrong with any of those things I just mentioned. But buddy, I tell you what I do, I've seen them destroy homes. I've seen them destroy churches. Hey, here's one for you. I've seen the ministry. I've seen some guys that got so busy for God. In the ministry, God gave you. They didn't have time to ignore their wife, ignore their kids, spend no time at home. You're a fool. You're a fool. God gave you time for both. You better take time for both. Amen, brother Jim. I've seen making a dollar cost folks their home. I've seen it tear up a church. I've seen it tear up people's spiritual lives. In-laws can do it. It's hard to remove that hazard. But he said remove the hazards, and you're taking rid of their family. But you know how to spend all your day around them. That man heard a guy on a train got robbed and they robbed the train and they come back there and pistol out and took everybody's money, they took their jewelry, took their gold, took everything they had. And man, they robbed and got off the train then with everything, made a clean getaway. And the guy looked over at his wife and she was over in the corner doing this. He said, what are you doing? She pulled a gold necklace out of her mouth, took it home. And she had her diamond wedding ring in there, had her gold earrings in there. He said, what did you do? She said, I didn't want to get my stuff. She said, when I saw them cut, I put all my jewelry in my mouth. Well, they couldn't see it. He said, boy, it's too bad we didn't have your mama here. We could have saved the luggage, too. Amen. Amen. Forgive me. I shouldn't have said that last thing, but I did. You know what he said to do? He said, go through and remove the accelerants. Anything he said in there that might really get a fire going, he said, get it out of the house. You know what they are, don't you, sir? You know what they are, too, don't you, sis? You know what buttons push to get a fire going, don't you? You know just what to say, you know just when to say it. He said, go through and remove the accelerants. Anything that'll really fan that fire and get it going, get that thing out of there, boy. Amen. But you know what he said most fires come from at home? Most all of them, he said, just comes from overloads. He said it just got too much on the circuit. And eventually it burns, and eventually it catches on fire. And let me give you a little tip, too. I've been an electrician for 45, 50 years, You go through your house and the lights are blinking. Something's on fire. And he has one look at that. But they'll overload those circuits. They'll overload it. He said they'll get loaded down to the point where they'll just catch fire or burn up. You better be careful. You know, you can be overloaded with good things. It don't have to be something evil. It don't have to be something wicked. Mom and Daddy, you can get so loaded down with good stuff. But you have no time for God no time for family you'll burn your house down Church house your house to Tell you what else he said then we'll get to the fire. He said use detectors He's a man put them up and use them Spring and fall. Since the clock doesn't spring, set it back in the fall. He said, every time you do that, change the battery on all your smoke detectors in your house. That's a tip from mom and dad. Use detectors. So what do they do? They'll detect a fire sometimes before it bursts into flames. They'll detect a fire when it's just still smoking a little bit, and the fire hasn't broke out yet. He said, use those, and it can tell you when a fire's going to start. Always use a detector. Keep your family under the Word of God. Keep your family in a church house where there's an old-fashioned preacher. Keep your family in a place where they'll hear the Word of God and where the Holy Spirit can detect things that you can't. Before a fire gets started, it can warn you. Use detectors. Preaching the Word of God is a good detector. The Bible's a good detector. The Holy Spirit is a good one, usually through preaching. Prayer is a good detector. God will tell you things in prayer. But he said, when you got a detector, though, you better heed the warning. What good is it to have a detector? And you won't die in the light, will you? And it's been chirping for six weeks. It chirps because of everything. What good is it to have a detector? If you're just going to listen to it chirp, you're going to walk by. Preacher, get up every Sunday and preach to you. You don't pay no attention, you didn't change nothing. Holy Spirit deal with your heart, you know this is good. You read the word of God, God showed you the truth, you haven't done anything about it yet. You haven't found your way to the altar, you haven't got your heart right. What good is it to have detectors if you're not gonna use them? He said use detectors. And I'll tell you something else he said, he said, don't play with fire. Don't ever let your kids play with fire. Mom and dad, don't you play with it either. Hey, young people, don't put yourself in a place. Girls, don't put yourself in a place where you can mess up. Don't put yourself in a place where you can mess up. Boys, don't get yourself in a spot where you couldn't necessarily. You're playing with fire. I would say the man cannot take fire to the pussum without being burned. You be careful. Don't get in a spot where you might make a mistake, girls. Lose your purity. Boys, don't get in a spot where you might lose yours. We preach to girls all the time, because they get pregnant and have kids. But you need to keep yours, too. Don't get in a spot where you could lose it. Don't get in a spot where you could mess up. Be careful with your relationships, even at church. I had a young couple at my church one time, they were teenagers, and he got him a girlfriend, boy, got him this gal and everything, and she was kind of a pretty girl, but