1689 London Baptist Confession (part 51)

Our great God and Heavenly Father, we come before you this morning, thankful for who you are, what you do, how you even preserve our lives. Each and every moment you give us breath, you cause our hearts to beat, you are in control of every single organism everywhere.

There is literally nothing in the universe that is not subject to your will and that does not bow to it. Father, we are not just your creatures, we are your chosen people, your people that you have set your affection upon and called and redeemed.

And you've gathered us here today to study your word, to see what it says about you and about how we ought to worship you and how we ought to think about you and how our focus should be about you and not about ourselves.

We are surrounded by a world that is consumed with self. Lord, teach us to put that off and to focus on our Redeemer, our Savior and our God. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Well, so we've been studying the statement of faith, the confession of faith for a while and I thought for just a minute I would talk about one of the reasons why I think it's important.

Pastor Mike and I were doing a radio show this week and we talked about some things that people, the Christians believe that are wrong and I brought a few of those but I discarded most of them. But it's interesting to me that as I get these papers in order, because there is no order, there is no method to the madness.

The Arian Heresy and the Need for Confessional Theology

Okay, anyway, one of the most commonly held heresies is that, and I'll bet I put it in here, is that some 73 of professing Christians believe that Jesus is the first created being. Is there a problem with that?

What's the problem? Created. Now, if somebody said to you, well, I believe that Jesus was created, how would you disprove that? John 1 would be good. John 1 is fine. I mean, you could also read Colossians, Colossians chapter 1.

But I think it's interesting, why do you suppose, though, that 73 of professing Christians, evangelicals, would say something like that? He was born a baby. Maybe it's because they read things like in Colossians 1 where it says that he is the first born.

And so, therefore, they conclude that he is created. One of the reasons that I wanted to tie this to having a confession of faith is because this is something that has been resolved in church history for nearly, let's see, let's do the math here real quick, almost 1 ,700 years.

This is something called the Arian heresy, the idea propagated by Arius that Jesus is a created being. And if we know church history, how many of us know church history? Almost nobody, right? I mean, we don't really study it a lot.

One of the things that a confession of faith is good for is it ties us to truths that have been proved over centuries so that every generation doesn't have to come along and sort of reinvent the wheel.

We have a wheel. Let's use that wheel. Let's not reinvent it. Ever wonder why we have to reinvent the wheel? Well, that's why. We don't need to. How about this one? 51 of evangelicals say that God accepts the worship of all religions.

Is that a problem? Yes, and that's one of the areas that we're going to go to this morning. But I wanted to just real quickly, I don't even know if it will, I'll just quickly mention this because we talked about alcohol a little bit, just the numbers of Christians who drink and whatnot.

And I thought this was interesting. Let me see if I can find the stat here. Talking about different denominations. And unsurprisingly, it was people like, which denominations do you suppose would drink the most?

Probably Catholics would be way up there. Among Protestants, who do you think it would be? Lutherans were way up there. Yeah. And who do you suppose was at the bottom of the list? Baptists, that's right.

I'll burn you at the stake if you do that. Oh, well, you know, and the Bible does talk about drinking because I found it, what I found was kind of disconcerting was that there were some who didn't think that drunkenness was a problem.

Let's look real quickly at 1 Peter 4. We talk about Ephesians 5 .18 quite a bit about, do not be drunk with wine for that is dissipation or that is whatever the ESV is. But 1 Peter 4 .3, and if somebody would read that please, because this really leads right into where we're going this morning anyway.

1 Peter 4 .3. Now, why is that significant when it comes to the topic of alcohol? It's categorically wrong, not the drinking part so much as what? The drunkenness, the being out of control, you know, those kind of things.

Because that's how pagans handle alcohol. That's how unbelievers handle alcohol. In fact, that word drunkenness there means bubbling over with wine, which creates kind of a, you know, if you've been around people who are bubbling over with wine, it's really not a pretty picture ultimately.

Romans 13. In fact, that's the only place I think I found in the New Testament where that word is used. Romans 13 verse 13 says, Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.

Different word here just indicating drunkenness, intoxication. But it kind of, it shows, you know, when it lumps, when Paul lumps it there with orgies and sexual immorality and sensuality and quarreling, fighting, jealousy, gives us some kind of idea what drunkenness is all about and why God does not, why he condemns it.

