What's the greatest danger to our churches, and I said the greatest danger to our churches is syncretism. You know, what will drive these churches into irrelevancy? You know, what will harm the following generations of the people that grew up in our church? What will nullify our preaching? What will nullify our doctrine?

What will damage our witness in the world, and it's becoming like the world. It's syncretism. So that was the whole thing. And of course, in one way, the greatest danger to church isn't syncretism. It's a fruit of what is the greatest danger, and that is a rejection of the true gospel.

Because if you embrace a false gospel, then it means that you're not obedient to the Word. So embracing a false gospel is the most devastating thing, but the fruit of it is worldliness. Simple definition. Mixing things that should never be mixed. So mixing the things of God, holy things with, and then just importing normal worldly things into that.

It always pollutes and poisons the well. You have this wonderful well, and it is adding things into it that fundamentally changes it. And the watching world sees that you're mixing up, you know, in so many ways you're just like them. Mm-hmm. And there's so many temptations to mix, mixing secular psychology fads in our counseling, in our definitions of human ailments and remedies.

You know, the early church was mixing Gnosticism with Christianity, you know, this esoteric, individualistic, personal revelation with Christianity. But maybe we could just talk about some of the incursions of syncretism in our times. Well, sure. Our probably at the top of the heap has to be our entertainments, having exactly the same entertainments that come out of places that hold a completely different and even contrary worldview. So there are the entertainment factories, they're pushing out things that push an agenda out of a completely contrary worldview.

And they're actually selling something in every song and movie, they're selling something, and we're buying. There are two words that describe this, assimilation. Assimilation is when a person transitions from one culture into another, and then there is the more extreme acculturation where one culture completely takes over and eliminates another culture. And that's the danger in the church. And we import all kinds of worldly practices in modern Christianity, an entertainment-driven church.

You know, when people come to our churches, well, they don't have a motivational speaker, They don't have a band to do the worship for them. We read a lot more Scripture, and they're children. It's actually harder for people to come to our churches because of those kinds of things that we don't have. But those things are actually part of a secularizing culture in the church. And it comes out of a whole view that says, let's not mix.

Let's just, whatever the Bible gives us, let's try our best to be satisfied with those things, give the best to give our all to those things. Yeah, one of the things that I said in that message is that the greatest syncretizing force in the church today, in your family today, is your phone. And you know, Fortune magazine says that you look at it 144 times a day, that you spend 4 hours and 25 minutes on that phone. And what you have are algorithms that are seeking you out. You know, they are looking for you and they want you.

And, you know, our people have taken their children out of the public school system. I said, your phone is more dangerous than the public school system. It's the discipleship tool of the world. It is catechizing your children. So be very careful.

Well, you and your children. Well, they're not... Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Me and my children, right?

And somebody's paying to find you. That's how the algorithms work. Somebody is paying to find somebody just like you. And when you click, it's sweet for them. Pete Slauson What a thought.

Let me give you a bit of scripture. This is 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10. Here's what Peter says in 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10, speaking of the people of God. But You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light, who once were not a people but are now the people of God who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy." So he's talking about a people that God has saved just through His own free mercy and claimed this people to be his own special people. If you go to the King James Version, it calls us a peculiar people.

And it's getting at the distinction that there should be between a people who have received such mercy and people who are still living in rebellion against God. There ought to be a really marked difference between those groups of people. Yeah, and the Bible makes it really clear what that actually looks like. There are people with a separate identity, a separate ethic, separate lifestyles, in many ways separate relationships, separate schedules, because God wants to control your time, work six days and rest one. And you see pictures of this in the Old Testament, the food laws, you know, go to Leviticus and see, which is the subject is holiness, how are God's people a holy people, even, you know, this whole matter of separate fabrics and things like that, those are all pictures of a people that live differently.

Now, we don't believe the food laws are enforced today, because they've been fulfilled in Christ, But God has always had a separate people. And for example, in the Old Testament, God's people, you know, spent 22% of their days in feasting and worshiping God. Nobody does that, right? 1 Corinthians 6, verse 20 Here's another scripture down the same line, 1 Corinthians 6, verse 20. Listen to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 20, for you were bought at a price.

Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. So, here Paul is talking about the implications of the gospel that the people who have embraced the gospel are a blood-bought people, are bought at a tremendous price. And so, God, he owns us, he owns the rights to us. And this is not something to be bemoaned at all by Christians, but to actually be relished. We are his own special people.

We're the apple of his eye. We're precious to him. And that ought to work its way out into what our schedule looks like, how we spend our money, how we spend our time. Pete You know, we get to spend a lot of time talking about just the beauty of God's ways. I mean, we're talking, we're kind of speaking negatively, here's what we want to stay away from, you know, but what do we want to gravitate toward?

And I think the Word of God does that. One of the ways to illustrate that is, do you want the sufficiency of culture, Or do you want the sufficiency of Scripture? Do you want your worship to be regulated by man, the next creative guy, the normative principle? Or do you want to be regulated by what we call the regulator principle? Do you want to have a culture where the law of God is applicable, that you're actually putting into practice?

Or do you want an antinomian culture? You want a Sabbath-breaking culture? You want a Sabbath-keeping culture? Does it matter? So, there are lots of details, and I think what we would say is that sufficiency of Scripture creates the most beautiful culture, that the regulative principle gives you holy boundaries to do what actually you know God is pleased with.

You have a culture of rest instead of a culture of just doing your own thing. Do you want to just be untethered from the way that God wants you to worship and handle your schedule? Or do you want to actually have a day of rest? Lots of days of rest are given to the people of God. So I think that we want to be hemmed in by the Word of God and not untethered from it.

