Get a Real Testimony! - Part B

Paul is saying, I made a choice 30 years ago, I'm still choosing it, and I'm here to say trusting in anything else stinks. Trusting in your religious background stinks.

Trusting in how you were raised, if that's what you're trusting in to be saved, stinks. You need your own personal encounter with Christ. Like John Dyer said, he was a Welsh poet, theologian, a man may go to heaven without health, a man may go to heaven without riches, without honors, without learning, and without friends, but he can never go to heaven without Christ. The Apostle Paul's life shows us that God can use anyone to further his kingdom.

Once a persecutor of God's people, Paul became a preacher of the Gospel. Today on Connect with Skip Heitig, Skip talks about Paul's encounter with Christ, and how Jesus can use you to do amazing things for his kingdom. But first, we want to tell you about an opportunity you have to see the Bible come alive before your eyes.

You're invited to join Skip on a tour of Israel in 2022. Visiting the places where the events of the Bible unfolded is a unique and significant experience. You'll be encouraged in your faith as God's word comes to life for you in a way it never has before.

Get all the info at inspirationcruises.com slash C-A-B-Q. Now, we're in Philippians chapter 3 as we dive into the teaching with Skip Heitig. He says at the end of verse 5, not only Hebrew of the Hebrews, but concerning the law, a Pharisee. Now I know, I know that you as a Western Christian in this modern era, you have read enough of your New Testament to know that Pharisees weren't great people.

You're thinking, oh that's, why would he put that in his resume? Because Jesus spoke against the Pharisees, right? He called them whitewashed sepulchers, he called them hypocrites. However, the original word Pharisee, parashim, means to be separated. And when they started around 200 B.C., it continued into the first century, they believed that they would give their whole life to studying and obeying the written law as well as the oral law.

They started off really good, they just evolved into a hypocritical group. According to Josephus, the Jewish historian, the Pharisees were the leading sect among the Jews, the most accurate interpreters of the law. As a Pharisee, he studied under a very particular mentor. Do you remember his name?

It's given in Acts 22. Gamaliel was his mentor. Gamaliel is one of the most famous scholars in Jewish history, regarded even to this day. What Gamaliel taught him to do was to argue. There was an ancient form of discourse called the diatribe, question and answer format, to learn how to think and talk on your feet very persuasively. He would have had to memorize large portions of the Old Testament, which would become very profitable as time went on in his ministry. So heredity, nobility, pedigree, piety. A fifth word that would describe him is intensity.

This dude was intense. Look at verse 6. Concerning zeal, if you want to talk about my zeal, persecuting the church. Saul of Tarsus, as you know, was a zealous defender of Judaism. Now, why it's important to understand a little bit about Gamaliel is understanding that he sat under Gamaliel's mentorship helps you understand him. Because Gamaliel was hateful toward the Christians. He called Christians, Christian heretics. And a very famous prayer uttered by Gamaliel goes this way. Let there be no hope to them who apostatize from the true religion, and let these heretics, how many so ever they be, all perish in a moment.

He prayed that concerning Christian heretics, those who left Judaism and turned to Christ as their Messiah. No wonder, then, we read about Saul in Acts 8, verse 3, these words. Saul was going everywhere to devastate the church.

He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into jail. He learned that in part from Gamaliel. No wonder we read Acts chapter 9 about Saul breathing out threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. So, this dude was so intense that he measured his religious zeal by his hatred.

You know you're bad off when you're known more for what you're against than what you're for. A sixth word that would describe Saul of Tarsus is morality. Look at verse 6 again. Concerning zeal persecuting the church, concerning the righteousness which is in the law, I was blameless. That is, nobody could accuse me. I live by the book, I did everything the law demanded, not just the written law, but the oral law.

So get this. Saul of Tarsus had a righteousness by rule keeping. How many people do you know who have a righteousness by rule keeping? I do my best, man. I try really hard. I work really hard at getting God to love me.

Doing all the right things. I'm a religious person. Righteousness by rule keeping. This is why religious people are the hardest people to see converted.

Because they don't see that they have a need for anything. You share the gospel with them. Look, I've gone to church all my life. I've been baptized, I've been confirmed, I've gone through other sacraments.

I try really hard in going to church regularly. It's all a righteousness by rule keeping. They have enough morality to keep them out of trouble, but not enough righteousness to get them into heaven.

So, morality. Now, here's the question. Why is Paul rattling off all of the things he's done in his past? Because there's this group we talked about last week called the Judaizers. Remember the Judaizers?

They mixed law and grace together. They were telling Gentiles, non-Jews in Philippi, you have to go back and keep Jewish laws and Jewish rituals to be right before God. So, go back to verse 3, where we studied last week. Paul says, We are the circumcision, true believers, true followers, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I also might have confidence in the flesh.

If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so. And then he lists all these things. As if to say, I can beat these silly arguers at their own religious game. Here's my background. Here's my pedigree.

Which leads me to a question. What are you boasting in? What are you trusting in? What are you confident in to be right before God? Are you saying like so many people, well I was born in America. That's about as close to God as you can get.

