Valentine's Day and a Warning of Syncretism

Well, good afternoon! Happy Sabbath! It is wonderful to be back here in sunny California with everyone. We were here two years ago for our first trip to California. I did not speak that time, but it was great to be here in this room with all of you, and it's great to be back for another break away from Michigan, right? I was going to say I bring cold greetings from Michigan, but no, I bring warm greetings from Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Flint again.

I do bring cold greetings, though, from the Detroit Lions. That was rough two weeks ago, and you guys are responsible for that. And so I'm kind of caught. Tomorrow I'm stuck, because the Kansas City chiefs have beat up on my Cincinnati Bengals, and now you guys have beat up on my Detroit Lions. So I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow, other than probably getting and eating a whole bunch of food and crying myself to sleep.

So between whoever wins tomorrow, I'm not going to be happy. No, it is wonderful to be able to be here with Troy and Cindy and to enjoy some more time with you. And so it's just great to be here, and so thank you for your warm welcome and for the opportunity to share God's Word with more of His precious people. If you had to guess how much money is estimated to be spent on this Valentine's Day coming up this next week, what would your guess be?

I'll give you a couple of hints or a couple choices. 500 million? 1 billion? 5 billion? 10 billion? This is how much is going to be spent here in the United States? How much would you guess? Or would you guess 25.8 billion? I'm a little specific with that one, aren't I? 25.8 billion dollars is the estimate of what will be spent this holiday season for Valentine's Day, and that comes from the National Retail Federation website.

What's interesting is that that's a large amount. I mean, I can't even wrap my mind around that amount of money. 25.8 billion with a B dollars. I found it interesting that in 2022, while we were in the midst of the pandemic still, the WHO reached out to a whole bunch of nations saying that if they would gather together and donate 23 billion dollars, that they felt they could end the pandemic.

23 is still less than 20. I mean, could you imagine that much money that they felt at that time could maybe finish and end the pandemic? As we know, it continues on, and there's still COVID. But so this number again, this is such a big number.

I had to break it down, and so one of the things I thought I would do is look at some of the military expenses that we spend, because one of the new things that we have in our military is the new Ford-class aircraft carrier, the newest of our aircraft carriers. Did you know for 25.8 billion dollars you could buy two aircraft carriers?

I mean, that's a lot of money. That's a lot. 13 billion dollars each, and you could buy two of those for the amount of money spent on Valentine's Day. Same military type of idea, but the Virginia-class submarines, these are fast attack submarines that the nation uses to protect our country, they cost 4.3 billion.

So you could buy six of those for the same amount of money that is spent on Valentine's Day. It's an amazing amount of money when you consider that. Some of the statistics from the same website shares that 53 percent of Americans plan to celebrate Valentine's Day this year. 62 percent of consumers aged 25 to 34 plan to celebrate this year, and that's more than any other age groups of 62 percent of those in our young adult range plan to celebrate.

Consumers plan to spend on average 185 dollars per person this year, and so of course that's average. Some spend more. Some spend... Top gifts given, I don't think we'd be too surprised to know that candy ranks the number one at 57 percent, but followed by greeting cards, flowers, and evening out jewelry and clothing, of course. 145 million Valentine's Day cards each year. So 145 million. It's the second largest holiday after Christmas that these types of cards are shared. I don't know if your stores are the same as ours in Michigan, but you walk in the door and you're overpowered by pink and red everywhere on end caps, on the card section, everywhere you go at this time of the year.

The flowers are extra abundant, wrapped in pink and pink and red wrappers, and it's just...

You can't escape it. There are even... Restaurants have specials going on right now. Valentine's Day specials. Two meals for one low price and different things. And so what is... With all this hub of about Valentine's Day, I want to open the sermon with a question. With this Valentine's Day right around the corner in our nation, I'd like us to examine if this is a holiday that Christians should observe. Now, you're probably thinking this is a lot to talk about for a day that I'm not even going to celebrate or I don't have any intentions to, but I'm going to pivot as we get through the message. It isn't going to be completely about Valentine's Day all the way through.

