What To Tell Suffering Christians (Part 2)

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I went to Israel the first time, or Jordan the first time, was standing on Mount Nebo.

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Never made it, and God buried Moses. And to look around thinking somewhere around here,

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All right, so today we're talking a little bit about suffering for Christians, part two.

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What do you tell a Christian who is going through a difficult time? A time where they are wondering how long will this go?

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Can I endure another day? This Christian could be on their deathbed or they could be going through difficulties at work.

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They could be in the Middle East or in Africa, Northern Africa, getting persecuted for their faith.

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Any kind of suffering, this is good for a Christian. I would even say that even if you're receiving the chastening hand of God and you're suffering under the rod of God, the loving rod of God, this advice is still good for you.

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And what I love about it is that it confirms everything I know about Scripture and who

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God is and the importance of doctrine. Doctrine, theology,

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Theo, God, logos, word, a word about God.

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Theology leads to methodology, a word about methods, which leads to doxology, glory, a word of glory.

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And so we need theology in our lives. I think it's a lie straight out of the pit.

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Well, down with doctrine. We don't need doctrine. Paul was a doctrinal preacher. Jesus was a doctrinal preacher.

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John the Baptist was a doctrinal preacher. Isaiah was a doctrinal preacher. Whitefield was a doctrinal preacher.

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MacArthur's a doctrinal preacher. S. Lewis Johnson's a doctrinal preacher. And if I have any gumption at all,

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I want to be a doctrinal preacher as well, even when it comes to suffering. Now there's a way to talk.

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When I'm talking to someone who's suffering, I'm talking just like I am right now. I'm not in my preacher mode.

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I'm not in my heralding mode. I'm in my bedside manner mode.

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And I want to, even with my voice, communicate sympathy, right?

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Or empathy, if possible. So what do you tell people who are suffering?

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Let's make it very, very practical. Somebody that you know is in the hospital and you want to go visit them.

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Christian people in the hospital, Christian person. And so you say to yourself, if you're smart, you say things like this.

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I should go visit this person. I'd like to be visited. So I want to show them love. I should probably bring someone with me, like one of my kids, so I can teach them what to do as well.

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And then I should figure out what to say when I say to the patient, would you like me to read you some scripture?

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I should have something in the back of my mind. Now they might say, could you please read me John 10?

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I love to read that in the hospital. Could you read me Psalm 46, Psalm 23, Psalm 103,

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Romans chapter eight. Those are wonderful hospital

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Psalms and portions of Paul's writings. But you should know ahead of time,

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I think this would be good to say. And so today we talk about 1

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Peter 1, verses three and following as what you talk to Christians about when they're suffering.

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And that is, you talk about who the Lord is, the great triune God who saves, who's sovereign.

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And we get the attention right from the get -go. Oh, we can talk about other things later. But from the very beginning, we're going to talk about who

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God is and the sovereignty of God and how he starts something. He's certainly gonna be faithful to complete it.

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And so today on No Compromise Radio, 1 Peter chapter one, part two, counsel for the suffering

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Christian. Remember, he says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

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According to the foreknowledge, the pre -set love of God in eternity past where God put his love on the people, set his love on people in the sanctification of the spirits.

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You've got the father and the spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for the sprinkling with his blood, the great triune salvation of God.

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May grace and peace be multiplied to you. Every kind of blessing from the

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Greek blessing to the Hebrew blessing. This is what I want for you, suffering Christians who are exiles, no home.

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You're running, literally, you're running. You grab the kids and you think, I gotta run. I gotta run for my life.

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They're trying to kill me and my kids, run. What do you tell the people?

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He begins to praise God. And this is what his readers need to hear.

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This is what his readers need to do after they hear it. Blessed be the God and father of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, the sovereign mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

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In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in the praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

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That is good news for a suffering Christian. That's exactly what Peter does. That's exactly what he does.

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He says, you have been loved in eternity past. You've been loved in the present and you're gonna be loved in the future and there's going to be an inheritance.

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You have God as a father and if God is your father, you are a son or a daughter and when a father in his generosity gives an inheritance, you get an inheritance as well to an inheritance that's imperishable, undefiled and unfading in verse four.

