Phil Howard Interview (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and it's

Wednesday. In real time it's Tuesday, but in NoCo world, in No Compromise Radio world, it is

Wednesday, and on Wednesdays I like to have guests. Sometimes there's theologians on, pastors, friends, relatives, and today

I have a dear friend on, Pastor Phil Howard. Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry.

Good to be with you, Michael. Have a great weekend being with you in your church. Phil was here this weekend, and he did a marriage conference and then preached on Sunday.

We did some Sunday school. We did some Q &A. We went and did duck tours yesterday in Boston. What'd you think of that when we went from the land to the water?

Oh, I feel like I saw Boston yesterday. I've been in Boston once before, but I didn't see anything like yesterday.

It was terrific. That was a lot of fun, and then we drove past Mary Baker, Eddie Glover, Patterson Fries, Christian Science Headquarters.

How many husbands did she have? I don't know. Didn't have time to keep up.

Well, welcome to New England, Pastor Phil, where it's home of the Seventh -day Adventist.

It's home with Ellen G. White, home of the Christian Science people, home of all kinds of things.

Well, I'm in California, in San Francisco Bay Area. What can we say?

What has been born there and exported has been just as bad so far as truth.

So, Pastor Phil has pastored for over 49 years, or about 49 years, married for 59.

I thought we should have him out for a marriage conference. And Phil, what goes through your mind when someone says, come and talk about marriage?

In other words, if they ask me to speak on redemption, I think, okay, I can do that. If they say marriage, I think, oh,

I have a long way to go as a husband. Well, I think if you're honest, nothing exposes any of us like the home life, what you are at home.

I'm afraid good and bad is the sum total, at least in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of your wife.

I used to say, as long as my wife and my children thought

I was authentic and not a fake and not a hypocrite, that would be my greatest recommendation.

And I've lived to see them. It's their love of Christ that can make them love their dad and husband.

But I think of the blessedness. I loved, Carol and I always loved to meet with couples and we would be excited when we knew a couple were going together because our courtship, the good memories, they're not full of regrets.

We were both Christians. We sought to do it God's way and as a whole, just no regrets.

And so, we're happy on dating as Christians getting married. It's an exciting adventure.

Wonderful. Well, Phil, I don't want to repeat the questions that I've asked you during Sunday school hour here at the church, nor do

I want to ask you the same questions we did at the marriage conference, because we'll play those on the radio station, with your permission, of course.

And I don't think I asked you this question in front of the congregation, so I'll ask you in front of the radio audience.

How did we meet? Do you remember when we met? Not exactly, but just when did our paths cross?

Every year for years, I've been going to a conference in Santa Cruz, California.

It's Mount Hermon Conference Ground. Are there Christians in Santa Cruz? There is.

And a lot of marijuana. But at that conference,

Dallas Theological Seminary would go, and I eventually went there and was in admiration of many of their faculty.

And my first memory of you and Kim is you on about the third row when

I was speaking in a morning series on Psalms, and there was something about you that you were glued to me as a speaker, and there seemed to be a divine reciprocation.

Something divine went on in our hearts. I wasn't introduced to you, didn't know you, but that's when

I first saw you. And then we seemed to always mix it up every year at that conference.

And then the fondness and the love for one another grew. Phil, I remember that sermon.

And as you know, we have preached a lot of sermons as pastors. We've listened to a lot of sermons in our training and even now for edification.

And it's hard to remember sermons just generally. We know the Spirit of God is using that word and helping and chiseling.

But I remember you preached Psalm 32. Am I right? Yes. Yeah. And I often think to myself, well, how do you preach

Christ in a psalm? Are all the psalms messianic? What about Psalm 2 and Psalm 110 and Psalm 22?

Are they more messianic, et cetera? And so, there's this theological argument. But what I noticed is you said something like, while there's not the person of the

Lord Jesus here in this psalm or the second person of the Trinity, everything in this psalm, how blessed it is to have your iniquities not counted against you.

