Bad Arguments

Okay, grab a Bible and something to write with. We're going to get started on our study. We're going to be wrapping up Exodus very quickly and then get into Leviticus today. We'll do some pre-work before we get into the book of Leviticus.

Prayer for Understanding and the Word of God

However, before we get started, I think it would be a good idea for us to pray. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, again, we recognize that Your Word tells us that we have nothing apart from You. Not our life, not our breath, our soul, our body, our mind, or even the things that we are skilled at.

All things come from Your hand, and the food that You even put on our table comes from Your blessed, bountiful bounty. We recognize also, Lord, that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

And so we ask, Lord Jesus, as we come to You humbly, to fill us through Your Spirit. Help us to understand what we are reading so that we may glorify You in all that we do. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.

The Church’s Drift from Scripture and the Baton of the Faith

All right, before we get into Exodus again, were there any questions that cropped up as a result of the sermon? Yeah, it was pretty straightforward, yeah. Josiah, the reformer, and it starts with the Word of God.

That was Solomon's temple. That was before... All the Jews had to go there. Uh-huh, that's correct. All the Jews had to go there. And so they had set up vessels to Baal. They had set up literally male prostitution.

You know, so, I mean, has anything changed, by the way? Has anything really changed? I mean, in our day, you know, there are churches that ordain impenitent, practicing homosexuals. Yeah, they don't believe it.

They have a Bible, and these are the churches that overtly attack the scriptures and deny what it says. Should I hide her? Yeah, it's like herding cats. Yeah, thank God. Yeah, so, but coming back to the point then, I mean, has anything changed in the church today?

Has anything? I mean, there are places that are set up as Christian churches. You can't hear the Word of God. You will not hear God's Word preached in any way to confront you with your sin. You're basically told you're good people and just do good things and God's gonna bless you.

Yeah, that's right. And some of them, they're pretty good with the, they got really good chops with the band and the smoke machine and the disco ball and all that kind of stuff. Others are, you know, are into the smells and bells, you know, and the reality is, the situation is, is that God's Word has fallen to the back.

And if it makes any appearance at all, and I have to say it that way, that oftentimes when it makes an appearance, it makes an appearance out of context. It's not taught in any kind of substantive or meaningful way.

And these people who attend these congregations, they're not really disciples of Jesus because they're not being discipled in the things that Jesus' disciples were discipled in, that we are to continue discipling.

It's one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Our job is not to be innovative. Our job is to, you know, a good metaphor, and I've used it in the past, is like if you all watch the Olympics, and I'm like obsessed with the Olympics, I love the Olympics, but if you watch the Olympics, you know, they have those relay races, right?

You get the people with the baton, and you know, and they run their hearts out, and then they pass the baton to the next person, and that person then runs with it. That's what Christianity is, it's a baton race.

And there are people, literally, as soon as they get the baton, they sit there and go, oh man, this thing's too heavy. They cut off part of it, or you mold it and rework it. Now they go and they pass it on, and what gets passed on is not what they were handed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How did, oh, it was Mark Twain. Mark Twain, I think he has a quote where he says that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And so, so much of what we see, you can see the same themes, the same motifs, and it's taken on different, you know, visible manifestation.

I remember that those pastors in the ELCA who were holding to what scripture teaches regarding homosexuality and it being a sin, that shortly after the ELCA, 10 years ago now, 10 years ago, voted to ordain impenitent homosexuals, and I always put the word impenitent because that's what they are.

You have to remember that we believe that what scripture says, that anybody can be forgiven of these sins, and that homosexual sins are no greater than the guy who cheats on his wife, you know, heterosexually.

You know, heterosexual sins and homosexual sins are all bled for, died for, and we're called to repent and be forgiven of them, not to revel in them, glory in them, or to somehow wink and say, it's okay, God's all right with that, he's not.

And so after the ELCA had voted to ordain practicing homosexuals, they had put out an article on one of their, on one of their publications' websites, basically saying, a reasonable request is kind of, and this is my paraphrase of it, but a reasonable request, let's bring back temple prostitution.

And they were doing that tongue in cheek. They were saying that satirically for the purpose of pointing out that the same exact way that they were twisting the scripture to ordain homosexuals, you could use that exact same argumentation to justify bringing back temple prostitution.

The same argument, it opens the door for anything. Literally, there is, once you start embracing the way they twist scripture, you can't call anything a sin. So the guy who decides, you know what? Polygamy's in the Bible.