But as we get kind of into this concept, let's take a closer look at the Valentine's Day characters that are involved with this holiday. So who was Saint Valentine from History.com? And this is a January 24th from 2022 article entitled, History of Valentine's Day. It says this about Valentine.

The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, of whom were martyred. One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine realizing the injustice of this decree defiled Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Still others insist that it was Saint Valentine of Terny, a bishop who was a true namesake of the holiday. He too was beheaded by Claudius II outside of Rome. Other stories suggest Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first Valentine greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl, possibly the jailer's daughter, who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it alleges that he wrote to her a letter signed from your valentine, an expression that is still, of course, used today. Although the truth behind this Valentine legend is murky, the stories all emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and most importantly, romantic figure. Who is Cupid?

From the same article, History of Valentine's Day, Cupid is often portrayed on Valentine's Day cards as a naked cherub launching arrows of love at unsuspecting lovers. But the Roman god Cupid had his roots in Greek mythology, and accounts of his birth vary, but some say he's a son of Nix, an Arabist, others of Aphrodite and Aries, and others suggest he was a son of Iris and Zephyrus, or even Aphrodite and Zeus. A bunch of Greek, I'm not a Greek god expert, but this is some of the mythology, some of the ideas. According to the Greek archaic poet Eros, Eros was a handsome immortal who played with the emotions of God and men, using golden arrows to incite love and leaden ones to sow aversion. It wasn't until the Hellenistic period, so this is just before the beginning of the Roman Empire, that he began to be portrayed as this mischievous chubby child he'd become on Valentine's Day cards. What is Lupercalia? That's another one that maybe you're familiar with, as you consider, and if you've ever researched Valentine's Day. While some believe that Valentine's Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine's death or burial, others claim that the church may have decided to place St. Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to Christianize the pagan celebration of Lupercalia, celebrated at the ides of February or February 15th, and it's celebrated here in this nation on the 14th. Lupercalia was a... this is interesting. I did not realize that until I did the research.

Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Phaunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. To begin the festival, members of the Lupercae, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat for fertility and a dog for purification. They would then strip the goats' hides into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood, and take to the streets gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hides. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcome the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year.

Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city bachelors would each choose a name and be paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage. Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christianity but was outlawed as it was deemed unchristian at the end of the fifth century when Pope Gileis declared February 14th St. Valentine's Day. It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was common believed in France and England that February 14th was the beginning of the bird's mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine's Day should be a day for romance. The English poet Jeffrey Chaucer was the first to record St. Valentine's Day as a day of romantic celebration in his 1375 poem Parliament of Fowls writing, for this was sent on St.

Valentine's Day when every fowl cometh to choose is made. So it's a lot of information I went through and like I said, it's a lot to kind of consider on a worldly holiday that many of us, I believe all of us, would avoid and not celebrate. But it's interesting to consider just where all this idea comes from, right? This isn't anything new. This is similar to what we see all around in society, around us. This the syncretism of Lupe is the heart of this with the pagan Roman festival, with the Catholic St. Valentine's Day. You just see this this combination of all these ideas, of all these the culture, of all the the pagan gods, the Greek, the Roman gods, all this kind of information and of many around the world still celebrate today.

And with this idea, we saw that many had changed it over the years to become a popular fertility rite, a Christian holiday. While the syncretism occurred sometimes in the late 400s AD, the holiday really took off commercially in the late 1800s, promoted as a day to show love to others, especially romantic love to your special someone. So here from Michigan has entered California to talk about something that we know we're not going to be partaking in, but I want to also use this holiday as an example of something that to some seems seems harmless. It's just a secular holiday, right? I know there's no religious connection, but the truth of the matter is this, and along with other secular things, these things can enter into the church and it can create problems for Christians. We see throughout Scripture and around us in society today that Satan loves to take things of God that God says are good and wholesome and important to his plan for humanity, but then Satan twists it and says, nah, that's not that. That's old. That's even archaic. That's not relevant for today's culture. And then on the same time, things that we know are bad in society that Satan uses to portray as being good, things that are more open-minded, showing more tolerance, showing more acceptability. And so we know that our enemy does this on a regular basis. Did God create love?