Or, not only was I born in America, I was born in America by church-going parents and I have a Christian education at a Christian school. Whatever it is you might boast in, if you're not boasting in Jesus Christ alone, it's a false boast. Those things aren't bad. All of those things are good things.

But, a good thing can become a bad thing, if it keeps you from the best thing. All of those wonderful things that were part of his background and his resume, actually kept him from a relationship with God. So, shred your religious resume, and you'll see Paul doing that.

Second, have a spiritual encounter. Look at verse 7. What's the first word in verse 7?

Say it out loud. But, now that's a word that denotes a change. It's a negative conjunction. Sorry to bring up English class here. So, whenever you see the word, it denotes that he is pivoting and he is changing his thinking. So he's saying, this is who I used to be, but. These are the things I used to trust in, but.

Here's a list of all the things I thought were important to me, but something has changed in my life. And that is, I got saved. You see, that little word in verse 7, but, takes us back 30 years from the writing of this letter, to when he was going on the Damascus road from Jerusalem to Damascus to imprison believers. So here's this pompous, religious man on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus. He has an encounter with Jesus Christ.

Alan Redpath used to put it this way. When God wants to do an impossible task, he takes an impossible person and crushes him. Listen to Paul's crushing. This is Acts chapter 9, the first few verses. Meanwhile, Saul, that's Saul of Tarsus, was uttering threats with every breath. He was eager to destroy the Lord's followers, and so he went to the high priest. He requested letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking their cooperation in the arrest of any followers of The Way.

That's what they used to first call Christians, The Way. He wanted to bring them, both men and women, back to Jerusalem in chains. As he was nearing Damascus on this mission, a brilliant light from heaven suddenly beamed down upon them, and then he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, who are you, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

It is hard for you to kick against the goads that is of conviction. So he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what do you want me to do? And the Lord said to him, arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.

It was this episode that changed everything. Now he goes from persecutor to preacher. After this chapter, he goes from Mr. Prideful to Mr. Humble. He goes from religious man to righteous man, from self-confident to saved. He had an encounter, a spiritual encounter, that was personal with Jesus Christ.

In the passage that I just read from Acts chapter 9, he refers to Jesus as Lord, and he submits to him, Lord, what do you want me to do? And the rest of his life, it's about doing what Jesus wants him to do. Here's why I love Paul's testimony. What happened to Paul happened instantly to him.

I mean, he was one way one day, but that day changed him and he was completely different the next day. I know that for some people, coming to Christ is a process. They hear the gospel once, they listen to it, they may agree with something, but they marginalize it, pass it off, and then they hear it again at another time, and they hear it again, and maybe one day it just sinks in, they go, I'm giving my life to Christ.

But for other people, it's instantaneous. It's like an epiphany. For me, it was an epiphany. When I heard the gospel, I thought, I'm in trouble.

I need to do this. I need to receive Christ. Now, I didn't quite get that at first. I had a friend, the friend who really led me to Christ, Gino. One day, he was doing drugs. The very next day, less than 24 hours later, he's preaching Jesus to me. And I said, excuse me, nobody can change that fast.

And he said, well, I did. The night before, he went to a meeting, and he went forward, and he received Christ as his savior, and he was forever changed to this day, changed. Saul had an encounter with Jesus.

Now, this encounter was so unexpected and so transforming that I have been amused over the years. I've even collected stories of people trying to explain Saul's spiritual conversion. For example, Renan, the French atheist, philosopher, said that this was a case of an uneasy conscience with unstrung nerves, fatigue from the journey, his eyes were inflamed by the hot sun, and a sudden stroke of fever produced an hallucination. Because it's so odd that this person would change so dramatically, it must be a hallucination. Others say a thunderstorm happened to hit at this very moment. And being so overwrought by guilt, he imagined that God spoke to him. But my favorite, and the most popular explanation of Saul of Tarsus' spiritual conversion, is that he had an epileptic fit. I still hear this.

I still read this. It was a case of an epileptic seizure. I did a little research and discovered, according to medical sources, epileptics cannot remember anything that occurred during that fit.

Yet Saul seems to have great detail about everything that happened, and he writes about it, tells about it. So I love how Spurgeon answered this argument. When people said, oh, it was an epileptic fit, he said, oh, blessed epilepsy, if it affects a conversion like this. May God give us more people with epileptic fits that result in conversion to Christ. So shred your religious resume.

Have a spiritual encounter. Number three, to build your testimony, you need to learn how to count. Paul admits that he counted wrong for years. Look at verse seven. But what things were gained to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ. Notice the words counted and count three times in two verses.

The Greek word is hegeomai. It is a term, a mathematical term, a term of accounting. An accounting term means to reckon, reason, or to count. So Paul is saying, you know what, I've learned how to count.

Two more words I want you to notice. Notice the word gain and the word loss in verse seven. What things were gained to me, these I have counted loss. Those two are accounting terms. They're from the business world. Gain and loss represent the profit column and the loss column in a set of accounting books.

The books are open. One column says profit, the other says loss. Gain, loss. Paul spent his whole life working on his spiritual religious resume, and he had all of these things in the profit column. Gain, gain.