But there are other passages that talk about drinking. Well, I'll just say that do not condemn it. But there are plenty that do. Even in Proverbs, one is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.

Anyway, I think the key thing we talked about a few weeks ago is just not letting it control you, not letting it change the way you think and act. But we're on to chapter 22 of the Confession of Faith, which is of religious worship and the Sabbath day.

And when I first started that, I just thought, well, it's going to give us a real good insight into the Sabbath day. But I sort of missed the first part of religious worship because I've got seven pages of notes and I haven't even started on the Sabbath day yet.

Really, why do you suppose it's important to understand religious worship before you start talking about the Sabbath day? And I think that's exactly right. If you talk about the Sabbath day first, it's going to turn into simple legalism, just a list of rules.

Whereas if you kind of set up the whole topic by saying, this is God, this is how he prescribes that we worship him, then it's going to kind of put the Sabbath day under the umbrella of proper religious worship, and it will make a lot more sense to us when we get there.

The Regulative Principle of Worship

Okay, so let me read the first section of the confession here. And by the way, sometimes I change the King James English into my own English. Like, I'm not going to say shoes, because if I say shoes, you'll think, no.

So, the light of nature shows that there is a God who has lordship and sovereignty over all, is just, good, and does good unto all, and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served with all the heart and all the soul and with all the might.

But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted, and here's the important part, by himself. And so is limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.

Now, if I were to put that in shorthand, what could I call that? When it's talking about worship, and it says, you know, you're only allowed to do what is prescribed in the Scriptures, what would we call that?

The regular, well, you're thinking governmental, the regulatory system. No, but you're close. The regulative principle, right? That simply means that we only do what is prescribed, what is commanded by God in the Scriptures.

So we've talked at length about general revelation revealing that God exists. The universe, basically in Psalm 19 says, or shouts his glory. So we have an obligation as human beings to worship our creator.

However, instead of worshiping the creator, mankind has consistently worshipped what? The creation. Romans 1 verses 20 to 23. And I'll read those just basically review, because we've read this many times, but something that should be like emblazoned on your brain by now.

For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Talking about mankind has no excuse not to worship God. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. In other words, forget worshiping the God who is.

We're going to create our own idols and worship those things. R .C. says we take the honor that belongs to God and give it to creatures. And if you think about it, it doesn't take long to think, OK, this is really dumb.

We're going to worship the things that God has created instead of the creator himself. That's idolatry. And R .C. says it is the primordial sin of mankind rejecting the revelation of God. Right. If you go back to the Garden of Eden, what do they do?

You know, did God really say? And so God tells us what to do. And our attitude is thanks for the advice, God. But. We're going to do what we want. One of the great myths of humanism is that all religions are equally valid.

That could only be true if they are all equally invalid, equally false. This is R .C.'s argument here. What does he mean by that? If everything is true, then. Nothing is true, right? I mean, I say that in a different way.

Somebody will say somebody will tell me what they believe and I'll go, well, what's your what's the source for your view of that? And they'll tell me what. Something like. That's just what I believe. So then if I say, OK, there are seven billion people in the world and every single one of them.

Can have their own view of who God is, how we get to be in heaven. Can all seven billion people be right? And I've actually had some people say yes. It is possible for all seven billion people to be right, even if they don't all agree.

And that's what he's saying here. That's absurd, right? Everything can't be true because if everything is true, then it's equally probable that everything's false. We also hear from. The world. I mean, this is a common thing, right?

There are great religions of the world. Islam is a great religion. Judaism is a great religion. Hinduism is a great religion. Buddhism is everything is a great religion. You know, Seventh-day Adventists, you know, everything's great.

And you'll hear this. That if somebody is zealous and they're sincere about their religion, then that makes it valid. That that religion, that that faith must be valid. And it doesn't matter. Ultimately, well, except for the guy who just went over to this little island off of India and was killed by the natives.

Because everybody knows that that was dumb. I mean, after all, he went over there to declare Christ to people who don't want to hear about Christ. Therefore, that's stupid. I mean, you don't you don't hear people on the news saying, well, he was he was zealous and he was sincere.