Absolutely. Absolutely, he did. And in fact, Scripture says God is love. Let's open our Bibles to 1 John 4 and verse 8. 1 John 4.

Actually, we'll back up a little bit. We read verse 7 first. 1 John 4 and verse 7. Just laying down the foundation so we're all on the same page, which we most likely are already. But 1 John 4, verse 7 says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this, the love of God was manifested toward us that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. And then verse 11, Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. And verse 16, and we have known and believed the love of God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him. So there is no question God is love, and his love abides in us, and he wants us to share that love with others. And if we look at Ephesians 5 and verse 1, we see another aspect of this love that God wants us to have. Ephesians 5.

Ephesians 5 and verse 1 at the beginning.

Paul tells us here, therefore be imitators of God. So do the same thing God does. Act like God. Think like God does as dear children, and walk in love, that action component.

Part that is our responsibility. So we are to walk, we are to act in love, as Christ also loved us and given himself for us, and offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

So does God want us to love one another? Absolutely. Does he want us to have romantic love for our spouses? Yes, he does. Does he want us to do nice things for one another? Nice things for our family? Nice things for our greater family? Absolutely, he does. And in fact, Paul, later on in Ephesians 5 verse 28, continues to talk about this. He says, In verse 33, So God is love, and he has given us instructions and the ability to love one another.

But then Satan, in his craftiness and his desire to deceive others, takes something godly and good, and then, we already mentioned, puts his own twist on it. And he has encouraged mankind to become distracted by the evil that masquerades often as something good.

While we're here in Ephesians, let's go just to the book of Colossians, one book later, and our Bible's Colossians 2 and verse 8. Because we start to transition over to what I want to, I kind of pivot to as we continue with this message. Colossians 2 and verse 8, Paul, again, offering a warning of heresy that can enter into the church. False ideas, false thought.

He says, Doesn't that describe a lot of the truth that we see around us today? A lot of the reasons people operate what they define as right and wrong? A lot of it's not any longer based on God's word, but it's based on traditions. This is a good thing to do. We've celebrated Valentine's Day, or we've celebrated other holidays for years, and so it's a tradition. This is what we do in our family. He says, Beware, lest anyone cheat you, according to the traditions of man, according to the basic principles of the world, and notice, and not according to Christ.

We know that you can put in your notes a reference to Isaiah 5 and verse 20, where the prophet says, Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light. We know that darkness is the evil of the world, evil of Satan, and the light is the light of Christ, the light of God's word, the goodness. Isaiah goes, Who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter? Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, saying, I can taste, I can sample, I can touch some of the stuff around us in society, some of the evil, and I'll be okay. I'm not partaking it. I'm not making it my life. When God's mercy was poured out on the Israelites and he led them out of their Egyptian captivity, he did something that was miraculous, that no one would have believed, that could have been physically done. Here is a group of people, so large a number, that he was going to take out of their evil that they were trapped in. The Egyptians never believed in something. This group of people, this unarmed group of people, could ever escape their midst. They had nothing going for them. They weren't very well organized, and they'd been there for so long. This was their home. This is what they knew to be right and wrong. This is where they knew where their food would come from, what they could grow in their gardens. No one believed would have ever believed that someone, that even a god, could take even Pharaoh didn't believe that our god could take his people out of Pharaoh's grasp. But he did. But before the Exodus account, Israel had spent many centuries in Egypt surrounded by their polytheistic religion. From another article from worldhistory.org, Joshua Mark wrote this on April 14, 2016, an article titled, Egyptian Gods, the Complete List.

And trust me, we don't have time to go through this complete list that they had on there, but I want to highlight a couple just to kind of still paint a picture of what God was calling his people out of at that time in Egypt. What he wanted them to not partake of anymore, not to touch, not to taste.

So the article speaks to some of these gods. The gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt were an integral part of people's everyday lives.

It's not surprising, then, that there were over 2,000 deities in the Egyptian pantheon.