boy, she didn't wear enough clothes. And I don't want him. He said, I can maintain myself, I can keep myself, I can handle it. He came up to me one Wednesday night, he didn't have to tell me nothing, I already knew, it's on his face. He said, Brother Jim, I just handled it. He said, Brother Jim, I messed up. Messed up my life, messed up her life. You be careful with your relationships. Don't play with fire. Church members, just because you're 30, 40, 50 year old, don't you think you can just let yours go haphazardly either? We've had family destroyed in our church in their 40s and 50s because somebody got too close to somebody else. You don't play with fire. You keep yourself out of that place. Can a man take fire at his bosom and not be burned? The Holy Spirit will warn you. Your conscience will warn you for a while. The preacher warned you, things you better quit, things you should be careful of, people you should be careful of. In a good Bible-believing church, you'll be warned. My mom used to let me go almost anywhere when I was a teenager. And I could go with almost anybody that we knew around our block. But there was a few people. One guy, everybody knew he was a dopehead. Another guy, everybody knew he was a sock drunk. And they were my friends, good friends. In fact, all my friends were dopeheads and drunks. Like them. Like them, they were. But she let me go just about anywhere. She said, you can't ride without them. And you can't ride without them. She said that'd get you killed. I don't want to see you in a car with that one. right here in the church. They don't have any plans on getting closer to God. They're honest to goodness. I love them. I love them all. There's not anybody. There's some people, your kids don't need a ride. I mean, bro, Jim. All right, that's prevention. But what if a fire breaks out? I said, what do you do if a fire breaks out? You know what he told me? He said, call 911 immediately. Don't call your friend. Don't call your best buddy. Don't call your mama. Don't call your daddy. He said, call 911 immediately and seek help. He said, you go get the help. He said, don't try to put it out alone. He said, you call for help immediately. I've told this illustration everywhere I've ever preached, but we have a cotton mill back home. And up on the second floor, they had a machine called a mapper that mapped that material up and made it fluffy like a sheepskin coat. It was a huge machine. It took up most of the second floor of this factory we worked in. They put a guy up there running that machine. He said, this machine's the most dangerous in the building. He said, look right up there in that building. He said, the foreman's right up there. He knows how to fix everything on this machine. He said, if you ever see cotton start to ball up out of the frickin' corner of that thing, he said, don't try to fix it, shut it down, go get the foreman. And he knows what to do. He put him on that job, and he said it wasn't 30 minutes, alarms going off, big noises, crashes all over the second floor. He went up there and said that machine was a thousand pieces of wood. Busted all two pieces. And he said, what did you do? He said, well, it didn't really jump up, it just started to ball up a little bit, Man, he did, he got choked up, and it tore up that whole machine. And that foreman jumped on him. He said, you idiot, I told you not to do that. He said, I did the best thing I could. I did the very best I could. He said, no, the best you could have done was call the foreman. I told him, the best thing you can do is call the foreman. I said, well, Jim, I got trouble. But the best thing you can do is call the foreman. You talk to him twice, he knows what to do. He knows how to fix it. Why in the world would you call mama or daddy your friend? Call the foreman. He knows how to fix your, he can fix your life. He can straighten the kinks out in your head. Call the foreman. He said, don't try to put it out alone. It may look small, he said, but the smoke alone can kill you, even if you don't get in the fire. And then he said, you know what he said? Wait for help to come. Have you done what you can do? Have you done all you know to do? Did you call 911? Did you call a foreman? Then wait for help to come. Don't try to put it out by yourself. Wait for help to come. You're not smart enough to fix it or you wouldn't have been in that shape to start with. Call the foreman. And then, if it does burn to the ground, brother and sister, don't get mad at God. He didn't start it. Your household getting burned down, just like in the pot, the house of God gets wrecked. Hey, God didn't start it. Why get mad at God? Don't get mad at the church. They didn't start it. You're the one that started it. Your family, somebody started it, but the church didn't start it. They called for help. And what he said, I'm almost done, believe it or not. A few more little things here. He said, he said, he said, what do you do? He said, well, when we get there on the job, he said, the next thing you do, when a fire's broke out and it's already burned, he said, you go in and save what you can. He said, when we go into a place, he said, our number one priority first, to try to save people. That's what we want to do is save people. He said, that's the first. When you go through the building, you try to save people. He said, and then after you get the people out, he said, you try to save as many things as you can. If you can take some valuables out of the house without killing anybody, he said, then you try to save some things. Buy a car out of the garage. You try to save some things. But people come first. He said, didn't he try to save a few things? And he said, if all else fails, you can't save anything. He said, we'll get the hoses going. And he said, Brother Sumo, he said, we'll get the hoses going. If we can't save the