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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Avendroth.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church. This is Mike Avendroth. I�m your host, and we like to talk about interesting, provocative things in a provocative way.
I don�t really think I�m that blunt or that straightforward, but probably compared to the way society has gone, the way that the world goes, and the way that evangelicalism is, I probably sound like I�m a little more hardcore than probably normal.
If you would study Luther and Erasmus and Calvin and I think his name was Pigius, the one that he was debating. Who would you take if those two debated just by names only? That�s kind of like Hosea and Gomer.
It�s an interesting thing, because they were very blunt. It wasn�t some kind of personal issue. It was just, �Let�s sit down and hash out the truth, and if you don�t agree with most of the things that I say, I�m glad you�re listening anyway, because A, I�m not always right, B, it�s good to hear the other side, and C, we are all underneath the Word of God, and it trumps everything and everyone.
So today the topic is the Bible. I think one day I�ll do a show on how we got the Bible, canonicity, transmission, inspiration, but right now I�d just like to talk a little bit about the Bible and how you should view the Bible.
Some people view the Bible as an end to their book table, something that�s heavy. It�s kind of like the story where the Bible�s collecting dust and the pastor�s coming over on a Friday night and says, �You have to quick dust off your Bible.
I like it when people here at the church leave their Bibles on Sunday by accident, and then I�ll say the next Sunday, �So how�d your Bible reading go this week �Oh, it really went great. And I said, �Really?
Here�s your Bible. And they thankfully say, �Oh, we have other Bibles at home. We knew we left that here. So what does the Bible say about itself? It�s very, very important today to think about that, especially in the day of traditions equal to the Word of God, like in the Roman Catholic Church, and especially for evangelicals, as I�m an equal opportunity prodder, for evangelicals who talk about mysticism, this whole experiencing God trend, �God told me, I experience, God said something to my spirit, God said this and God said that.
That actually, when you come to think through the issues, it has nothing to do with anything except elevating mysticism to the Word of God, adding to the Word of God. If you come and tell me, �God told me something I will say to you, �What is the chapter and what is the verse
Because if it�s not chapter and verse, God didn�t tell you anything. God has spoken, He has completely spoken, He has sufficiently spoken, He has spoken in such a way that we have the canon now, it is complete in Revelation 22, although originally applied only to Revelation, finds itself appropriately in the canon.
In Revelation 22, towards the end of the book, towards the end of the Bible, it says in the last chapter in our canon, �I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to them, God shall add to him the plagues which are written in this book.
And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city which are written in this book. That would be a horrible, horrible judgment for anyone to go through, because when you reject and stiff-arm God�s Word, you are rejecting and stiff-arming God Himself.
Of course, not literally, but figuratively, that�s what you�re doing. And this is no new concept. Revelation 22, verses 18 and 19 isn�t new, it comes right out of the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 4, verse 2, �You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.
Deuteronomy 12, in addition, �Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to, nor take away from it. And so subtraction from the Word of God is horrible, addition is horrible.
Proverbs 30, verse 6, �Do not add to his words, lest he reprove you, and you be proved a liar. And so we need to make sure that if we don�t walk circumspectly, you�ll say God told you something when it�s really your own soul saying it, your own deceitful heart, Satan, maybe, or most likely some kind of feeling that you have, and now you want to put God�s stamp of approval on it,.
�Thus saith the Lord� instead of �I thought of something. And Blackabee in his Experiencing God book, page 172, says, �If the God of the universe tells you something, you should write it down. When God speaks to you in your quiet time, immediately write down what he said before you have time to forget.
And I would go further. If that�s your philosophy, if that�s your theology, then you ought to quick open up the back of your Bibles, take out the book of maps, and insert some blank pages and begin to write down what God says, and then begin to add to the canon, because that�s exactly what you would be doing.
If the God of the universe tells you something, you should write it down? Like what? Marry Jane, or leave that particular church, or should you buy a Ford Fiesta, or get your Toyota brakes fixed? What would God tell you?
What more can he say than to you he has said? And so divine revelation is finished. It is done. It is complete. There will be more revelation in the future, especially when you get to heaven as God fully reveals himself to us in his incarnate Son.