Everything in this psalm reminds me of Jesus. And then you went and talked about the Lord Jesus. Do you remember that? I do.

It marked me and it marked you. I regularly say to people, that's exactly what

S. Lewis Johnson would do. If you, dear listener, dear Bible teacher, dear pastor, are teaching a psalm and you don't think it's messianic, or there's a

Bible passage and you're in 2 Chronicles and you don't think the Lord Jesus is there, isn't it easy to then say, while Jesus isn't in this verse, everything in this verse reminds me of Jesus.

And then off we go. Go ahead. We don't have to import him behind every rock in the

Old Testament, but the Bible isn't just about chronology and about just different facts.

It's a book about him. So I don't think we do the text's serious damage or the here to keep bringing him up in as many analogies as we can.

Absolutely. And as we talked a couple of days ago, would it be too much, dear pastor, that you sit under to talk about Jesus for 5 or 10 minutes in every sermon?

Oh my, my. Well, it's like, could we talk about the head of this outfit?

The only Savior, he must think, you mean you find it a strain to get me in the subject matter?

Well, since you're a Dallas Seminary grad and you know, a lot of folks there, and since you're 179 years old,

Louis Berry Chafer, I think listed 33 benefits that every Christian receives because of the work of Christ.

And one of the things we try to do, we collectively, Pastor Phil and myself, yes, talk about those benefits, but don't forget to talk about the one who gave you those benefits.

Absolutely. I mean, when I first studied that, I was amazed because, you know,

I was just a teenager. I just wanted the benefit of not going to hell and the guilt to be removed from me.

That's all. When I left that night, I just knew I wasn't going to hell. I knew

Jesus was a great and a wonderful Savior because I've been around Christian parents and family.

But I was amazed as I read the will that he'd given me so much and that it all transacted in a night, that it was all applied to me.

It wasn't just stuck on the cross. It had transferred over 2 ,000 years to my heart.

Wonderful. Pastor Phil, I often say to you that you're like my pastor because you encourage me and you don't get after me too much, but once in a while, that's okay.

I'll take it. We all do. Could you walk through a little bit for our listeners today how important it is to be patient with other

Christians who aren't quite where we are theologically? In other words, maybe you tell us a little bit about your background,

Pentecostal, not really a Calvary Chapel movement because that was pre that, but something similar. You've been on this theological pilgrimage, and now you're, you know, you're

Reformed, you're Calvinistic, etc., but how can you just encourage patience in our listeners?

Because, you know, No Compromise Radio listeners, we know everything. We've got our eyes dotted and our teeth crossed.

Yeah. Well, I think when I, in the groups that I was saved among, so much of my family, both of my wife's side and mine, we were entrenched in Pentecostal circles like Assemblies of God, those kinds of circles, sincere people, love the

Lord. But when I started Bible school, I was in a Free Will Baptist Institute for two years.

I matriculated to a regular Baptist school for two years, of which I graduated.

And then I wound up in very strong Separatist schools and seminary, very non -ecumenical.

But in the whole journey, I'd meet different ones, and I began to get the clue as I went to a

Mennonite school. And this school is that God actually had people that loved him in those various camps, and that we weren't going to heaven based on the

IQ test, because we all, very few Calvinists that I know in those groups, maybe believed the security of the believer, debate you over election, and certainly would not talk about the five classic points of Calvinism.

But God is a patient, patient teacher, and I think we must watch that the knowledge we have doesn't breed an arrogance that we're too smart to be any benefit to the body.

I mean, and, you know, I'm sorry to say even an AWP quit going to church, and yet he was a brilliant man, had great insights, but he was so disgusted with the uneducated and the church, none of them quite where he was, that he became isolated.

And I had a faculty, I had a great teacher in seminary that became so isolated in the latter part of his ministry that he couldn't benefit the body at all.

And so, that I think hasn't made you love anybody. And this is what

I loved about the Lewis Chafer stories, the S. Lewis Johnson's, the

Howard Hendricks, the McGee's. They were known for a passion for people.