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Can you believe it? You're born into this inheritance. Now, my mother, believe it or not, was friends with Warren Buffett and Mr.

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Buffett, even though he gives money to crazy causes, as far as I know, he's not a

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Christian man. I would love him to be one and his aunt who loaned him his first $10 ,000 was our family friend.

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A matter of fact, I even have her Bible and can you imagine if I was in his will when my mother was sick, he actually gave some money to our family to help with the sickness and he only gave out of his wealth.

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He didn't give according to his wealth because if he gave according to his wealth, we would be millionaires by now.

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When God gives according to the foreknowledge of God, well, that's a little bit different, but see, the free gift of the inheritance, we were born into the family of God and we received this inheritance and it's reserved in heaven.

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People's inheritances fade and they falter and they are stolen.

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Look at what Peter says about this great inheritance. First of all, it's imperishable.

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And so every one of these words, in English it says imperishable, undefiled and unfading.

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And there's an A in front of each of the Greek words. So there's some alliteration here and they're all alpha privatives.

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And so they give you a word like the first one within perishable, it means corrupt not, a corruptible.

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It can't be ruined, it can't pass away, it can't decay. And so if you would look back in secular literature, an army would ravage and bring to nothing something.

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Well, your inheritance is always gonna stick around. It's imperishable. There's another word that's used, in English it says undefiled.

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And here we have the alpha privative with A in front of some kind of defile by staining or ruining, corrupting with contamination, soiling.

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And so you can't soil, you can't have your inheritance impured.

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I just made up a word. Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. Impure. My name is

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Mike Avendron, this is No Compromise Radio. Out of my www .donotbesurprised .com

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mug, I must have some Pete's coffee. What am I doing? Crazy.

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Undefiled and will not fade away.

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Unfading is what the ESV says. In the Greek, there's an alpha privative in front, it negates the word that follows.

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And so you have fade, A, fadable. A, what would be a better way to say it so I don't have to make up another new word.

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It's interesting that according to one commentator, thus literally unfading, it was a word found on several tombstone inscriptions, which will fade away, but not our inheritance in Christ.

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So the people, God's people don't ever fade away. And you put that on a tombstone, these people are unfading.

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Even though the tombstone itself will fade, the people won't fade because of what God has done.

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It is an inheritance that doesn't fade. Flowers, they fade, they wither, but God perpetually keeps his people.

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Spurgeon said, joy, my brethren, in the glorious inheritance, which is prepared for you, unstained, uncorrupted, perfectly pure, and therefore to last forever, because the elements which produce decay are not in it.

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It is without sin and therefore it will be without end. What a mercy it is to be kept by the power of God.

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See, heaven is kept for us and we are kept for heaven. Heaven is prepared for us and we are prepared for heaven.

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There's a double action of God's grace, thus working in us, sad working for us unto eternal bliss.

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And see, the trial that you're in, it's not gonna last forever, but your eternal inheritance will.

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And that word inheritance is really, it's a cool word. It means to distribute something that's, you know, put into many pieces and then you divvy it up.

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Isn't that interesting? Literally lot and distribute. You distribute the lot, what's yours, you get.

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And so this kind of talk already makes me stop thinking about all my own troubles and who

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God is and what he's promised to do and how faithful he is. And it lifts my eyes away from my problems up into the

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Lord. And that's why my grandmother -in -law, Grandma Evie, always had that phrase and that slogan, that unforgettable slogan.

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What'd she say again? Knock, knock, who's there?

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To, to who? To whom? That was not her slogan.

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What was her slogan? That you need to gaze on the

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Lord and only glance at your trials. Because if you gaze on your trials and just glance at the

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Lord, you're gonna see things, perceive things, think through things wrongly.

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And so that's exactly what Peter's doing here. Paul did the same thing. I mean, it sounds almost exactly the same, doesn't it?

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Well, because it is exactly the same to start. Ephesians 1, 3. Might've said 1, 4 earlier,

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I meant 1, 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the same language.

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Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And then Paul does what

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Peter does. He starts off with sovereign grace, with election talk, with predestination talk, with chosen talk.

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Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.