I should be a polygamist, you know? I'm surprised that hasn't come back yet, to be honest with you, at least within some of these mainline churches. You know? But, what was that? You give it time. Yeah, you give it time.

I mean, one of the big practices now with some of the millennials is what, it's called polyamory. And so you've got, you're like a house full of guys and girls that are all married to each other. And the ELCA, I know ELCA priestesses and others who are, who are, said that's completely fine.

But when you abandon the word of God, how's the song go? Anything goes, right? Anything goes. Yeah, it is nuts. And then consider then Josiah. Josiah didn't know any better. He didn't hear the word of God.

He didn't hear the word of God until the 18th year of his reign. So the guy is 26 years old, 26 years old. He starts reigning when he's eight. 18th year of his reign, he's 26 years old. And Shaphon shows up and says, you're not gonna believe this.

I found a book, a book. We have a book. Consider the absurdity of it. But is that not very similar to what it is that we're recognizing on the day of the Reformation? There's Martin Luther. He's literally forced into a position where he's teaching theology.

He's just recently exegeted the book of Romans or at least portions of the book of Romans. He has his aha moment. Wait a second, salvation is by grace through faith alone. And to say that the righteous shall live by faith is not saying that they have to make themselves righteous in order to live, but the righteous shall live by faith in that they're declared righteous by God and that they live and walk in faith.

You know, this is what the scripture is teaching. He has his aha moment. And he doesn't even realize that he is now completely at odds with the entire medieval Roman Catholic system. And I have to say it in those words, medieval Roman Catholic, because when you look at what the earliest church fathers believed, taught, confessed, you know who they sound a lot like?

Lutherans. And there's a reason for that. The early Christian church fathers did not believe in purgatory, did not pray to saints. The early Christian church fathers believe that you were saved by grace through faith alone.

And they overtly defended the faith against those who subverted these doctrines. And so what happens is, is that Rome comes up with this idea, we're going to take Jerome's Latin Vulgate and we're going to say that this is the word of God, this translation, which does have errors in it, by the way.

And that is what gets preached. I mean, could you imagine coming to Kongsvinger Sunday after Sunday, and I decide I'm just going to preach in Hebrew, not in full sentences, but the whole sermon is nothing but Hebrew, right?

Or Greek. Would you guys sit there and go, amen, yeah, best stuff ever. Hebrew's in the Bible. It's a biblical language. We should have all of our sermons in Hebrew. Would you benefit from that at all?

So show up Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, and you hear only Latin. And this is the days before there is public school. Yeah. This is the days before there's public school. The only people who know Latin are those whose parents can afford to send them to school to learn it.

The rest of us peasants, how are we going to hear the word of God? Answer, you're not. So I remember when I was a kid, my grandmother, she would take me to Latin Mass. She loved the Latin Mass. So I'd go visit her in New York.

So we'd go to the Latin Mass. I didn't know what to do. So the whole time, it's like I'm watching the people in the pew in front of me. If they stand up, I stand up. If they sit down, I sit down. And you just kind of watch everybody else's cues, but I don't understand a word of this thing.

And you leave there sitting there going, that was a whole hour of my day. I could have been out playing stick ball. Yeah, that's what I do. My abs and my core was really solid then, right? But I got nothing from it, absolutely nothing.

I didn't understand a word that I heard, not one. My grandmother, no. She didn't know Latin.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, this is the days before the Pharisees. So Josiah's before the rise of the Pharisees. Pharisees come up in the intertestamental period. Right, but I mean, it happens. That's from Josiah. Yeah, yep, yeah, yeah.

So here you got these people in the time of, prior to Josiah, okay? Somewhere, somebody had to say, I have a great idea. We're gonna come up with an improvement project and we need your money to help fund this.

We're going to put a beautiful, ornate image of Asherah inside of the temple. False fertility deity, supposed to help you have children. The worship of Asherah. So somebody said, yeah, that's a great idea.

I'll pitch in. And so they had an image made of Asherah. And that thing was put inside of Solomon's temple, inside. So the question is, who had, what had to move? Did they take the Ark of the Covenant and move it over to put Asherah in the Holy of Holies?

Or did Asherah just stay out in the holy place, but they left the Holy of Holies for Yahweh? It doesn't say, does it? Does it matter? Yeah, when it was there. So not only could you worship Asherah and know that her image is inside the temple, if you are prone to male prostitution, don't worry, the temple's got you covered.