people, we will if we can. We'll save things if we can. He said, when the push comes to shove, we'll get the hoses out and try our best to at least save destruction. He said, you might lose a side. You might lose a roof. But if you can save destruction, You can rebuild it, God can. At least try to save the structure. You might be able to rebuild then. But you know what he said? He said, sometimes we get there too late and it's too far gone. He said, ain't nothing we can save. He's got there before kids did, mom and dad did, all the people in the building did. He said, we get there too late, we can't save anything in the house, nobody, no thing, nothing around. He said, nothing we can say. You know what he said to him? He said, we get the hoses out, and we try to save all the adjacent buildings. He said, we try to save everything close to us. You may burn your house to the ground. You may destroy your spiritual life. You may destroy your family. But what the priest is going to do, he's going to try to save some things around you. Before it splits to the ground Sometimes you do that. You're trying to save buildings, things close by. And then you know what he said? He said, sometimes we just get the hoses out and everything's gone. But he said, we just get the hose out and try to keep it from spreading. He said, we hose down everything for the church and try to keep things around. Just try to keep it from spreading somewhere else. Somebody in your church destroy their home? You destroy the church, destroy their spiritual life? All we try to do is get the church to keep it from spreading tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight. Before you infect everybody in the church. Try to keep it from spreading any further. And it'll spread. He'll take her side, and she'll take his side. You know that came to us, and that's your second cousin of mine. And boy, you're gonna spread all over the house. Try to keep it from spreading. You burn your house down. I've seen a bunch of homes destroyed in my 30 years there, Brother Charlie, not as many as you got, but in my years, I've seen a bunch of homes destroyed. I know Brother Mike has too, and these other preachers, and Brother Jimbo and all these guys, and Brother McAfee. I know they've seen some destroyed. And what we do, we concentrate on trying to save people. When something happens in your life, we'll do our best to try to save people. That's what we want to do. And you know, some of them, we go to, by the time the preacher hears about it, it's a disaster. You know, if we heard about it earlier, we're not gonna have it. But by the time it gets to me, it's already World War III. Somebody's already dropped the nut by the time I give it. It's hard. We try to say, I go into some house that's been completely destroyed, and it wasn't no accident and nothing, it was pure arson. Mama ran her big mouth until she burnt it to the ground. Daddy ran his big mouth until it was burnt to the ground. The kids got out of hand, nobody restrained them, and it was burnt to the ground. Pure arson. With no accident, nothing. You know what they thought? They didn't know it would get out of control. They thought they could do a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Mom and Dad don't know. Richard don't know, certainly don't know. My best friend don't know. But I dabbled a little bit of this and dabbled a little bit of that. And you never thought it'd get out of control, did you? But that little old spark, boy, will be aflame before you know it. You'll burn your cotton-picking house down. You know what they thought? They thought they could put it out any time they wanted to. You were so small. They thought they could put it out any time they wanted to. Sometimes you can't You burn your house down We try to save some things We have we see we see fires break out and families and churches and spiritual life We'll try to save some things if we can't say the people will try to save a marriage We'll fight try to save a marriage if we can we'll do that we'll try to save a testimony We'll try to save a life Maybe we'll try to save a reputation. Girls, we'll try to save your reputation. Boys, we'll try to save something. You want to save something. But you know what he said? Sometimes, he said, Brother Jim, you get there, he said, there's nothing to save. The adjacent buildings have caulked. He said sometimes you get there, all you can do is just stand back and watch it burn. Not a thing you can do to fix it. You just stand back and watch it burn. Oh, you get the hoses out and try to keep it from spreading. You try to keep it from getting to the neighbor's house. You don't want their house to burn, too. But mostly, you just keep it, try to keep it from spreading. Last, and I'll close with this. You know what he told me? He said, most fires that are really dangerous and really kill a lot of people and really destroy a lot of things, he said, most fires, he said, come at night. He said, they come home, people are sleeping. And you don't have to go sleep for a little while, mom and dad. You don't have to nap very long to burn your cotton-picking house down. You don't have to go to sleep at the switch very long. And boy, you have some problems. Did you know, the Bible says, let us therefore not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober. Did you know nobody in the building from eight to eight, Nobody in the building is exempt from these things I talked about tonight. Nobody's exempt. You can do that too. I'd say to you tonight, don't let your house be destroyed. Don't let your church be destroyed. Don't let your spiritual house you build for the Lord be destroyed. Don't burn your house down. I'll let the preacher do what he wants to do with that. Let's bow our heads tonight. Invitations open. The Lord spoke to your heart. I encourage you to come.