Besides truth, it's a terrible thing to despise the people you were assigned to give the medication to.

That's right. I'm sorry to laugh, but it's probably, you know, convicting laugh. When you are preaching,

I noticed people were sitting on the edge of their seats, many of them literally, and some of them just figuratively.

Kim regularly says to me, honey, can you just sit in the congregation when someone's preaching and not critique them?

And I say, well, it's kind of hard sometimes because I'm a preaching professor. But I was very thankful two days ago,

Phil, that I didn't sit there and critique you. I was involved in the message, and I was thinking about my own heart and thinking about the

Lord. Can you give our listeners any tips on how to just engage people when you're teaching?

Some of our folks who listen are pastors. Some are just Bible teachers. I shouldn't say just. Some are

Bible teachers, thankfully, and some are parents. I mean, the Word of God, it's wonderful.

The Spirit of God illumines, and we don't need to prop it up, but God has used people to teach the

Bible. Any little tips or insights on how to be engaging and teaching the Bible in such an interesting way like you do?

I was a young man trying to preach. I would say

I was 15 or 16 because my dad had to drive me to the assignments.

My dad was a wise man, and he asked me, and I kept saying, because I'm in I want to be anointed.

I want something to happen. I used to write, I don't want to be a dried old

Baptist. I did that because of my arrogance and prejudice. He said, well, what do you want to happen?

I couldn't define it. I was preaching in Napa, California. Well, that night when

I preached, at one point, it seemed like I was moved as a boy with whatever the message was.

I asked for their forgiveness while I wiped my eyes. I was so overwhelmed. So, we're coming home.

If they gave me, because I'm just a kid, they gave me any kind of offering, I'd always treat my dad to a root beer float.

This is his payday for driving me there. Okay, and so we're going, and my dad asked, well, was anything different tonight?

Anything different? I said, yeah, I was overwhelmed. I've never been overwhelmed like that.

He said, did you see anything in the congregation? I said, well, dad, when

I lifted my head from wiping my eyes, all I could see was handkerchiefs. He said, you need to quit worrying about what you're preaching does for us and see what it does for you.

He said, you know why you saw the handkerchiefs? I said, I'm clueless.

No. He said, if our preacher weeps, we weep. If our preacher's harsh, we're going to be harsh.

If he's tender, we're going to be tender. And he gave me the greatest preaching lesson of my life.

What does the sermon do for you before you ever deliver it? And if it never moves your heart, never brings humility, confession, repentance, just the privilege of even handling the text, quit.

It's kind of, if you remember the story of Henry Morehouse, that he always, after he heard

Moody, he said, I want to preach for you when I come to England, or rather come to America.

And that's a slough him off mood. He said, sure, sure. But when he gets to New York City, he wires him in Chicago.

I'm on my way. Well, Moody arranged to be out of town, went to the

Sunday school convention, told his deacons, preach him on Wednesday night.

I'll meet my obligation when I'm out of town. When he gets back in town,

I think it's about Saturday, they preached him every night and they booked him on Sunday without going through Moody.

And Moody asked his wife, says, why are they hearing a guy preach

John 3 16 every night? She said, Dwight, hearing you is hearing a man hurl an arsenal of weapons at poor sinners.

But said Morehouse offers us the love of God and is breaking us and moving us.

We can't embrace your bullets, but we can embrace the cross. Convicting.

Mike Abedroth with Phil Howard today on No Compromise Radio Ministry. Phil, I think some of your messages from Valley Bible are still online at valleybible .org.

Is that the right website? Yes. Truth for Today. Truth for Today. Yeah. They can go to Valley Bible and they'll have a section for that or Truth for Today.

All right. Phil, when I am thinking about you,

I think about a man who, among other things, weathers the storm of trials.

And that could be trials in your personal life, but also physically. Any comments to our listeners who suffer physically or emotionally or other things?