So 2,000 gods that they prayed to, that they would sacrifice to. These gods all had names, individual personalities and characteristics. They wore different kinds of clothing. They held different objects as sacred. They presided over their own domains and bore influence, and they reacted in highly individualistic ways to events. Each deity had their own area of expertise, but were often associated with several spheres of human life. Hathor, for example, was the goddess of music, dancing, and drunkenness, but was also understood as an ancient mother goddess, also associated with the Milky Way as a divine reflection of the Nile River. In her earlier incarnation as Sekhmet, she was a destroyer. The goddess Neith was originally a war goddess who became the epitome of the mother goddess, a nurturing figure to whom the gods would turn to to settle their disputes.

And so we have, again, more gods, and we could go through more of these deities, and I'll cover today. But I want to focus on a paragraph that the article also included.

The Egyptians had no problem with a multitude of gods, and they seldom shelved old deities in favor of new ones. Characteristics and roles of various gods were syncretized or harmonized to reconcile different religious beliefs, customs, or ideas. They didn't throw away an old god in Egypt. They would just then develop a new one. It's kind of like not doing away with the old and bringing in the new, but let's keep them both. Let's harmonize these two ideas. Let's take a little bit of this Egyptian god and combine it with this one, and now we create a better god or a super god.

And so they would syncretize these ideas and the customs and the ideas. And for political and religious reasons, for example, the Thebeian god Aemon, who was considered the most powerful deity in the New Kingdom, was united with Ra, a sun god who's cult dated to the beginnings of Egypt.

So this is that synchronization. And then the worship of the gods of Egypt has evolved over time as large cults developed on local and then on national scale.

This idea of syncretism is something that has existed for a very long time, as you can see, just in Egyptians with their gods. This is a major part of the environment the Israelites were surrounded by and would have to be untaught by God. After bringing his people out of Egypt, God knew that they would come into a new land with other nations around them, who also had their own false gods. So the one eternal God gave specific instructions on what his people were to do. Let's look at Deuteronomy 12 and verse 29.

And this starts to get into the core of what I want to share and kind of draw out of Scripture today as we start to pivot a little bit into Deuteronomy 12. We're going to come back to Valentine's Day a little bit later and kind of close with some ideas. But let's consider kind of how did God want his people as he brought them out of Egypt, as he took them out of this polytheistic way of life. How did he want them to walk as they went forward? Deuteronomy 12 verse 29 says, When the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land, take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them. Like that word ensnared is a powerful word that we can read through a lot.

That's like that trap set in the wilderness for a bird or for another animal. The animal is just walking along, living life, not knowing that they are about to be ensnared, taught, stuck, no way of escape. And he says, Be sure that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed from before you and that you do not inquire about their gods. Don't become curious. Don't open your mind to false ideas that can come in. And we see this all through the New Testament, too, in a lot of Paul's writings. He's saying, Don't let false ideas, false thought enter in.

Fight it. Stand against it. Go to what you know to be true.

Going on in verse 30, he says, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? I will do likewise. He's saying, Don't ask that question. Don't inquire. Don't desire that.

Verse 31, You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. God is saying, I'm going to give you instructions. There is a way to walk with me. He says, For every abomination to the Lord which He hates that they have done to their gods, for they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. It's just mind-blowing to be a father, to be a parent, and even consider that that would even be something on the table. And so it shows how corrupt we can become and how defiled our minds can become. And we may say, Well, I'll never do that. That's ridiculous.

But how far can we go to being synchronized to the ways of this world? How close can we get to touching something and saying, Well, I didn't get burnt that time, but I felt the heat.

And we can continue to be in a very dangerous position. Verse 32 says, Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it, nor take away from it. And then if you flip ahead to Deuteronomy 18 and verse 9, there's one more verse.

Kind of draw our attention to Deuteronomy 18 verse 9.

It says, When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations.

In a physical and spiritual sense, you and I today are not that much different than the Israelites were in Egypt. And as they were able to inherit the Promised Land, we've been born into a society that observes holidays with poor pagan and Greek and Roman origins. And it's been all around us, all the way from when we were kids on blankets to adults and to seniors. Since the moment we've been born, some of you have come out of keeping these holidays. Some of you have said, no more will be allowed in my house as God opened our eyes as He called us to walk different.