I'm sure they were making money on it too. Yeah, now they were relevant. You know, we've got to reach, we've got to reach the gay community here in Jerusalem. I know, male prostitution. That'll bring them to church.

And it did. Did it bring them to have their sins forgiven? To repent and to walk in the ways of the Lord? Not at all. And so you'll note this then, is that history seems to go kind of in cycles. And we're not in a good cycle.

The state of the church is bad. And I mean really bad. And we all know this. And it's not just bad, like in New York City, or some strange parts or pockets of California. We'd all know that California's gonna fall into the Pacific anyway.

But it's bad here. It's bad in churches not too far from here, driving distance. And that's reality. Yeah. So this has to deal, so the question you're addressing has to deal at its core with what we would call material and formal principles in theology.

So every theological system, every single theological system will have a core doctrine. And then from that core doctrine, they will have what they consider to be infallible messages from God. Okay, so a good example, let's talk about Mormonism, because that's pretty well recognized.

Mormonism, they believe in the deification of man. That's their core central doctrine. It's known as the law of eternal progression, and it basically goes, as man is, God once was, as God is, man can become.

That's the central doctrine of Mormonism. Mormonism is all about taking human beings and then following a system whereby at the end of it, they can become a God. And as far as, so that's their material principle.

Formal principle then are what do they consider to be a divine communications from God, authoritative. Answer, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, right? And then you'll get the King James Bible with this caveat, insofar as it's correctly translated.

How do you know as a Mormon if the King James Bible hasn't been correctly translated? Any portion of the King James Bible that contradicts Mormon doctrine is not correctly translated. That's very convenient.

And then all of the prophetic utterances of every prophet of the Mormon church from the death of Joseph Smith until today, and there's a living prophet in Salt Lake City today. So you have to collect all of that up, and this is the authoritative word of God, all right?

Within Rome, they believe the Bible is the word of God, but it's insufficient. So on top of that, you're gonna have church tradition as an authoritative source. You're gonna have then the Bible as understood through the magisterium, the official interpretation by Rome, and then any time the Pope has spoken ex cathedra.

So when the Pope speaks, he's not speaking the word of God unless he speaks ex cathedra, which means from the chair, and now he's in his Pope office, and when he speaks ex cathedra, then that's on the same level as the word of God.

Rome also takes philosophy, particularly Aristotle's philosophy, and exalts it to a very high position, and it becomes rather fascinating how that all works. So you studying your Bible alone, that ain't gonna give you everything you need to know, not regarding life, salvation, and what's required.

You have all of these other sources. Yeah?

Experience, Testimony, and the Empty Tomb

Experience, by the way. Yeah, yeah. The argument is going to... Right, right, yeah.

And see, you'll note then, what's fascinating then is that the lady that you were hearing, she falls into kind of what I would consider like the general evangelical milieu, where our experiences then dictate what's true and what's not true, and there's a problem with that, really a severe problem with it, is that people in other religions have experiences, like life-changing experiences.

There are plenty of Muslims who will sit there and say, I was a drunk, I was into women, I was into fast cars, and into smoking weed, and my life was heading nowhere, but then I found Allah, and now I pray five times a day towards Mecca, and my life is totally radically changed.

Muslims can say that. A lot of them can. Yeah. Yeah. And so here's the idea, and this is kind of overtly taught then in evangelicalism. Rather than tell them about Jesus, you tell them your life story because they can't counter that.

That's literally how they teach it, okay? Nobody can take away your story, your experience, your testimony. The problem is, is that we're not called to preach our testimonies, we're called to preach Christ and Him crucified and risen from the grave.

And so we've got to note this, is that a lot of people turn their lives around in all kinds of religions. I mean, from Buddhism, to Islam, to Roman Catholicism, you name it. I mean, there's a lot of people who are down and out, completely run up, their life run down, and religion changed their life.

But there's a difference between that and I was brought to penance and faith in Christ, my crucified and risen Savior. So when I was trained as an apologist, I mean, this was drilled into my head by Dr. Rod Rosenblatt, never go with experience, it's too subjective.

You have to go with the empty tomb, okay? So if I were sitting next to that rabbi, I would have basically said, so here's the thing, Jesus claimed to be Yahweh, and I would actually use the word itself on purpose, that He claimed to be Yahweh in human flesh.

He was crucified, died, and rose from the grave, and this is what the eyewitnesses say. And as for your claim that this was a religion invented 100 years later, no way, it's not gonna fly. We have documents that go back to the middle portion of the first century.