I mean, we can tell your voice is gravely and you've had three surgeries on your voice. You said Sunday. I don't know why

I'm gravely voiced. It's either the three surgeries or I yell at my wife or something like that. Words to sufferers.

Any encouragement? Well, God is close to the brokenhearted.

And sometimes wrestling with God, He may do you like Jacob and He might have to injure you.

Pride is the great enemy of all of us. I think pride and belief and their bedmates, they hang out together.

But I started having it as a young kid. I've always lived with some kind of affliction.

I was a climber. I jumped, put me into surgeries, braces, so many things.

Had it in my adult years that I never knew what it was to be out of pain because I had a bad hip.

You know what? It becomes a great friend, just like Paul. The grace of God has, he's always had a wonderful platform to work in my life because never self made.

I've just had too many people give me medication, take me to the doctor, and I'm not a self -made man, which

I find an obnoxious statement. I don't think there is.

And maybe a man that can sympathize because it is truly hard to sympathize with those.

If you've ever been broke, if you've ever grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, hey, I was one of those boys that the grace of God reached.

And I'm sorry, I'm just not better than you. Never tried to be. Amen. Phil, if you were talking to someone and they said,

Pastor Phil, we know we should probably read our Bible more, but I don't really know where to start.

We don't know what to do. We don't know how to do exegesis and other things. Any grandfatherly pastoral advice on just the initial steps, how to read the

Bible, what book to start, how much to read, and then pray about. What would you say?

Don't start in Leviticus and don't go out and buy a butcher knife to see how you can cut the sacrifice.

Please stay out of Leviticus. What about, I don't know where you are, if you're just beginning,

I think 1 John is a wonderful place. We often say the book of John, which is wonderful.

I take 1 John because it keeps marking on, is this going on in my life?

Do I love the brethren? Do I love righteousness? Am I breaking patterns of sin?

What do I do when I sin? Right there in 1 John. So I find it a basic manual of the modus operandi kind of the

Christian life. Probably the gospel of John would be beautiful.

Romans, you must pick up Romans eventually. And boy, if you could just understand its argument, a good translation, get a notebook and carry a pen all the time, take notes.

I had a woman one time told me she couldn't understand the book of Revelation.

And I asked her, when was the last time she read it? She said, well, I've never read it, but I can't get it.

So it'd be good to start somewhere. But I would say 1 John, John.

Well, that's good. When we hear things like that, then I want to play little snippets. You want answers?

I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth.

There you go. That's for you. Well, one of the things that I would add, Phil, to the person who's reading 1

John, I would say, why don't you with pencil and paper in hand or pen, because that's exactly the right thing to do, you can write down questions, things that you need to review, something that's encouraging, convicting, 1

John 2, 1 and 2, the heart of everything is the Lord Jesus, our advocate. What I think is, why don't you just read, dear listener, 1

John, every day for a month, all five chapters. I actually read all five chapters this morning, and it didn't take me but 10 minutes, probably, 15.

I mean, I didn't read it slowly, but I just read through it. And we start off about what we've seen and handled, and we end up with little children, you know, avoid idols.

And just start reading it every day with the same Bible, and you'll go, oh, top left, that's 1

John 3, we're children of God, and behold, what manner of love. And then chapter 4,

I always try to trick people, Phil, and say, does the Bible say, do not believe? And it does.

It says, do not believe. That's right. And so,

I would just say, just start reading it every day. And you know what, dear listener, if you miss two days, well, that's okay.

We're not under some legalistic, I forgot to read it, and so now I feel bad. You miss two days, pick it up again, and just keep reading it over and over and over, and then you'll kind of own that book.

Over and over. Well, it's like someone was complaining that it didn't stick, and an old farmer gave the illustration of, he started pouring water through the sieve, and said, well, it doesn't hold anything.

He said, but did you notice how clean the sieve became? So, just keep pouring it in, keep pouring it in.

That's exactly right. Well, we're going to have you on next week as well, but before we wrap up today's show, we were talking last night about Romans 7, and the different views of Romans 7.