But as God led us on a different path, these holidays and their influence didn't just disappear from our lives for some of us. For some, it might have been very challenging because your parents, your siblings, they continue to keep these days. And now you're the weirdo, right? You're the one that says, I can't come over anymore. This isn't something that is part of my walk with God.

And so suddenly we have friends that are now cutting us off, family members that says, okay, then we're going to go do our thing. You can be by yourself for these. Or maybe we were kids in school who were given an art project. I remember that. Sometimes our art teacher would have where we're all they had a pre-printed out pine tree that had the big black outline on it.

And then the kids were to decorate and make a Christmas tree, right? And then I get the same handout. And all I needed was two colors, green and brown. Maybe a little bit of white for snow, right? If you're from the Midwest and you know, there's snow that lands on the tree. My tree was done really fast, just two colors. And then the teacher would put them up on the wall. Our teacher would put them up display. And here's all these Christmas tree patterns and everybody, all the work they put into it. And here's mine, just a tree. I can't imagine the parents walking in and who's this guy that doesn't even put any tinsel, doesn't even put anything on the tree. Man, what's going on? I can't imagine. I'm thankful we didn't have to stand next to it as all the parents walked by or anything. They never went that far. Could you imagine? But I remember being pulled out of Christmas parties before the party started. I remember being pulled out of Valentine's Day before the Valentine's party. The kids have their their pack of valentines. They're going to hand out to other kids the candy. And my mom shows up at the door and knocks. And then I know it's my time to follow her out. Did get the half of the afternoon off. That wasn't too bad. But we're different, aren't we? All of us, whether we were called out of the world and we began a new walk with God, whether we were a kid on a blanket, raised up in God's home and in his house, we are different from society and we are different from those around us. It would have been nice in one way if when God called us to his truth or called our families to his way that he would just removed us from society and placed us on like an island all together, right? It's a feast all year round, right? How wonderful would that be? We're all together. We're singing hymns. We're like mind. We're working together, serving one another. That's Mike Phelps's way too, that if I had a choice, that's what I would have chosen, right? But God knew that that would not develop the character that he wanted his people to have. He knew that wasn't going to fill the void that was going on in life that we have to choose through tribulation at times, through persecution, through being different. Because God's people were always different. You go back to Abraham.

God didn't leave him in Ur and say, well, just become here. He drew him away. How hard would that decision have been for Abraham to leave everything he knew to go a different direction? We can go through all the patriarchs, the choices that they made at different times. We can look at Christ, the difference he had to make. He was the son of God in the flesh. I get it. But he still had to walk against those who wanted to persecute him, those who said, you're not following God.

This is heresy that you're speaking, that you're teaching. And we look at Paul, who was zealous for persecuting the church. Those were his words, not mine.

Who was a good Jew, who loved doing what he did. He was on fire!

Till God grabbed him by the shirt collar on the road to Damascus and said, walk with me a different way.

And then Paul was the one who was sitting at the feet of the best rabbis of the time. He was the one that knew the law. He knew it all. And now he has to go back into Jerusalem from time to time.

And they were like, there's that yahoo, Paul, here again. Remember when he was with us? Remember when he knew the truth? And now he's all doing this weird stuff. And we look at the apostles. We look at the difficulty they had. We don't see God's people having this easy walk of just spinning in with society, nor do we see God just placing us all someplace where we could just keep the feast year-round. We're always worked with his people in this world where they're at, saying, walk differently. Be that light. Be that example. Do not blend mankind's traditions, man's ways, with mine. We see this. Christ said it himself, John 17 and verse 15.

John 17, and we know this is a prayer just before Christ was taken as a prisoner, before he went through his mock trial and was crucified. He spent time in the garden. He spent time talking with his disciples, and at the end of his time with them, he offered this prayer for his disciples, but also in turn for us still today. And in this prayer, he notes this. John 17 verse 15, he says, I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. He said, sanctify them. Make them holy. Set them apart by your truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have also sent them into the world, and for their sake, I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified by the truth. I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. That's you and me today. Verse 21, that they may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they may also be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.