Therefore, it was valid. Probably not. But even Christians want to give some kind of credit to those who are sincere about their faith. I've had Christians tell me that they knew Jehovah witnesses who were very sincere about their faith.

And therefore, it's hard for that Christian to believe that that Jehovah's witness didn't go to heaven because they were sincere about what they believe. Can you think of people in the Bible who sincerely believed in false religion?

They were sincere about it. I mean, we read about. Well, anybody have any examples that they can think of? Yes. OK, I think you're talking about in in Athens. They certainly believed they had all these idols throughout the whole city.

Right. In fact, Paul comes into it in Acts 17 and he is provoked. He's irritated by all these false gods. But he says to them, I see that you are a religious people. He didn't say good for you. So we're all going to heaven together.

Right. Let's just walk up to heaven together. No, because they were worshipping a false religions. Simeon. OK, good. Yep. The prophets of Baal. And what do they do to show their sincerity? They cut themselves so you can be sincere.

And it's one of my professors used to say, be sincerely wrong. John Calvin believed that the church needed reformation, particularly in the area of worship. He believed worship had degenerated into superstition and idolatry around or because sound doctrine had been neglected.

And I read that and I just thought. Why do 73 percent of professing evangelicals believe that Jesus Christ was a created being? It's because sound doctrine is not taught in churches. If you go to a church where the most important thing on Sunday morning is how good the music is and that when you leave, you think, I really like the pastor.

He was really nice. He said things that I could really relate to. But you can't tell me anything from the Bible that was talked about. You can't tell me anything about the Lord Jesus Christ that was talked about.

Well, then what did you just engage in? I don't know, but I'll tell you what it wasn't. It wasn't worship. It wasn't worship. Today's evangelicalism, as he says, has been turned off to churchiness and ecclesiastical traditions.

Think about it. I mean, if you think about some of the things that we do here, and I'm going to just go over the top here, and I'm going to say they're stupid. Why are they stupid? Who sings hymns? I mean, we had some of these Sunday night services.

In fact, I have to say, I just ordered some Spanish language. They haven't done the whole hymnal, but they did some 32-page little things that we'll have for the next time we have a Sunday night thing where they've taken some of the hymns and put them into Spanish and printed those out.

But some of the Spanish folks here, when they visit this church in the evening, they're like, they don't sing hymns. They don't know a lot of them. You can say that about Americans. They know Amazing Grace and maybe two or three others, right?

How about scripture reading during services? I guarantee you if you go to most big evangelical churches, they don't sit there and read a chapter of scripture during the service. Why not? Why wouldn't they do that?

Because it's boring, right? Scripture is boring. Who wants to hear that read? How about expository sermons? Just getting up and reading the Bible and explaining the Bible. Who wants to hear that? That's not what you do.

You do surveys. You do marketing. You find out what people want and then, like I said the other day, how many of you are familiar with Ray Davies? I see one hand. Ray Davies being the main dude from the Kinks.

And he wrote a song in the late 70s and it was called, Give the People What They Want. It's a fantastic song. But that's what churches do. Give the people what they want. R .C. says, The minute we begin to pander to the audience rather than to God, we are in serious trouble.

And if you think about it, it makes sense from a Christian perspective. If we're to worship God in the way that he wants to be worshipped and we say, well, you know what? Here's the most important thing.

The most important thing is that when you come in, you are A, comfortable, right? B, entertained. And C, above all else, you must not be bored, right? And I guess we could put, you know, C prime. You shall not be made to feel guilty at any point.

We don't want that. You must be affirmed in all your sinfulness. In fact, I just thought, you know, if they had a hymnal in most of these churches, probably page one would be the old song by Billy Joel.

They'd change the words, God loves you just the way you are, you know? Don't go trying to, don't go changing to try to please me. You don't want to do that. R .C. says, I don't want to be cynical or harsh, but the Old Testament worship service where people were the most enthusiastic and energetic, consisted of the singing of praise songs by an overflow congregation while dancing around a golden calf, right?

He's like, that was the biggest, biggest explosion of praise in all the Old Testament. And I put this, I thought this was so profound, I put it on Facebook. Listen to this and think about it. If we worship by doing what we enjoy, right?

