The Joel Osteen Cube

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 Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Pastor Mike Abendroth here with Pastor Steve Cooley. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

It�s a pleasure and a delight to be here. I don�t know if I should have you here. You were just doing some behind -the -scenes

Fortesh dogging about my radio setup and studio and all that stuff.

Well, Fortesh dogging is a strength of mine. What can I say? I know. Well, anything happening in life?

What are you teaching these days? You're doing like a home group, half live, half Zoom. How�s that working out for you?

That�s got to be hard. Yeah, we don�t like it. All right. Well, if you liked it, there would be a problem.

Yeah. I mean, there is not one thing about this whole COVID -19 thing.

There's not one bit of it that I enjoy. You haven't had it yet, have you? Nope. Not well.

You know, who knows? We were just talking about that. I don't know. I could have had it, I don't know, what was it, a couple years ago.

It just depends. You know, maybe if there was an accurate test, I'd be interested in getting tested and finding out.

I think the only time I get my test is if I've been flying and then come home.

Okay. You can get free tests at Rite Aid, by the way.

Woo -hoo. You just drive up, they give you the swab, self -swab. It's free and well worth it.

I know. Let's see. People can write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com. Actually, I've been getting quite a few emails these days.

I'm not. You can write me at dogishforte at nocompromiseradio .com. This last

Sunday, I got done preaching and somebody handed me a gift. It's a gift cube that you can see.

It's blue. Oh, that's so sweet. Uh -huh. And this person gave it to me. This is a true story.

They used to be a Oneness Pentecostal person, Joe and his wife. And they began listening to No Compromise Radio and they lived here in town and they began attending the church and they said, you know what?

We don't believe in the Trinity. We don't think Jesus is God, but we'd like to hear Bible teaching and we are

Calvinists. Could we attend the church? We don't believe in the Trinity, but we're

Calvinists. Okay. Never heard of that in my life. Anyway, years go by, of course, they get saved.

And he said to me on Sunday, every time I hear the word Trinity, my heart just rejoices. And so he gave me a gift of gratitude.

And I thought I would introduce that gift to our listening audience today, including you,

Steve. So I'm going to turn on my little cube. This is almost like a magic eight ball size, right?

You asked the eight ball question, right? Should we continue Tuesday guy on No Compromise Radio? And so I think it has certain things that you can push.

There's forward, there's back, there's volume and stuff like that. There's heart here for favorites. And then it also has other things.

And so I'm going to play this first one just for Steve, because I think he needs to be affirmed daily.

Yeah. Do you think so? Yes. I declare God's supernatural favor over your life.

What you couldn't make happen on your own, God is going to make happen for you. Supernatural opportunities, healing, restoration, breakthroughs are coming your way.

Is that Beth Moore? Now this is my Joel cube. Look at that. That was affirmation number two, spiritual, supernatural favor.

Oh, that's sad. Steve, we've got daily inspirations, 52 sermons, daily affirmations and favorites.

Okay. Now I'm not sure which is more shocking, that somebody actually bought that at some point, right?

Or that somebody came up with that idea. Hey, you know what would be great? What if we had all of your little aphorisms,

Mr. Osteen? I wonder what he got paid for this. Now I think it's kind of fun because there are certain people in life that they don't need to be known by their whole name, right?

If I just said, Jesus, you'd know who that was, Paul, right? We'd understand who that would be.

Maybe even Peter. But then we move forward a little bit, Madonna, right? They're known by one name,

Pele, right? And now we're up to Joel. Joel.

Just call him Joel. Joel. So I'm going to, that was the daily affirmation and just,

I just think we need some daily inspiration. See, this isn't going to surprise you, but I'd rather have a cube from like Bruce Springsteen or -

Did you see the Kenneth Copeland video where he was denouncing

COVID -19 and then on the left hand quadrant was the heavy metal rage guitar?

Yeah, I thought that was very effective actually. Okay, that's good. All right. So here's a daily inspiration. And you know what I like, Steve? I like it when you make comments in between.

Okay. So please keep that up. This is Joel Cube, daily inspiration, take one.

You can't become who you were created to be always depending on somebody else.

You don't need that crutch. Start encouraging yourself. Oh, that's so good. I am strong.

I am strong. Something good is going to happen to me. I am standing, therefore

I cannot fall. I am woman, hear me roar. Some of the things God has done for you in the past, having people there to encourage you, causing everything to fall into place, that's not going to continue.

If God kept doing everything for us, we wouldn't see the abundance all around.

You may wonder why - You see where he's going with that? Oh, so what I need to do is rely on myself more.

Oh, that's good. That work is more complicated. Dude. Let me just see if I understand that right.

I can't just keep relying on God. Wow, that's a really good message, isn't it?