But I just find people that don�t want to look into the Bible, I find them lazy. It's a symptom of laziness. What's easier? Greek, Hebrew, hermeneutics, blood, sweat, tears, toil, church history, commentaries, context, authorial intent.
What's a lot easier than the hard work of study is, �Oh, God told me. God told me. I find a direct proportion to those who say, �God told me and the people who don�t know their Bibles. That is to say, you don�t know your Bibles well, you�ll say often, �God told me.
Know your Bible well, you will rarely say it. Know your Bible wonderfully well, and you won�t say it at all because there is everything we need in this book, and you ought to be content with it. Actually, this issue is a lack of contentment.
People aren�t content with the Word of God, so they want something more. It's like people not content with spiritual gift of helping, so they want tongues. They are not content. They are not satisfied.
They want something else. That is not a good desire. It's a good desire to say, �I'm not satisfied with my holiness practically, and I'd like to live out more of my holiness because I know I am holy positionally.
That is a good lack of contentment. It is wonderful to eagerly anticipate, anxiously anticipate the Lord's return. Those are good things, but not studying the Bible because you're too lazy and you want to default to, �God told me to do something.
You don't know how many people in pastoral ministry I have seen destroyed in the wake of, �God told me to do this, and God told me to do that. Then when I tell them, �No, He didn't because this is what the Bible says.
Who are you to tell me �God told me. Well, it was the God of your belly who told you, the God of your own deceived heart told you, the God of this world told you, the God of your friend told you, but not the God of the Bible.
With the time that we have left today, by the way, my name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm at NoCompromiseRadio .com. You can write us at info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. You can go to Israel with us in February of 2011, right there on the website, NoCompromiseRadio .com.
Or you can just come to Bethlehem Bible Church and hear some preaching on Sunday. If you've got a Bible teaching church, support your pastor. Get plugged in. Serve. Learn. Grow. If you don't have a Bible teaching church or your church isn't biblical, Bethlehem Bible Church, bbcchurch .org, we'd love to have you.
So let's talk about the Bible and what the Bible says, and I think if you realize what the Bible says, you wouldn't want to fall for anything less, like some kind of personal word from God. So let's talk about the Bible using the acronym CRUTCH, because sometimes people say, �Oh, you've got to believe the Bible.
That's a crutch. So I want to use reverse psychology, inverse thinking, to try to make a bad word thrown at the Bible, you know, a word that's thrown at the Bible to somehow disprove it. We want to use that acronym to prove what's going on.
I'm just kind of having a Hank Hanegraaff moment for a minute. I don't know what's going on with Hank these days. I rarely listen for lots of reasons, but we will talk about that another time. Number one, the Bible is complete.
The Bible is comprehensive. That's the first C in the acronym CRUTCH. The Bible is complete. Second Peter 1 .3, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence.
Here we have this divine power that is given to us, and it is complete. It is full. It is like 2 Timothy 3 .15, it's adequate, equipped for every good work. Remember that? Remember that scripture that saved Timothy, 2 Timothy 3 .15, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God, the preacher, and by application all who study may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
The Bible is complete. It is comprehensive. Maybe the best verse to show this is found in Psalm 19, Psalm 19, a mini version of Psalm 119. The law of Yahweh the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. The word perfect there means exhaustive.
It means complete. It means sweeping, inclusive, comprehensive, covering all issues, covering all sides. It is whole, W-H-O-L-E. It deals with sin. It deals with salvation. It deals with sanctification, glorification, the Godhead.
It deals with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. It deals with end times. It deals with church issues. It deals with social issues. It deals with how to take care of the poor. It deals with everything we need.
There's nothing in the Bible that is not addressed that you need when it comes to holy living. Godliness are living your life. And so when you say, God told me that I need to go to Africa and be a missionary, you might say to yourself, you know, I'm getting a, I just, you know, have a burden.
It's a compulsion. My conscience won't let it go. I certainly think God can lead and God can guide. But don't say God directly told me, especially if your elders don't think you're equipped to go because God would speak actually through the elders as a God would move their hearts.
You have to trust God that he has supplied everything that you need in the scriptures. Everything that you need is found in the scriptures. You can get wisdom and insight from how to get a new job to who you're going to marry, but it's not going to be this specific kind of information.
I find that people need to study the Bible and just think about things from God's perspective because that's actually what the Bible is. Looking at the world, looking at God, looking at humans from God's perspective.