And Mike Phelps's mind, take me away from here, place me on an island with all the rest of you.

That makes sense. But God says, I have to know my people will follow me. That is truly what it comes down to. Not get caught up in the things going on around us, in the swirling of other national events or world events, but that my people will keep their vision on me.

Seek first the kingdom of God and what? His righteousness. That's that vision that we've got to never let our minds and our eyes be taken off of. And God says, the only way I'm going to know is by you having to be continually part of an environment that is not of me, and so that I can know that you will walk according to my way.

Like the Israelites before, we know God has not removed us. We are in the world, but we are not of the world. So the instructions that God gave the Israelites apply again to us today, as we read in Deuteronomy 18 verse 9, when you come into the land which the Lord your God has given you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations.

Pivoting back to the Valentine's Day holiday this week, some may ask, well, what's wrong with taking my wife or husband out on this holiday? What's wrong with me purchasing some flowers and a card that shares my love for my spouse on Valentine's Day? Some may express, well, I'm not doing this for any pagan reasons or to worship any pagan gods. So what's wrong with me expressing my affection on this specific day? Let's look at John 4 and verse 22.

John 4 and verse 22.

This is the account of Jesus discussing a meeting with the woman at the well. He was traveling and went to the well and asked her to draw water, and that's when she started having this conversation. Jesus knew he was a prophet because he knew that she was married more than once. This is that account that we're breaking into the context here. John 4 and verse 22.

Do I want verse 22 or do I want to back up a little?

Let's back up to verse 20. Let's build a little bit more in the context here.

John 4 and verse 20. So he has this discussion about her husband, and she says in verse 19, I perceive you are a prophet. And she says, our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. And then Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. And he goes on to say, you worship what you do not know. We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is when the true worshipers, notice that, will worship the Father in what? Spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

This is who God is seeking to worship Him. Those who will keep their vision on the kingdom, those who will keep their eyes on His word, those who will look for what God wants us to do, how He wants us to walk, that we'll worship Him in spirit and truth. And what is truth?

Something absent from today's world, isn't it? Something absent from our society. There's all kinds of ideas on truth. There's what one politician or one group thinks is truth, or what one professor teaches, or one family, or one even area of the country. This is a model of truth. This is a model of what is okay. And yet, we desire so desperately for that truth that we have, that one source of truth, which is God's Word. It's His way. I often shudder to think about, where would I be right now if God didn't call my family, if He didn't work with me?

And sometimes when I was choosing maybe to go my own route, right, we've all gone astray at times.

But yet, God said, hang on, I'm not letting you go. And I'm so thankful for that, because where would I be? Where would any of us be? It's a place where I let my mind go for just a little bit, because it scares me. It scares me bad to think, where would I be right now if I didn't have God drawing me to His truth? If I didn't have His truth, what would I be grasping onto as sources of truth? Would it be relationships? Well, those fail us, don't they? Would it be philosophy?

Fall short as well. Would it be the support and the power of this nation?

For how long? Nothing supports us. Nothing withstands the test of time.

As mankind continues to stumble, mankind continues to fall.

And so this source of truth is what guides us. This source of truth is what we yearn for, to understand more and to hold close to us, because it's the only thing that helps. It's the only thing that provides. Does it matter to God what we do in our lives? It absolutely matters.

Does it matter to God if we celebrate a pagan holiday? It absolutely matters to God. God tells us very clearly how we should worship Him, and He tells us the things we should avoid.

Scripture and God's answer to the question I posed just a couple minutes ago is that Christians should not involve themselves in the observance of this Valentine's Day holiday. As we looked at the beginning of the message, none of the origins of this holiday are rooted in Scripture or have a biblical backing. The holiday is not worthy of what God would want us to observe, and God wants us to worship and follow Him the ways that He outlines for us to do. Even if someone feels like, well, I'm not worshiping false gods, or this holiday is secular, there is no religious component to it anymore, it really still is a day we should avoid. By partaking in the events associated with Valentine's Day, one is still advancing the origin and the meaning of the day.