So in the joint service you ran us through, I bet it was a dozen scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, which essentially is saying in different ways, don't drink down the world. Would you run us through those? 1.5 Yeah, sure. I think I started with Moses. I kind of ran through the great disciple makers, you know, in the Bible.

Moses, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of these nations. Deuteronomy 18.7. You shall not do according to the doings of the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. You shall not do, nor shall you walk in their ordinances." Like every culture has its ordinances. David says in Psalm 106.35, but they mingled with the Gentiles and learned their works, and then he says, which became a snare to them.

It was a trap. The culture throws out all kinds of traps for us. Isaiah 2, 6, he's talking about how God's people have been infected. He calls it Eastern ways. He says, because they are filled with Eastern ways.

And he's talking about Eastern philosophies, you know, entering into the people of God. He says, they are pleased with the children of foreigners. And the superstitions, you know, the fads, all that kind of stuff, or embraced. You have Jeremiah, Jeremiah 10-2, do not learn the ways of the Gentiles, and he says, for the customs of the peoples are futile. We always have to ask, What customs have we embraced that really aren't helpful?

Every culture has unhelpful customs. There are some cultures that have superior customs that are more aligned with Scripture, And the people of God have to discern which customs they're going to embrace. And the problem with the customs is everybody loves them, but the people of God shouldn't love all of them. You have Ezekiel, he says, they have not distinguished between the holy and the unholy, nor have they made known the difference between the clean and the unclean. That's in Ezekiel 22, 26.

Nehemiah talks about the same thing. He talks about the men of Tyre. They've been influenced by the men of Tyre. The men of Tyre bringing their fish and all kinds of goods and selling them on the Sabbath. And Nehemiah is pulling out other people's hair because he's so disturbed about it.

And he says, you bring added wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath. And he's telling them, look, what got us into captivity, breaking the Sabbath? Why are we doing this again, you know, after the restoration? Jesus, He says, in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men." That's in Mark 7, verses 6 through 8.

The Apostle Paul, the same thing, he says, no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened." He says, look, they're ignorant, they're blind. That's in Ephesians 4, 17 through 20. Again, of course, the Apostle Paul in Romans, Romans 12, 2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Peter, the apostle Peter, well, you just quoted it, we're a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart for God. So, the Bible is full of appeals to be very careful with what you do with the culture and not to be assimilated and especially don't be acculturated.

Don't be absorbed, you know, don't be syncretized into the world. So here's maybe one of the most helpful, we find it, the Apostle Paul writing it to the Corinthians, in 2 Corinthians chapter 6 verses 14 through 18, Paul says, do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness, and what communion has light with darkness, and what accord has Christ with Belial or with the devil? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever, and what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God, as God has said, I will dwell in them and walk among them.

I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore, come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." Scott, here's a cycle that I've absolutely seen in my own life, and that is the cycle of desensitization, desyncretism. In other words, these things happen one degree at a time imperceptibly, And one day you wake up and find that there's an area of compromise that has sort of snuck up on you because it happened little by little, and now you're way past where you're a comfortable being, but you weren't sort of seeing it as it was happening.

And you've lost the sensitivity in your nerve endings, and you really need for God to resensitize that. So I think one of the things we would say to people who are watching is cry out to God that He would resensitize you. Cry out to God that He would give feeling back to the nerve endings again so you would have a sense of where you've made those compromises one degree at a time, and now you're further than you ever intended to go, and just become really sensitive to the fact that you're a blood-bot people, blood-bot to be his own special people, to be a peculiar, different kind of people. And we brought three specific applications. What do you do?

What do you do about this to resist the syncretizing powers that are at work. And first of all, double down on the Word of God. Live your life out of the Word of God. The Word of... Meet with the Lord every morning and let Him shape your thinking, your feelings, and what you're doing during the day.

Let the Word of God dwell richly in you. Set your mind on the things above. Start right there and live your life out of that book. That's what we really need. Yeah, where your time and efforts have been siphoned off and diverted to other things, bring them back to the Word of God and fellowship with God.

Yeah. You know, how do you be consecrated to God? It's by consecrating yourself to His Word. So the first was double down on the Word of God. The next was double down on your family.

The devil is attacking your family. The devil wants to destroy your marriage. You know, the greatest impact you'll ever have in this world is on your family. You have the greatest authority, the greatest time frame, and everything, you've got everything that you need to have an impact on your family. And we know, we're just exhorting people to memorize Scripture, walk with your children, love your wife, double down on your family.

Don't minimize the power of a family that has been pulled out of a syncretistic life. So you mentioned the phone earlier. Just in terms of the family, the enemy doesn't have to kick down your door anymore. He can come right in through your phone. Through all the phones that are in your house.

And you can really easily lose sight of all those who are having influence and input into the lives of the people in our homes. And then the last one was double down on your church. Devote yourselves fully to your local church. You know, God has created a people, a culture, in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. And, you know, I was asking, are you taking your local church lightly?

Do you have plenty of time for the gym? You got plenty of time for pickleball, you got plenty of time for scrolling in your phone, but you don't have time for the prayer meetings, you don't have time to really be devoted. You know, there are just other things that are more important, and you know, you'd rather be out somewhere Tuesday night, but you're not going to come and pray with the church on Wednesday night. I'm sure that went over really well. But no, but doubling down on your church means that you don't get to, you don't, you can't do everything that the culture wants you to do.

So, yeah, it's true. Double down on the Word of God, double down on your family, and double down on your church and create the culture of heaven in your heart and then in everything else you're doing. Resist the mixing of the things that should never be mixed, the things of God with the world. Yeah. Yeah.

Do not learn the ways of the Gentiles. Okay. Well, there you have it. Yeah, thanks. That was a great meeting.

It was really a joy to be together. I was really thankful for that day. It was. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope you can be with us next time.

Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out ChurchAndFamilyLife.com.