So this happened, these documents were written, first century, while the hostile witnesses were still alive, the people who crucified Christ. And so start from there.

Right, mm-hmm, yeah.

Why the Empty Tomb, Not a Changed Life, Proves Christianity

Okay, so here's the thing. It is absolutely true that people's lives are changed through the power of the gospel, through the preached word. I mean, just take a look at Josiah. I mean, perfect example of it.

But it's that whether or not Christianity is true is not based upon your changed life. Whether Christianity is true is whether or not the tomb was empty. So when we're talking about ultimate truth claims, we must recognize that the devil is great at counterfeiting all kinds of changed lives and miracles and stuff like that.

So if we were to base whether or not a religion is true based upon somebody's experience, testimony, or life change, then we must say that Islam is true, Mormonism is true, that the Jehovah's Witness religion is true, that, you know, name, just start going down the list.

Oh, no, not at all. But they do not rise to the level of validation of whether or not Christianity is true. Okay, what makes Christianity true is whether or not the tomb was empty. That's literally how the New Testament puts it forward.

Yeah, that is the true miracle, all right? So people experience life change for a lot of different reasons. I'll be blunt. I mean, there's a lot of people who are former alcoholics who are now sober and they get their coins when they go to meetings.

And not all of them actually believe in Jesus. Alcoholics Anonymous does not require you to repent and trust in Christ. You can believe in a higher power. You can believe in a law. You can believe in Jesus.

They do not care which deity you believe in. And so there are some, but you kind of have to acknowledge that there is a higher power. So atheists don't go to Alcoholics Anonymous. But they're supposed to, if you read the books, they have to acknowledge that there's a higher power.

No, no, you don't. Right, so atheists can go. It could be your coffee cup. Right. Your coffee cup can be a higher power? Okay, all right, I stand corrected then. All right, it was my understanding since you were required to believe in a higher power, I didn't know that you can take your coffee cup and make that the higher power.

Wow, okay. All right, all right. That being the case, then we must say that there are some atheists who've gone from alcoholics to being recovering alcoholics without any belief in a real God. All right, does that mean that atheism is true?

Right, yeah. Yeah, you see what I'm saying here? So we have to evaluate these arguments that we put forward. We have to evaluate them properly. What is it that makes Christianity true is that Jesus Christ claimed to be God in human flesh and rose from the grave on the third day just like he said he would.

And that this was witnessed by the eyewitnesses. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ is not raised, then our faith is in vain. Now I'll let you guys in on a little secret. There's one Easter hymn I don't like.

One. And every time it comes up and it gets sung, I change the lyric while no one's listening, all right? All right, he lives, he lives. Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me and talks with me along life's merry way, right?

He lives, he lives. You ask me how I know he lives. He lives within my heart is the text. You ask me how I know he lives, I say under my breath. The tomb was empty that day. Right? That's how I know he lives, because the tomb was empty.

Yes, yeah.

I would basically say because I'm trained regarding truth claims, I can't sing the lyric without hearing it as a truth claim. Oh, I know, oh, I know. I know, yep. Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah, yeah, and you'll note, you'll note this.

I mean, any time the song comes up, I don't stamp my feet and protest and say, I'm not gonna sing this song. I just quietly change the lyrics at the end because for me, it just doesn't work.

Yeah, mm-hmm.

You'll be whistling it. I know, it's really catchy. It's a little ear, it's an earworm. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, right, right, yep, yep, yep.

No, and there's a way in which that can be done properly. Where it gets out of hand, though, is where you are told when you're preaching or teaching or you're evangelizing somebody else to point to your own changed life.

That's the wrong place to point. Well, you point to the empty tomb. And you'll note that, I'll give you an example from the New Testament so you can kind of see this. I'm gonna do this from memory. I think it's in Acts 14, where Paul is in Antioch, Pisidia.

Let's see, Lystra, let's see here. Maybe it's in 13, hang on. I told you I was doing this from memory, Acts 13. I'm gonna show you how the apostles preached when they did, yeah, here we go. Watch this sermon.

So the Apostle Paul is on a missionary journey. He comes to Antioch, Pisidia, which is in modern-day Turkey today. And so first place he goes, first place he goes when he's preaching is always the synagogue.

And the reason for this is actually quite simple because the people in the synagogue are hearing the word of God in the synagogue. And that hearing of the word of God would have led them to the point where they were in anticipation and expectation of the Messiah to arrive.