Brother, I want everyone to know, and this is the theme of the show today, that when you hear tripe like this, when you hear blasphemy like this, no matter if it comes through a smiling face, a coiffed hairdo, is that what you say?

Is it coiffed? Coiffed. Yeah. What's coiffer? Just a misspeak?

And they want you to realize that everything's going to be good now, good now, good now.

Coiffer, I think that's like a stylist. Oh, okay. They do the coiffing. Yeah. Uh -huh. Have you been coiffed before?

I'd rather not say. Okay. 0 .08 % coiffed means you ought not to drive a theological car.

We're not here to confess our previous - Yeah, that was off the air, right? We were talking about how do you control people?

Find out all their dirt. Yep. Have them confess and do a microphone. I know this is off topic, but one of the things

I have to do regularly in counseling, Steve, and I know you do it as well, I want to know less than what they want to tell me.

That is to say, please use biblical categories, dear counselee, because if you say things like fornication or embezzlement or greed or envy or adultery, that's all

I need to know because there's hope for sinners like you, instead of me getting all the details.

What was that date again? 1964. What were you wearing? What did you have for lunch that day?

I don't need to know. Anyway, please remember, dear Christians, every time you turn on the

TV and someone is talking this way, of course, it's now redundant.

It's trivial now and people say your best life now, but I want you to think that is the theology of not suffering, but it's the theology of glory, right?

That's Joe Osteen, right? Luther talked about theology of suffering and glory, and of course, for Christians, there will be glory one day, but remember who was the kingpin of theology of glory now, and his name was

Satan. I want to make sure Steve got that answer right, so I looked over at him, and he looked over here, and he had it right.

Jesus gets led up into the spirit to be tempted by the devil. How about that even that goes against Joe Osteen in Matthew chapter 4, verse 1?

Something must be going on there because he's actually led into temptation. How does that fit into Joe Osteen's God?

I don't know, and I'd rather, you know, if he, maybe he's done a sermon on it, and I'm sure

I would find it abominable. Steve and I have known each other for many years, and we'd always laugh about the

Saturday Night Live, the original ones, and they would have bad playhouse. Extremely bad. So, obviously, when

Jesus is getting led up to be tempted by the devil, led up by the spirit, something's going on there because aren't we taught to pray, lead us not into temptation?

So, something's going on here. We better put our hermeneutical lenses on.

Are we ever to take them off? Not when we're looking at the Bible, right? And here,

Satan wants Jesus to get glory now. Remember, it even says in Matthew 4, 8, again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

All these I will give you if you fall down and worship me. You know, even as you're reading that,

I'm just thinking, this is just a variation, right, on the scam that he pulled on Adam and Eve, Eve, basically.

Because what did he say? You know, it was like, don't believe God. And here, what's he saying to Jesus?

Don't believe the Father. The Father has a timeline for you. Forget that. Do what I want you to do, right?

Isn't that true? And we have talked regularly, and I think I've been influenced by S. Lewis Johnson, that the root of all sin, it's unbelief.

Not taking God at his word, right? It leads to lawlessness and manifests itself into covetousness and all that.

But it's unbelief. You either believe the Lord or you don't. That is the heart of or root of all sin, the sin of unbelief.

Well, and I like to say about Jesus, you know, people say, well, of course he was sinless. He was

God. And I'm like, well, he was sinless as a man. How did he do that? Because he never doubted.

His faith never wavered. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit never left him, never diminished in any way.

Why? Because he never doubted. Steve, I like it that you tied in the temptation of the

Lord Jesus, the last Adam, with the temptation of the first Adam, right? Because that's the way everyone should think, tying these two things together.

Don't read one without the other, because we realize as Adam was supposed to say no to temptation and to Satan's wiles, he didn't and we fell in him.

And then we have Jesus who says no to temptation and yes to the

Father's glory. And it's a great tie -in. I was going to read Genesis 3, 6.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit.

And then the language is just, it's just like sad. It's just stark.

It's just matter of fact. And ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her.

And then those three English words at the end of chapter 3, verse 6 in Genesis, and he ate.

Glory, no. Yeah, no celebration or anything like that. But, you know, essentially, Satan was offering the same thing to Jesus.

You know, forget the cross. And, you know, to Eve, forget about all this obedience stuff and, you know, doing what

God said. Why don't you just cut to the chase? Get your reward now, right?

Do it now. When Peter was talking to Jesus and he basically wanted

Jesus to bypass the cross as well. And let's take the easy way. And, of course, if Jesus gets the easy way, then

I'm sure Peter, the apostle, could have the easy way as well. I mean, who wants to suffer and be crucified, maybe upside down, according to legend for Peter.

How does Jesus address Peter? Get behind me, Satan. And, of course,

I always think of King James Version. Get thee behind me, Satan. Now, did that mean

Peter was like Satan really? He was saying the same things that Satan would say, right?