If we structure our worship service around what we like, rather than by doing what is pleasing to God, our worship will gravitate toward idolatry. What do you think he means by that? If we just think about what a lot of services get to, and we think about how they are, the songs, the sermons, everything that goes on through there, what is the goal?

Is it to exalt Christ or is it to exalt the people who are there? And I think that's it, right? And what is that? That's nothing but idolatry. As Christians, it is our duty as much as possible to learn what true worship is supposed to be like.

Now, during service, especially when it gets warm in here, have you ever found yourself... Hey, wait a second. Wait a second, I have to do a confrontation here. Just hang on for a second. Okay, now we're done with that.

She's repenting in sackcloth and ashes. Have you ever found yourself, during the warmth of service, starting to fall asleep or maybe getting a little bored? Maybe you stayed up until, I don't know, 2 a .m. last night playing Xbox.

Or you stayed up and watched Saturday Night Live or something. You know, you stayed up late last night and now you're kind of getting a little wobbly. Or maybe you get bored. Or, you know, the infamous, as you're leaving, you say, well, I didn't get anything out of that.

R .C. asked this question. What did we put into it? What did you put into it when he came into worship? He says, to worship is to actively offer a sacrifice of praise and glory and honor to him. To attend the proclamation of his word and to celebrate the ordinances of the church.

That's why we gather here this morning. You know, people, I think a lot of times, I think for most of us, we come in here this morning because this is what we do on Sundays. How many times do we think, I'm going to church and I'm going to offer a sacrifice of praise to the God who saved me?

That's why we're here. So it's about getting our minds right before we come in here. You know, what did you get out of it? Well, what did you put into it? When God prescribed worship in the Old Covenant, the very first commandment he gave was what?

Exodus 20, verse 3. I knew you were thinking that. Which is, you shall have no other gods. And we normally say it, what? How do we say the rest of it? Before me. R .C. kind of tweaked it a little bit.

And I found it helpful. You shall have no other gods in my presence. Why is that helpful? OK, we can't help but have other. Why? Because our hearts, as Calvin said, our hearts are idle factories. We're always finding something to.

What is an idle, first of all? I mean, other than, you know, the carved image that people fall down and worship and whatnot. What is an idle? Best definition, Charlie. OK, anything that receives more attention or allegiance than God.

And if we just think of it this way, Jesus gave two great commandments. What do you say? The first is, OK, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Now, how often do we do that?

Probably never. Right. We like to think we do, but probably never because there's always something, you know, that comes before that. And. Thankfully, our salvation isn't based on our faithfulness, but our faith, because Christ perfectly did that.

But I don't want to go down that road. It was this idea of no other gods in my presence is ultimately it's a prohibition of idol worship. Because God's presence is everywhere. But Israel build up places of worship to idols.

You know what they're called in the Old Testament? Anybody know? Your high places, you shall have no high places, it'll say from time to time. Well, why or tear down the high places? Because those are ultimately altars set up to worship false gods.

You would climb up those things, maybe on your knees like a good. Penitent. And worship. But all those things were forbidden. In fact, God ordered through the prophets would order the kings of Israel and Judah to tear down those high places.

The second commandment was not a prohibition of art. You'll have no. Make no image of me. Right. But a prohibition of attempting to represent God by the effort of any artist. I mean, just as an aside, I really get.

There are a lot of reasons why I get uncomfortable when people have pictures of Jesus. Can you think of some of the reasons why we should be uncomfortable about it? Well, I'll tell you. Reason number one is I don't think he sat down for any portraits.

What do I mean by that? I mean, it's kind of a funny thing to say, but it's true. So any picture you see of Jesus is. It's not accurate. It's just something somebody made up. And I grew up in a religion in the Mormon church where there were pictures of Jesus all the time.

And I'm like, he looked remarkably Scottish. I think I don't know. Maybe, you know, maybe his folks kind of, you know. But I mean, he just did not look like we would expect a Middle Eastern man to look.

And that's true of a lot of the pictures. And some of them I find, you know, just really, you know, if you know what a carpenter did back then. This was not some weak guy. And when I see pictures of him, you know, that I get offended for that.