And that's what we need when it comes to healthy decision-making. Not God told me, God led me, but through his word, I was convicted to do this, that, and the other. It's my own choice. Delight yourself in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart, Psalm 37.
And if you are word-saturated, word-filled, the desires that you have are divine desires that God has put there through his word. We don't want to add to the word or subtract the word from the word because we have a completed word.
You don't want anything taken away or added to. It's perfect. And we need to, number two, with the letter R, remember that God's word is relevant. It's relevant. So we're thinking today about the Bible.
I'm trying to give you a quick crash course, 24 and a half minutes on the Bible. One, when we think about crutch, it is comprehensive or it's complete. Two, with the R, it's relevant. It's pertinent. It's applicable.
It is appropriate. It is fitting. Whether it's 1500 BC, 150 AD, 3699 AD, or 2010, it is relevant. Quite the opposite of Robert Greene Ingersoll's comment, if a man would follow today the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal.
If he would follow the teachings of the new, he would be insane. That's a lot different than the scriptures that say, Psalm 119 .105, Psalm 119 .105, thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Today, now, relevant, timely. This is a cross-cultural book, a trans-chronological book. It is a guy that goes from 4 ,000 years ago to the 21st century. This is not some kind of antiquated, not culturally up to speed, oh, the Bible writers didn't know the year 2000 and all the Y2K problems.
God is eternal, and God understands all of time, all of cultures, and he's written this book in such a way that you're in India in the year 2000, or in the New Hebrides in the year 1500, or Scotland in the year 1000, or in Papua New Guinea in the year 500.
If you have a revelation from God, Old or New Testament, you can understand who God is and you can understand about the Messiah to come if you only have the Old Testament, how to have sins forgiven. How relevant is the Bible?
The Bible's very relevant. The Bible can teach you what it means to die, what happens to you after you die, what happens if you pay for your own sins, what happens if someone else pays for your sins. I have a question.
Just how relevant is that? We're having a funeral today, a viewing hours at the church, and I just was with the funeral company out in the sanctuary, and they brought in the body of a Christian man who's now with the Lord, absent from the body, present with the Lord.
And we are going to have viewing hours and then the funeral, and I'd like to know just how relevant, just how timely would the Bible be in a case like that, where there's a corpse in the sanctuary, it's just a container for this particular man's soul and spirit, and now that man is rejoicing, singing the praises of his Savior, Christ Jesus.
I wonder if the Bible would be relevant to this particular thing. Is it just kind of this Amish, out-of-date, expired, it's no good anymore? Of course not. The Bible says in Psalm 19, describing the Bible, the fear of the Lord is a synonym for the Bible, is clean, enduring forever.
Enduring forever. It's this clean, holy, no spot, no corruption, no error, no sin. It's very clean. It's something like that. Show me something clean and pure and holy, and I'll show you something that endures forever.
It endures forever, and it tells us all about everything we need to know. The judgments of the Lord are true, they are righteous altogether. The Word of God is not touched by sin, and it is relevant. It is always relevant.
It is eternally relevant. And so you ought to study such a book. Should you study the Bible? What does the Bible say about itself? C, comprehensive, R, relevant. Our third letter in our acronym, U, it's understandable.
It's understandable. There are difficult things, certainly, read 2 Peter 3. Peter said some of Paul's writings are very hard to understand. But there are other parts that aren't very hard to understand at all.
And even eight-year-old kids, four-year-old kids can understand the story. Mark Twain said, most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand. But the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
Yes, it's good to train. Yes, it's good to study. Yes, it's good to show yourself approved. But you can understand the Bible. We have the resident truth teacher, the Spirit of God, indwelling every Christian so they can understand the things of the Spirit.
Psalm 19, I go back to that one again. The commandment of the Lord, talking about the Word, God's mandate, the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. It's radiant. It's clear. It gives a direction and it enlightens your eyes.
You can see things. You can understand things. You can comprehend things because God has given you the helper, the Spirit of God. And He's revealed His Word and His mind and His person through the Spirit, through the apostolic messengers.