And so Paul then, as an apostle of Christ, one who's actually been commissioned by Jesus and sent by Christ, he would go and watch the emphasis of his preaching. And so here's what he would say. So starting at verse 16, this is his sermon.

Men of Israel and you who fear God, listen. The God of this people Israel chose our fathers, made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with a lifted arm he led them out of it. And for about 40 years he put up with them in the wilderness, and after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance.

And all of this took about 450 years, and after that he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. Then they asked for a king, and he gave them Saul, the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin for 40 years, and when they had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, I have found in David the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart who will do all of my will.

Of this man's offspring, God has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus, as he promised. So we're gonna note a couple of things here. And this is a consistent theme that you see in the book of Acts, is that the disciples of the apostles, when they preach, they're gonna preach the fulfillment of prophecy in the Old Testament, in Jesus Christ, and then they're going to proclaim the tomb to be empty.

So their two twin focus was fulfillment of prophecy, empty tomb. This is how, this is where they spent their time. And so Paul, and on a couple of other occasions, he would give his testimony, by the way.

But his testimony was always to the fact that he's an eyewitness of the resurrection, by virtue of the fact that Christ knocked him down on the road to Damascus and blinded him and then gave him sight in Christ.

Now, before his coming, John had proclaimed a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And so the people in Antioch, Pisidia, should have heard reports of John the Baptist as they were traveling to Jerusalem, people traveling to Jerusalem for the different feasts.

So as John was finishing his course, he said, what do you suppose that I am? I am not he, but behold, after me, one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I'm not worthy to untie. Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham and those among you who fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation.

For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize them nor understand the utterances of the prophets, which were read every Sabbath. And you gotta know, this is a miserable state to be in, by the way.

Literally, can you imagine going to synagogue Saturday after Saturday after Saturday, hearing the word of God, not understanding it? And what was getting in the way then? Unbelief, stubborn obstinacy, as well as a mixing of God's word with the mythologies and man-made doctrines of the Pharisees.

So they didn't understand the utterances of the scripture. They fulfilled them by condemning him. So again, notice fulfillment of prophecy. Though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to have him executed.

And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, laid him in the tomb, but God raised him from the dead. And for many days, he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people.

So you'll note fulfillment of prophecy and the empty tomb and the testimony of the eyewitnesses. This was what the church proclaimed. So we bring you good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us, their children, by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, you are my son today, I have begotten you.

And as for the fact that he raised him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way. And so now you'll note he's taken the two major pillars and kind of weaving them together now.

Fulfillment of prophecy regarding the resurrection of Christ. So he says that I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David. Therefore, he also says in another Psalm, you will not let your holy ones see corruption.

For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, he fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption. But he whom God raised up did not see corruption. So let it be known to you, therefore, brothers, that through this man, the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.

And by him, everyone who believes is freed from everything by which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. But beware, therefore, lest what is said about setting the prophets should come about. Look, you scoffers be astounded and perish for I'm doing a work in your own days, a work that you will not believe even if one tells it to you.

So note the emphasis is on the fulfillment of prophecy of the Old Testament and the eyewitness accounts of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, proving that he was the Messiah who was promised and the announcement that in him is the forgiveness of sins.

There's no altar call, none of that. Instead, just, and beware, beware lest you not believe. So it was delivered with a warning. And faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ. Some believed, some didn't.

That's how that works. Yeah, yeah, that might be a way of putting it. Yeah, that's right. God causes the sun, the rain and the crops to grow for the just and the unjust. This is most certainly true. But you're gonna note something here is that somehow pointing to my changed life misses the whole point.

And let me explain what I mean. Is that Christianity is not a religion that says we're gonna go from glory to glory to glory to glory to glory. That my life, now that I'm a Christian, should just get better and better and better and better.

And proof is, look at the size of my house. Look at the car that I drive, the clothes that I wear. You know, before I was down and out and now I've got, you know, almost seven figures in my 401k. I'm speaking about somebody else, not me, by the way.

Definitely not me. But so the expectation is that Christianity is supposed to take you a good person but misguided and just make you better. Just basically take you as an old penny and shine you up and make you clean in that sense.

That's not exactly correct because the reality of the situation is that trusting in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins could cause you to suffer like you wouldn't believe. Jesus basically said that He didn't come to cause unity but to cause division.

And the division would actually occur within our own houses. That father would be against mother and mother against son and son against father. I mean, just, it's a mess, right? And over and again, Christians are those who are like, you know, at the end of a procession on their way to be crucified.