I get offended when he's too white. I get offended for a lot of reasons. But ultimately, here's the problem. The problem is nobody knows what he looks like, but they want to have these pictures of him.

Why? Because it's in our heart that we need to have some kind of icon, some kind of picture. And I think it's probably wrong to do that. But in both of these commandments, the first and the second, God set up guardrails to establish limits as to what proper worship was and was not.

God not only commands worship, but he regulates it. And that's what we were talking about, the regulatory principle. He regulates it through his word. Now, again, talking about Bethlehem Bible Church, why is it that we don't have a drama ministry on Sunday morning?

Anybody who was here last year can remember the Ligoniewicz family could probably give us, you know, these dramas week in and week out. Well, why don't we do that? It's not prescribed in the Bible. Why don't we have, you know, there are churches where lovely women will come dancing down the aisle and throw confetti or throw whatever they're doing.

You know, they just throw stuff at you. Probably, you know, Nerf balls or whatever. Why don't we do that? Because, again, it's not in the Bible. Why don't we have, why don't we let women preach? Because the Bible says they won't, they shouldn't.

God's Holiness, Unauthorized Worship, and the Fear of the Lord

Let's turn to Leviticus chapter 10. Leviticus chapter 10. And if you want to know ultimately, you know, how not to do things or why you should pay any attention, I mean, this is a good one. Mike will refer to it all the time, but I don't know that we read it often enough to just kind of give us a sense of the seriousness with which God takes worship.

And if somebody would read the first three verses of Leviticus chapter 10, I mean, maybe some of the toughest words in all of Scripture right there at the end of verse 3. And Aaron held his peace. Didn't say anything.

Why? Those were his sons. And he said absolutely nothing. Why? Because he knew that they had done what they ought not to have done. They chose to kind of worship God in their own way. Unauthorized fire.

Now, that doesn't happen today. We haven't heard about anybody being consumed when they do dramas or they do any of these. But it shows us one thing, and that's that God is serious about how he will be worshiped.

R .C. says the most important ingredient of worship is that the holiness of God is made manifest. He says there should be an atmosphere of fear and trembling in our worship. We don't get that out of plays or out of...

I've just seen some really bizarre things. I mean, even like there was a church in New York that did ballet during communion. I don't understand that. Now, what's the number one reason? I found this interesting.

What's the number one reason given in polls that people go to church? I bet nobody will get this one. I'm not going to bet a lot. But what's the number one reason given in polls? You're no fun. Fellowship, socializing, yeah.

Very good. Very good. Right off the bat. Terrible. I guess he was the person they talked to for the poll. I don't know. Now, R .C. says, and I typed him up as R .D., but he's R .C. still. There's nothing wrong with fellowship, and there certainly is a place for it.

However, our primary purpose for being together in worship is to come into his presence with thanksgiving and praise, giving honor and glory to him. That's the main reason we're here. I mean, I do kind of in my mind, I'm a little bit concerned for people who come in.

I won't say when they come in, but they come in, they sit through the service, and then they're, you know, like running out to the parking lot. And I'm like, in some churches in Southern California, I sort of understand it because, you know, if you don't get out there early, there's a 25 or 30-minute wait to get out of the parking lot.

But we don't typically, I don't think it takes that long to get out of our parking lot. It's not that big of a deal. One of the reasons we come here is to do the one another's, right? To come alongside one another and encourage one another, all these things.

But that's after the service or before the service, not during the service. During the service, we are worshiping him. Now, let's go to the second part of this section of the Statement of Faith, the Confession of Faith.

Worship of the Triune God Alone Through Christ the Mediator

Religious worship is to be given to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to him alone, not to angels, saints, or any other creatures, and since the fall, not without a mediator, nor in the mediation of any other but Christ alone.

And again, I think it's important to realize that this Confession of Faith is written in the aftermath of the Reformation. So what we see here is somewhat in response to the Roman Catholic Church, and it's amazing to think about how some of our Christian leaders have fallen when we think about some of the things that are said today.

Think about this question. Would the Apostle Paul commend the leaders of Islam, Hinduism, Catholicism, or any other religion? Would he? No. Acts 17 and 16, I referred to it earlier, where Paul's in Mars, or Mars.