And now we have the Bible. We have an anointing from the Holy One. And you all know, T-C-R-U-T, comprehensive, relevant, understandable. And now fourthly, T, true, or trustworthy. Samuel Butler said, the Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Well, the Bible is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth because it was written by God. Psalm 19, again, the testimony of the Lord, God's divine witness of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
It's sure. It's trustworthy. It is reliable. It is certifiable. Pilate says, what is truth? We know what it is. And in a world of ripoff artists and scams and frauds and shams and false advertising, con artists, we have the truth.
No grays, we have no mishmash of things. It is black and white thinking, the Bible, and it makes naive people wise. It makes people who have open minds. Anything goes in, anything comes out, it closes their minds and says, I'm going to be closed to the wrong things going in and the right, right things going out.
God is true. God breathed out scriptures, therefore the scriptures are true. That's a major premise. God's true. Minor premise. God breathed out the scriptures. Conclusion, thy word is truth. John 17, 17, Jesus said, sanctify them in truth.
Thy word is truth. We have a God that we serve who cannot lie. He makes promises. He speaks truthfully. Truth is an attribute of God. Scriptures breathed out, and therefore Proverbs 30, every word of God is tested.
He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. God has everlasting righteousness, and thy law is truth. Psalm 119, God gives us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 2 ,000 times in the Old Testament, thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord, over and over and over.
This is what the Bible says. This is what God has revealed. It was covered. It was a mystery, and now it's no longer covered. It's no longer a mystery. We can know it. Robert Leitner said the human writers of Scripture recorded accurately, precisely what the Holy Spirit desired them to write.
No more and no less. Friends, that is why Calvin said we should treat the Bible as if we would hear God audibly speaking what it says. That's how much authority it has. That's how much weight it has in gravitas.
If you could hear God speak, and it would sound like thunder from Sinai, you would respond, first of all, with a lot of quivering and shaking and dread, probably, and fear of the Lord, both fear, fear, and reverent fear.
And then you would say, I must obey such a voice of authority. Well, when you read the Word of God, you should read it the exact same way, and you should study it. If this is God speaking, and no one else has God speaking, it's not found in the Book of Mormon or any other book, then you should study the Bible.
All this should make you trust the Bible, study the Bible, memorize the Bible, teach the Bible to other people. If you're a simpleton, you ought to say to yourself, I can become wise. My IQ, frankly, isn't that tremendous.
I wish it was higher than what it actually is, but I am wise, not in and of myself. If you met me before I was saved, you'd understand that this is something given to me by God. Let the boasting one boast.
I will boast in the Lord that he has taught me his scriptures, and now I'm wise enough to understand life, death, heaven, hell, Christ, sin, forgiveness, propitiation, reconciliation, redemption, justification.
I understand these things, and I'm actually wise enough to say, let's teach these to other people. Let's teach these to other people who are also simple. They're simple. They have open minds. The world says, have an open mind.
Well, that's a foolish thing to have. God would say, close it. Don't let things go in that ought not to go in. Don't let things go out that ought not to go out. Protect your mind. Let only the righteous things go in, and don't let those righteous things go out.
The Bible makes wise the simple. If you're naive, and you don't know how to live your life, and you're 23 years old, 24 years old, you don't know quite what to do, study the Bible. Study the Proverbs.
Study the wisdom literature. It gives wisdom, and it is truthful. Psalm 119 .151, thy commandments, all thy commandments are truth. Psalm 119 .160, the sum of thy word is truth, and every one of thy righteous ordinances is everlasting.
Why would I believe some atheistic liberal who says the opposite, and their life is falling apart? You need to read Paul Johnson's book called The Intellectuals, and the smartest people in the world from Rousseau on down.
Their lives were horrible, from the disregard of their children to adultery. Show me somebody who's got a high IQ and thinks they're really smart and says the Bible's not true, and I'll show you behind the white picket fence, scrape off that veneer, scrape off that shellac of external morality, and I'll show you a whitewashed tomb full of dead men's bones.
That's what I'll show you. My name's Mike Abenroth. This is No Compromise Radio, and I thought I was going to get through crutch today. The Bible is comprehensive, relevant, understandable, and true, and I've got two more to go, but I don't have time.
I have a C, and I have an H left, and you don't know what those are until next week when you listen. Same time, same channel. Info at NoCompromiseRadio .com, go to NoCompromiseRadio .com, sign up for Israel, God bless you.
No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abenroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. 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.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.