And did say. Yeah, yeah. Crazy. How about turning on the

TV and you watch Joe Osteen and you say to yourself, yes, but I see how encouraging he seems and I need some encouragement.

How do we battle that? Well, I mean, we were just talking a little while ago.

How do the Lord's people get encouragement? Right. And if your encouragement is coming from Joel Osteen, I mean, it'd be like, you know,

I'm really hungry right now. And I said, here's three marshmallows. Okay.

Do you want the marshmallows or would you like a steak? There are two ways to go about this. And if you go to Joel Osteen for your encouragement, you're eating marshmallows.

What I would like to do is encourage you to get some steak. And how do you get steak? By doing what the saints have always done.

They reflect on who their God is. They look at him. You know, Isaiah 40.

You want to know the solution to your trouble? Look at God. First Peter Chapter 1.

You want to know the solution to your problem? Look at God. You know, you were talking about Nahum. You want to know the solution to your problem?

Look at God. As you recite his attributes and why you should trust him, what he's done for you and what he will continue to do for you.

Not like Joel Osteen going, you know, it's kind of like God is your training wheels and eventually you need to shed those and get on your own.

We long to be reliant upon God. Why? Because he's all powerful. He's sufficient.

We need nothing else. We don't need the aphorisms of Joel Osteen. Well, certainly

Jesus's death was more than an example. His life was more than an example. We realize that.

But it was an example. Jesus also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps.

He committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth. So I was thinking about 1 Peter 2 because you had brought it up earlier,

Steve, either on air or off. I can't remember. And so that's the Christian life. We have a suffering servant, suffering then glory.

And while there are many wonderful things that happen to us in this life and the joys of being, I wouldn't know, a grandpa or taste buds or marriage or whatever this life brings us.

That's wonderful. But there's something better that's coming. And this life is a life that has much struggling and sin and issues that go on.

And so it's suffering then glory. That's just the paradigm of life. And so we ought not to say Jesus is our example and his life was suffering then glory.

But I want glory now. That's what Joel is teaching. Yeah. Which is, you know, again, actually, it's kind of kind of me to even say marshmallows.

Yeah. How about strychnine inside the marshmallows? Yeah. Right. And it tastes good on the way down.

And then all of a sudden you're like, I think I'm losing my hair. Right. This is slow. You know how they used to poison people in the old days.

And, you know, before DNA testing everything, you had a husband you didn't like. You remember those old like Alfred Hitchcock shows.

And it's a slow poisoning with strychnine. And before you know it, then they get really sick and then they fall over.

And here it's not immediate, but Satan doesn't, you know, disguise himself as an angel of, you know, death metal.

Right. That's not that's not the disguise. Angel of light. He's he's nice. He's fluffy. He looks good.

And he's well coiffed and he wears six thousand dollar suits. And I would the devil does wear product.

Oh, I knew you were going to say that. I would rather have you listening to a TED talk or something. Martha Stewart.

Yeah. Anything besides a corruption, an aberration of scripture when people mutilate scriptures for their own gain.

If you want to hear something intellectually stimulating or something, you know, get yourself Victor Davis Hanson.

Yeah. Audible, you know, and listen to that. But do not listen. If you want to hear the

Bible taught, do not go to Joel Osteen. Just don't do it.

Remember, Steve, when we first would get saved? And I mean that like we weren't there weren't two times.

But when I got saved and when you got saved and both of us, you do the same thing. Right. There's so much air on TV and you think

I used to kind of either not care or find it interesting or entertaining or edifying. And now I think it's blasphemous.

And then we watch Benny Hinn. Right. And we watch TV and you'd always send me like the Jan Crouch.

Well, you know, watching Paul and Jan Crouch. I mean, I do have I do have one favorite moment, you know, of TBN history.

And that was they had James Kennedy on there, D. James Kennedy on there one night. And he gave a really a good message on justification by faith alone.

And I just remember Paul Crouch's face getting up there and just going, wow.

I never thought about it like that. I remember laughing and just going, I'm sure you haven't.

You know, it was it was so good. Well, today we're talking about, as my cube would say,

Joel. Is it a cube? Actually, I think it is a cube. Yeah. Well, it's it's kind of a, you know, well,

I guess a three dimensional rhombus sort of thing. So if you have two rhombus, it would be a rhombi. Would that be true?

Anyway, it just says Joel. And that's going to be the name of the show today. How about this? But you know what? I think you could look at it as something that men made with their hands that you feel it.

It's got some weight to it. Yeah. Just like most idols. So bow to it.

Uh huh. So when I need some encouragement, I don't know what the sermons might be like, but I would guess they would be star spangled bannered sermons.