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In love, He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which

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He has blessed us in the beloved. Peter is going to say basically what

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Paul has said. You're a Christian because God made you one. And when God starts something, He finishes it.

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And so it started your salvation in eternity past, and it's gonna culminate in eternity future.

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And so you ought not to worry, because even though this hurts, even though you're troubled, even though you're squeezed in this mold of sin and miseries trial, there's a future for you.

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And it's a glorious future. And God has done it all. God has caused you to be born again.

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I want you to get that in your mind. I say it often because we live in such an Arminian world, such a

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God neglecting salvation world.

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It's God who caused you to be born again. Your free will didn't cause your salvation. Your faith didn't cause your salvation.

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Why are people opposed to this kind of language of first Peter? I think

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D. James Kennedy, although he was wacky with the stars book, he was anything but wacky with this quote.

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The reason people today are opposed to it, sovereignty of God and salvation, is because they will have

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God be anything but God. He can be a cosmic psychiatrist, a helpful shepherd, a leader, teacher, anything at all, only not

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God. For a very simple reason, they want to be God themselves.

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Salvation, your salvation is based upon God's work, God's plan,

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God's decree. Not even your faith saves you, right?

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It's saved because of my faith? No, not at all. God has to cause our salvation because if God looked down the corridors of time, he would know that we were sinful and that we were rebellious.

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And so God saves in spite of us. John Calvin said, when God elects us, it's not because we were handsome, not at all.

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If you look at Ephesians chapter two, verse eight, for by grace you've been saved through faith.

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The cause was the grace of God. The cause was the love of God, Ephesians two, four.

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But the instrument of means is faith. You were saved by grace through, through, through, through, through, through, through faith.

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That's not the ground or the cause. Salvation depends on God and his work, not on your faith.

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Faith isn't some work that earns salvation. It's not some merit to both thing.

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It's not a quality. It's not a virtue. It's not something that you come up with on your own.

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The exposer's Bible commentary says, lest faith should be in any way misinterpreted as man's contribution to his own salvation.

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Paul immediately adds a writer to explain that nothing is of our doing, but everything is the gift of God.

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And that not of yourself, it is the gift of God. Not because of, not on account of, but through,

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Romans 3 .22, exact same language. Even the righteousness of God through faith.

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Romans 3 .25, God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith.

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Not on account of, true or false, faith in Christ saves.

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Well, if you wanna be technical, it's false. It is Christ that saves through faith.

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Isn't that better? I think that's much better. I think that's eternally better.

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You're saved by grace through faith, and this is not of you.

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This grace by faith, salvation, I mean this grace through faith, salvation, is in a view.

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Spurgeon, at every point of the process of salvation, this word is appropriate, not of yourselves. From the first desire after it to the full reception of it by faith, it is evermore of the

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Lord alone and not of ourselves. The man believes, but that belief is only one result among many of the implantation of divine life within the man's soul by God himself.

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Faith doesn't save. It's not the cause. It's not meritorious. It's not some kind of faculty or something that is boastable.

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Is that a word? We just make up words here at No Compromise Radio. That's why I think when you even talk about your salvation, you should make you passive and God active instead of flipping around the other way.

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People give their testimonies and they don't talk like the Bible talks. Regularly, most often, it's

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God chose, God predestined, God willed you to be saved. God did this freely.

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Salvation is from the Lord. God's sovereign in salvation. He gets the credit.

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And that's what Peter wants to have people think of. God did all this. What if he had to save yourself and then glorify yourself?

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Well, what kind of hope would that give to a Christian that is in a horrible trial? It doesn't give any hope, but God starts salvation and he's faithful to complete it.

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And God saves by himself, for himself, to please himself, only consulting with himself. He's only answerable to himself and he does the choosing.

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He does the saving. He does the willing because our wills are enslaved to our own nature.

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So my name is Mike Abendroth, this is No Compromise Radio. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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You can also go to our church website too to hear some of the sermons from Sunday morning and Sunday night. That's bbcchurch .org,

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bbcchurch .org. Don't forget, we'd love to have you go to Israel with us. February, 2015, you can get the information there on our website and stay tuned for some exciting new

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NoCo developments this fall. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.