And we're also, as we again heard in the sermonette, we're setting that example of what we should or should not be doing in our observance of this day. We're the be-doers of the Word, and that's where God says, do not touch, don't handle, stay far away from things that are not of Me. And so we set that example to our neighbors. We set the example to our family and to our children, to other people's children, to other people around us, those we work with, those we see on a daily basis, that this is not something that we are going to partake in and touch. If someone is special to you and you want to express it to them, do it on a different day than bringing this into your home and all that is associated with it. Don't do it under the umbrella of a worldly holiday with origins and false gods and traditions based on false worship. I think my brother Troy might have used this before you can put lipstick on a pig, but at the end of the day it's still a pig. And there's often we see at times in society that people will make something seem good. I mean, is love good? Absolutely love is good. Is love of God? We already covered that. We know there's no question there. So why is it wrong to then add some pagan aspects and some candy and some cupids and some going around and making whips of leather and smacking people with them?

Everything's wrong with these things because it's not the way that God has invited us to walk with Him. As we conclude, let's go to Leviticus 18 in verse 1. Again, I saw a little bit of time to spend on a holiday that probably none of us were planning to be part of or to partake of this next week. But the synchronization and the synchronization that we see going on in life around us is not something we can avoid and ignore because it's happening everywhere. But God says, walk differently.

We can't just blind our eyes and put a mask on and walk around. We have to see it, right? It's around us. But being one who stands out or does things differently from others around us, it's not usually the first line that I want to jump into. We don't like to stand out. I don't like to be the weirdo.

I don't like to be the one that says, well, what I remember being I remember working in the workplace like all of you do. And somebody says, what are you getting your wife for Valentine's Day?

You sound like the biggest jerk in the world when you say nothing.

What kind of husband are you? It's a day of love. Do you not love your wife? It's a day of flowers.

You don't ever get her enough flowers. And they were right about that part.

She deserves a lot more flowers than she gets from me. And so here's a day to market.

Here's a day to note it. And you're skipping it? Yep, I'm a jerk.

Why? It's not fun to stand out. It feels uncomfortable. It feels awkward.

And sometimes it feels more normal if we can bring some of the things from society and bring some of the things around us into our lives and think that it's going to be okay. Again, it takes me back to being a kid in elementary school, filling out the outline of a pine tree with just a green and a brown crayon. It takes me back to that. And I stood out. I felt weird. I'm so thankful God allowed me to stand out. Because where would we be today? What would be our hope? Where would our vision be? What would we be trying to do with our life day in and day out? Make more money?

Get a shinier car? Get in a bigger house? What would our focus be?

I think part of what led Israel astray when they saw the idols and the ways that other nations around them worshipped their gods, they probably thought, what's the harm? I know I saw God. I saw him deliver me. I know he exists. But what's the harm if I just touch this little? They may have even thought the idols or the Asherah poles or the other symbols of false worship didn't mean anything to them. This isn't important to me. It just made them appear more normal, right?

Maybe if I bring in some of these pagan relics, then I'll just seem more normal to those around me.

It's hard to say exactly why they disobeyed God, but we know the influence of other groups and nations on them was very strong. Like Israel, there are many reasons why we can justify in our own minds things that we do. King after king justified why they would disobey God. Sometimes Israel's prophets would justify why they would go against or disobey God. But we must work to fully submit to God's will and instructions for our lives because there is one God we agreed to at baptism to follow for the remainder of our lives. Let's read Leviticus 18 in verse 1.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God. According to the doings of the land of Egypt, where you dwell, you shall not do. And according to the doings of the land of Canaan, where I'm bringing you to, you shall not do, nor shall you walk in their ordinances. But what shall they do? What shall we do? You shall observe my judgments and keep my ordinances to walk in them. I am the Lord your God.

You shall, therefore, keep my statutes and my judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them. I am the Lord. May we heed the instructions given to Israel and continue to come out of our own physical and spiritual types of Egypt. May we forsake the ungodly ways of society around us, and may we seek to follow God and to worship Him in spirit and in truth.