He's on Mars. Way before the rover shows up. He's in Athens on Mars Hill, and he hasn't gone to Mars Hill yet to preach, but he's in the city, and he says in Acts 17, verse 16, it says, Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw the city was full of idols.

So when we think about evangelical leaders who say positive things about the Pope, say positive things about Islam, say positive things about different religions, and then we compare that to what Paul was feeling while he was in Athens.

Why was he provoked in his spirit? It's wrong. He sees these idols that are set up for people to go and worship them, and he says to himself, I'm provoked. He's provoked because he knows that worship only belongs to God, to the Father, to the Son, and to the Spirit, not to these false idols.

What the rest of the world applauded as high culture, all this art and everything like that, Paul saw it as idolatry, and he hated it. He hated it because God hates it. The point of Romans 1, Acts 17, and this section of the confession is that a person can be exceedingly religious and at the same time be completely alienated from God, separated from God.

In Romans 1, we trade the true God for an idol. Mankind does that. We don't trade the true God for no God, R .C. says, for atheism, but for a false God. I mean, I love it when people tell me that they're atheists and I say, no, you're not.

You're worshiping something. And what you're worshiping, if it's not the God of the universe, it's an idol. And the truth is most of the so-called atheists worship their own minds, the delusion of their own minds.

They think they're smarter ultimately than God is. Romans 1, verses 22 to 25, says this, Claiming to be wise, doesn't that sound like today's atheists? They're too smart for all this. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Oh, they don't worship little creeping things. They're too smart for that. They worship Stephen Hawking and other brilliant people who don't know anything. I was reading Job here this week and just thinking about, you know, when God kind of undresses Job and says, were you there?

And tell me if you can and all these things about the basics of the universe. And the answer is we don't know these things. People act as if they're too smart to believe what the Bible says. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. You know, the universe is magnificent. Well, that's true. Where did the universe come from? Stop worshipping the universe. Worship the one who created it. What are some other idols that humanity worships today?

What's that? Work. Money. Self. Sports. Rituals of Puku right here. Yeah, I think self-worship is a big one, right? I mean, I think it's, yeah. Well, I think an amazing number of older people do, too.

Yeah, sure. Comfort is a big one. I mean, there aren't any number of things that people ultimately pursue with a passion that if they pursued Christ with this kind of perfection, they would be among the preeminent theologians, I think, in the world.

We'll close here in a minute, but how about this idea? Even the God of the Bible can be reshaped into an idol. What do I mean by that? You could take the truth and just sort of repackage it a little bit, and you wind up with a lie.

Here's one that I find that people absolutely worship. They'll say that they believe in the God of the Bible. They'll say that they love the Lord Jesus Christ, but they will, like, cut my heart out if I say, you don't have free will.

And it doesn't matter how many scriptures you bring up. It's just like, well, I don't care. I have a free will, and if God takes that away from me, then he's not the God that I believe in. I'm like, well, God didn't take that away from you.

Adam did. It doesn't matter how upset you are about it. Free will, unfettered, unconditional free will doesn't exist. How about this? How about God of the Bible? I love the God of the Bible, but God is love, and that's all God is.

I agree that God is love, and because he's loving, then what? He's too loving to send anybody to hell. I saw there's an evangelicalist making the rounds on Facebook now. She's a popular singer. She's not the greatest singer of all time.

That would be Amy Grant. But she's a popular singer, and she said this week, apparently, that she doesn't know if homosexuality is a sin because she's not God. And I can buy the last part, right? She isn't God.

But what about the first part? If you're a professing Christian, you say, well, I don't know if homosexuality is a sin. What's your response to that? Crack your Bible open. Let's do a little study. It's not hard to figure out.

But ultimately, what does that tell us about her? She doesn't want to trust the God of the Bible because the God of the Bible has said what he said. But it's like, well, maybe he's changed his mind because I know some homosexuals that are really nice people, and I don't want to think that the God of the Bible, the God that I worship, would send those people to hell just for being who they are.

It's huge. Man-placing is huge, right? And if you've got a platform like that, you don't want to cut people off. You know, your favorite verse becomes John 3 .16, but we'll close with this here. John 3 .16 and verse 17 as well.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.