I was a Jew, born of a Jew, tribe of Benjamin, kept the law. All those things were in my profit column. But, Paul says, but I've learned to count since then. And I see things differently. I had them in the wrong column all along.

Those things that I put in this column are actually loss. So listen to verse seven and eight in a more modern translation, and I think it'll all come together for you. Paul writes this. The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I am tearing up and throwing out with the trash, along with everything else I used to take credit for.

And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my master firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant.

Dog-dumb. I have dumped it all in the trash so that I can embrace Christ and be embraced by Him. So now he opens the books and looks at that profit column, all those things listed, and he goes, you know what?

I just made a discovery. I'm bankrupt before God. I've had them in the wrong column. They've actually kept me from a real, authentic relationship with God.

So I'm moving them from the gain column into the loss column. Something else I want you to look at. Look at verse seven. What things were gained to me, these I have, what's the word? Counted. That's a past tense. I counted it. That was 30 years ago.

He's going back to his conversion. Thirty years ago, I made the estimation when I had an encounter with Christ, these things were in the wrong column. I have counted that 30 years ago. Now look at verse eight. Yet indeed I also, what's the word? Count. Now that's present tense. I count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ.

Here's what he's saying. I made a choice 30 years ago. I'm here to tell you I don't regret the choice that I made. Same choice 30 years later.

Longevity is always the test of choice. 1973, I made a choice. Watching that Billy Graham broadcast, I made a choice to make Jesus my Lord. That was 1973, many moons ago.

Today I'm here to say I made the right choice. I still follow the same Lord. Now look at another word as we bring this to a close.

He said all of those things I counted loss, I count them loss, and I count them as, verse eight, rubbish. Now I want to be careful with this word because it's a very strong Greek word. It's the word skubala, which means nothing to English readers. But if you were a Greek speaker 2,000 years ago and you heard this word you'd go, whoa. Because it means, as you've heard in this translation I just read, and they put it mildly, dog dung. It literally means the excrement of animals.

The stuff you sweep away from the stalls because it stinks. So Paul is saying I made a choice 30 years ago, I'm still choosing it, and I'm here to say trusting in anything else stinks. Trusting in your religious background stinks.

Trusting in how you were raised, if that's what you're trusting in to be safe, stinks. You need your own personal encounter with Christ. Like John Dyer said, he was a Welsh poet, theologian, a man may go to heaven without health, a man may go to heaven without riches, without honors, without learning, and without friends, but he can never go to heaven without Christ.

So he says, and be found in him, verse nine, a verse we'll look at next week, not having my own righteousness which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith. So here's the skinny. Your heritage may be wonderful. Your upbringing may be awesome. Your education is worth something. It's okay.

However, if you are relying on any of those things to go to heaven, they stink. I got a letter a few years ago that was an amazing letter. It was from Utah, the little town outside of Salt Lake City, and the man introduced himself as from the Mormon Church, a leader in the Mormon Church, a very influential and ardent follower in Mormonism. But he said, I would listen to your radio broadcast in the morning, and one day I decided I'd pull over on the side of the road and I'd listen to the whole thing. By the end of the broadcast, I realized that everything I had trusted in was wrong, and I prayed by the side of the road in my car after the radio broadcast, and I just wanted to write you to tell you I've received Jesus Christ as my Savior and my only means of salvation. So, toss your resume, get saved, and learn how to count. I could even reduce it down to this.

Lose your religion and choose your relationship with Christ. That wraps up Skip Heitzig's message from the series Technicolor Joy. Now, we want to share about a special resource that gives you incredible insight into what's going on in the Middle East and why it matters for you. The beating heart of Bible prophecy is the land of Israel and the Middle East. Joel Rosenberg has his finger on the pulse of the world-shaking changes happening right now, and he unveils them in his new nonfiction book, Enemies and Allies. This is the first book of its kind that takes you inside the Oval Office, inside the palaces of the kings and crown princes, the presidents and the prime ministers in Israel and in the Arab world as we ask them, what do you think about religious freedom, about making peace with Israel, about the threat from Iran, about U.S.-Arab relations, U.S.-Israel relations? Enemies and Allies, from multiple New York Times bestselling author Joel Rosenberg, takes you on an unforgettable journey inside the turbulent Middle East.

You'll go behind closed doors to hear from the very kings and crown princes, presidents and prime ministers who are leading the charge. Enemies and Allies includes exclusive, never-before-published quotes, insights and analysis from the author's conversations with some of the world's most controversial leaders. Your hardcover copy of Enemies and Allies is our thanks for your generous gift of $35 or more today.

To give, call 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskipp.com. Thanks to you, listeners are being transformed by God's truths. Listen to this letter one person sent in. Thank you, Pastor Skipp, for your faithfulness to the Word of God. Your teaching has definitely given me a stronger foundation in God's Word than I've ever had, and my life is being transformed because of it. You make stories like this possible with your support, and today you can help connect even more people to God's Word. Just visit connectwithskipp.com slash donate to get involved. That's connectwithskipp.com slash donate, or call 800-922-1888.

Again, that's 800-922-1888. Thank you. Tune in tomorrow as Skipp Heights and shares how you can fully embrace the benefits of being a believer in Christ. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on His Word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skipp Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.