That is, you hear the star spangled banner on a football Saturday and then they in the third quarter never go back to it.

And so he reads a Bible verse and then never goes back to it. Right. It's just a launching pad for whatever, whatever personal affirmation he wants to give you today.

Uh huh. So how about a different take, Steve, when it comes to teaching the

Bible? Many of our listeners teach the Bible, some pastors and teachers and evangelists.

Do we watch Joe Osteen and say, you know what?

We so hate his doctrine. We so hate his minimization of sin and therefore the minimization of the

Lord's life and death. And anybody that's a blaspheming false prophet like that false teacher, we just are so repulsed by.

Then we say to ourself, when we preach and teach the Bible, if the false teacher smiles and is known for his smile and his endearing looks in terms of his, you know, eyes and all that, then we don't want to have anything to do that with that.

We are just going to go the flip side and we can just be mean or something. Well, sure. And I think you're better off, you know, dressing down, having, you know, three or four days growth on your face, just rolling out of bed and being all rumpled.

And let me, let me tell you people something, you know? Well, um, that is a topic for discussion.

Maybe not today. I still preach in a suit or mainly these days, just a sports coat and tie.

I would feel weird not to preach in a sports coat and tie. I just don't think I could do it. So I go to different places to preach and regularly they'll say, you know, you don't need to wear that.

But I either have like gym clothes or sports coats, right? I don't really have in between.

What would I wear? Right. But I'm thinking in particular, Steve, about just smiling.

And I just think a lot of Bible teachers, when they're talking about law and holiness and wrath or Nahum one, maybe they don't smile as much, right?

They want to echo the passage with their face and personality and delivery.

But when they're talking about good news, is there anything wrong with smiling when you're talking about the glories of heaven and Jesus the

Savior? I think I like to do it more, you know, definitely like to do it more. And I think one of the things I find myself doing, uh, you know, and I really probably ought to watch,

I don't know if I ought to watch or ought to watch less of myself on video, but, um, you know, sometimes

I think I like will, uh, make a quip or, uh, or say something funny because I recognize the fact that, you know, maybe things are getting too serious and I need to lighten up a little bit, you know what

I mean? Um, so I, yeah, I think that's good. And I think we want to be encouraging in that sense.

But I, I do think, man, I, I, I would hate to be in Joel Osteen's shoes.

Right. Uh, let not many of you be teachers, et cetera. I would hate to have the biggest church in the

United States, so -called church. I would hate to have a worldwide television ministry and, you know, be able to pack

Yankee stadium and all that. Cubes named after you. And, you know, board games and not tell people the truth.

Right. I, I wouldn't, man. Wow. Steve. I mean, we, we probably know how he sleeps at night, but when

I think about Sundays and preaching, you preaching on Sundays, probably the exact same thing happens.

I wake up in the morning and I'm like, gulp. I have to preach and, uh, get ready, uh, confess my sins.

Um, get up in the pulpit, preach, greet some people afterwards. Service number two, get up and preach, talk to some people afterwards.

And then I go home and many times I'm not satisfied with the message homiletically.

And I'm thinking, oh, I should have done this or that. But I do fall asleep to these words, duty discharged.

Right. The more I think about homiletics, the more it could be a Mike centered sermon. So, but I did tell the people about the

Bible. I did try to honor the Lord Jesus and, uh, duty discharged. How do you lay down and say duty discharged if it's just a bunch of craziness at, at Compact Center in Houston?

Yeah, you really can't. And, you know, just to add onto what you said, I think, okay,

I did teach the Bible, even if it wasn't the greatest sermon anybody's ever heard. I did give the gospel, right?

Somebody could have listened and gotten saved today. I mean, listen, have you ever been, and I know the answer to this already, you ever been surprised?

Somebody says, you know, I actually got saved when you said so -and -so and so -and -so. And you're just like, really?

You know, I mean, you know what I mean? And you know, it's not you because we know it's not us.

Right. We were fallible. We feel the weight of that all the time. Well, to start the show with Joe and his cube of Joel, we kind of end the show with Joel and his cube of Joe.

And here's what I mean by that. Let's just switch those around. Did we save Joe? Did we save his wife,

Misa? Did we do any of that stuff? It's just systematic preaching. I'm sure he read the Bible himself.

And then one day, as the Lord pleases, the light goes on and you are made alive through the preaching of the word.

And we think, OK, now we just get a little of encouragement. And then the next week we go to the same thing.

Right. It's just nonstop. Because you know what? There's still people out there who need to hear the truth. And they don't need to be shepherded to hell by somebody well -dressed and well -coiffed.

And if we come to your house and you're watching Joe Osteen, you're in big fat trouble. Big trouble. Law. We're the law church.

Oh, yeah. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth 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 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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