And what does Jesus say? Deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me. And throughout the New Testament, Christians are encouraged to bear up under suffering and persecution. And so from the look of the world, being a Christian could take you from doing okay to really doing awful.

And if the expectation is that my life is better now because I'm a Christian, what do you say to the person who literally confessed Christ and then was arrested and fed to the lions? I didn't sign up to be lion chow.

I signed up to be glorious, right? Yeah, yeah. And so we gotta be careful. Our lives have something to say about Christianity, but it's not whether or not it's true. The truth of Christianity is all on Jesus, period.

It's all on him. If he is who he claimed to be and he rose from the grave and the eyewitnesses have told us the truth, then whether or not Christianity is true is whether or not the tomb was empty, end of story.

And this does have an impact on our lives. But as they always say in the fine print on those diet commercials, results may vary. Results may vary.

Right, exactly. Yep, yep.

The American Gospel and the Limits of Personal Testimony

Now, a movie worth renting, a documentary worth renting, and you can only get it via rental. You'll have to look it up online because it's right now currently available only on the website called Vimeo, which is like a competitor to YouTube.

But the name of the documentary is The American Gospel, Christ Alone. The American Gospel, Christ Alone. It's like four or five bucks to rent it. But rent it online, it's worth the watch. It's two and a half hours long.

I apologize, it is a bit long. But the interesting thing about that, in that documentary, and it challenges the gospel that's put forward by many of the prosperity preachers, that your life is supposed to get better, you're supposed to be wealthier, and all this kind of stuff, right?

The American Gospel. And in that documentary, there is a couple. And the female, the wife and mother in the couple, she has a genetic disorder. And before she was diagnosed with this disease, she was a full-blown anti-Christian atheist.

And once she was diagnosed with this illness, it was that then she began to realize she has to consider eternal things. Her husband started going to church first, then brought her, she heard the gospel, and she believes her condition has gotten worse, dramatically worse, quickly.

And she's nearly died a couple of times. And this is a woman who can't even breathe without having a little oxygen thing in her nose. And listen to her story about how much happier she is, despite the fact that her life is totally failing physically because of Christ.

And you'll recognize that there's kind of a marked difference here. And that's a powerful story of the truth of the gospel in the experience of this woman. But the grain runs very opposite the way that we would expect it to.

And that's kind of the point, is that we're called to take up our cross, follow Christ, because we're all, people who are carrying crosses are dying, all right? That's the idea. It's on a website called Vimeo.

If you type in, if you go to V-I-M-E-O, but if you go to Google and type in the American gospel, it comes up, the American gospel, Christ alone. So, worth the watch, worth the watch. And I think that uses a proper use then of somebody's testimony.

And because this is a person who in this, in the account, things aren't going great for them. They're going awful and getting worse. And their trust is in Christ and the real promises that we have in him.

And then here's the other danger then also regarding using your personal testimony. And boy, I've been in churches where somebody who turns their life around is encouraged to come up and give their testimony in church.

And here's, there's a big problem with this. So somebody says, all right, you know, I was just this horrible pagan before I became a Christian. I did this, I did that, I did these other things. And so, but now I've seen the error of my ways and now I'm totally sold out for Jesus and my life is 100 different.

Everyone goes, yay, way to go, Jesus. Two weeks later, that person goes on a bender and they end up back in that same gutter. And now what are we supposed to say? What are we supposed to say? How, in fact, if they think Christianity is all about making your life better in that sense, and by the way, there will be progress in holiness.

But if they think that's really what it's all about, where's that person's faith now when they had no self-control and they gave into the temptations of the world, the devil, or their own sinful flesh, all three combined, and they went back to the vomit, that they were like a dog returning to its vomit, went back to it, what do we do in that situation?

Yes, for forgiveness. But see, the thing is, is that in the church that holds up the personal experiences, the proof that Christianity is true, you can't say that because now the whole endeavor is shaky, okay?

So they feel like they can't go and get the help they need because if I tell them after I was up there explaining to everybody how my life is changing two weeks later, I was back in the same gutter vomiting like I was before, since everybody's basing the truth of Christianity based upon my changed life, yeah, no, that's not gonna work, okay?

So what ends up happening is that they then feel so shamed by what they've done, they can't even come and confess their weaknesses. In fact, somebody who's fallen off the wagon needs to kind of be pushed aside and ignored because the truth of Christianity is based upon my changed life, exactly.