And actually, we were talking about it a little bit in the sonnet together. We took a sonnet together. You were a little too close to me from that small two -person sonnet, and there's not,

I've never taken a sonnet that close to another man before, but for you, I did it.

And here I'm already dehydrated, and he's trying to kill me with a sonnet. I was wondering why

Carolyn gave you that look when you walked downstairs. Just kidding. Romans 7.

We, of course, at No Compromise Radio, Pastor Phil, myself, we don't want people to sin.

Sin is iniquity. It's perverse. It's unholy. It's exactly unlike God. There are many, many reasons not to sin, and we don't want you to sin.

But it is a reality that Christians sin. And back to 1 John again, in chapter 1, if we say we don't have sin, we're liars.

And we're thankful that chapter 2 follows chapter 1. If we do sin, we've got an Jesus makes propitiation for our sin.

My question to you, Phil, is what do you tell a Christian that keeps on sinning?

In other words, they still hate it. They want to repent. They're sad. They're guilty. Their conscience gets them.

They know they're not supposed to, but they still sin, because there's kind of a perfectionism out there, a

Keswick who -knows -what infiltration, even into Reformed theology at times, where you better not be sinning as much as you used to.

You better be on the track that's always going straight up like California real estate. Any thoughts?

I think it's interesting. The big debate among all, it seems like,

Christian traditions is even once you get over the hurdle of how is a man just before God, and you settle on the

Lutherans, the Baptists, we can come to an understanding as a whole on justification.

But the issue is sanctification. How can I have victory over the flesh?

I mean, and I grew up in a holiness movement, and we even denied the flesh.

I was teaching 1 John at a conference, and I mentioned that when we sin, we have an advocate.

And a couple of the pastors says, you don't mean to say that Christ's advocacy ministry goes on while I'm in the midst of sin.

I said, I'm saying that exactly. That's what the text says. When I'm sinning,

He's advocating. How can that be? Well, He's pleading the work of His death on the cross, what we call propitiation.

And so, I think that the big living contradiction that we live with is when

I want to do good, I'll find myself doing evil. But I think as you walk with God, you don't become sinless, but you sin less, that He begins to cleanse your mouth, your mind, your morals.

And it's proof in all true born -again believers that where they were and where God has brought them, there will be a process of putting off that which was a habit, the bad language, the bad attitudes about, let's say, women, the evil eye that Jesus said, get rid of your evil eye, which is an evil perspective.

If you're a racist, it's the way you view a certain color or certain ethnicity. If you're a man that's a womanizer, you've learned to look at women with an evil eye.

The same girl that could be my daughter, you make as a lust object. Jesus says,

I offer a righteousness that exceeds what the Pharisees do. It will reach all the way into your heart.

It's a process. It goes on. And you won't be sinlessly perfect, but you'll become more and more like Christ.

And without that process, Hebrews 12 says, be suspicious of whether you're a son or not, because He's not going to threaten me with hell, but He will threaten me with tender discipline.

And He'll take away your appetite for sin. He has His ways. And I'm sure you'll agree with me,

Phil. It's sometimes for the Christian as we realize He's conforming us into the

Lord's image, but we feel like we're sinning more than we ever did before. Don't you think that's often because our hearts now are tender to God's law and tender to who

God is? And so, dear Christian, if you feel like you're sinning more than you ever had before, in one sense, that's probably a good sign that you're sensing that.

It's not a good sign that you're doing it, of course, but that you're sensing that, don't you think? You read it in the literature that the longer a man or woman walk with God, they're sensitive to things that young believers said,

I would have never thought of that, you know, motives, attitudes, not just outward deeds, where I used to steal.

Now I'm struggling with covetousness. I think it's amazing that Paul said, I got through all 10 commandments until the 10th one that slew me.

You shall not covet. The one that you don't have to commit an act to be guilty of.

Amen. We're going to pause right there. Have Pastor Phil on next time. My name is Mike Gabendroth.