Classic: Assurance. Again?

Opening Banter, Health Updates, and Conference Announcements

What if I started off the show, Welcome to Duplex Gratia Radio? That's harder to say. Welcome to NoCo Radio? Welcome to Duplex Gratia Radio? I don't know. Duplex Gratia Radio, formerly known as No Compromise Radio?

I don't know. I mean, if you know me, you've got the background for NoCo, and you've watched the hopefully progress and maturation and all that. But I don't know, I still kind of, you know, my pride doesn't want me to be a discernment ministry.

We used to have about 25 Patreon supporters, now we've got 10. If we switch to Duplex Gratia Radio, we'll have five. By the way, if you're a Patreon member for No Compromise and you give, please check your Patreon email box, because if you send me your address, I'll send you the Discovering Colossians commentary, written by S. Lewis Johnson, with a little adaptation by me, Mike Abendroth.

So, I've sent out quite a few, I think with, I sent some out to friends, enemies, and others. I sent out about 20 last week, so if you're in there, in that list, great. What else do I have here? By the time you hear this, I'll be back from Omaha, Nebraska.

That's good. And by the time you hear this, I'll probably, I don't know, I'll probably be taking my leukemia medicine and all that stuff. Then they did the full body scan, found a thyroid growth, have to have a biopsy in that, found a dilated aorta, ascending aorta, aneurysm, blah, blah, blah.

I'm glad to be alive today. I went to the doctor the other day, the regular doctor, and he told me the story. A lot of health problems. Yeah, I never did until 2015. I don't know what it is. I live on a certain road, and maybe it's the curse of that road.

There's all these men on that road dying, and I'm just barely hanging on because the Lord wants me to be alive. So that's remarkable, to make marks about that, to make remarks about that. Deeply Rooted Conference 2023 on the topic of assurance.

November 10th and 11th, 2023, Kingsport, Tennessee. I have never been to Kingsport, Tennessee. I'm looking forward to that. The only place in Tennessee that I've been, I don't want to call it the worst because maybe it's not the worst, and people there probably will be bugged, but I've only been to Memphis.

I've seen Elvis's house. It didn't go in, but I just saw the outside. What else did I do in Memphis? I went to some arena where the Grizzlies used to play, and now it's a Cabela's or something like that.

That was interesting. And I think I saw a river.

That's what I think I saw.

Other than that, what else did I see there?

I don't think I saw anything.

Speakers.

Joshua Banks. He was one of my students at seminary. I think his church is the one that hosts the conference. I don't know. I'm going to mess up some of these names. Greg Cercone, Vern Hall, Damon Joseph, Sean Morris.

Hey, what are those Pato Baptists doing in there? Jeremiah Reiner and David Rossetti. Joshua emailed me and said, what are my passages? Because the other guys don't want to double up on the passages. I don't know what my passages are.

This is in November. I'm just trying to do the thing that's in front of me now. So anyway, I'm joking around to some degree. If you think about praying for me, pray that that medicine that I take, I don't know which one I'll take.

I've got two options for the clinical trial. Pray that it works and that I've got a couple more daughters to walk down the aisle, like to have some more grandkids. I think I'll be around, hopefully for quite some time.

The Angels, the Incarnation, and Glory to God in the Highest

Last time I was in the studio, I was thinking about Luke 2 because I've been preaching Luke.

2.

And there's that famous thing that the angels say, and everybody wants to argue. Angels don't sing. They say, they chant. Actually, they might be singing, but the text says, say, okay, for you literalists.

By the way, I saw a video the other day about a professor talking about biblicism and how important the Bible is, amen, how important the spirit of God is, amen, how we shouldn't put the creeds above the Bible, amen, are equal to the Bible, amen.

I had all that, yes and amen. And I watched the video and I thought, there probably was a day that I would have believed everything that this person said, kind person, gentle person, nice person, all that, have nothing to do with the person.

See all these caveats we have to do? That's why it's called Duplex Gratia Radio. I own the website, duplexgratia .com.

What do we do?

I own Duplex Gratia on Twitter. How do you own it? You just type it in. But the biblicism, as we define it now, pejoratively, ignoring 2000 years of the spirit of God's work and Ephesians 4 and learning and just me and the Bible and the Holy Spirit type of thing, it was no co-radio, not Duplex Gratia Radio.

But anyway, back to the angels. The angels, they recognize out of all the things so far that they've seen, the thing that gives God the most glory is that the Son is born, the eternal Son became flesh.

And they say in Luke, glory to God in the highest, right? This is the most wonderful thing. Out of all the glory that we could give God, that God be the glory, great things he has done. Psalm 29, ascribed to him, glory to his name.

The Son, incarnation, enfleshment, great is the mystery of godliness. I mean, this is amazing, but we confess it. Speaking of confessions, 1 Timothy 3, 16, peace on earth and what? Goodwill toward men.

That's how the AV, New King James, translated. And that's what's common in our songs around Christmas and everything else. By the way, it's not quite October when I'm recording this, and I've been preaching in Luke 1 and 2.

And of course, it's the narrative of Jesus' birth in chapter 2. And so we're singing Christmas songs at the end of every worship service to help reinforce what we're learning. And some people at church knew I was sick, and they came and they Christmas caroled me the other day, which is very nice.

Christmas caroling in September. I said, you ought to go do that to other people's homes too. This was nice. So I don't know if you've ever been caroled in September. Maybe that's when Jesus was actually born, right?

There's always like, oh, it's not December 25th. Peace on earth and goodwill toward men. That's how it's translated. And the Vulgate is to those that have goodwill, right? If you're good, then this is the peace that God gives you for being good.

A goodwill toward men, well, God has goodwill toward you and you ought to accept it. That's kind of the way that you would translate that. And the best translations, going back to the oldest text, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is well pleased.

And that's technical language, biblical language for sovereign election, right? Remember, salvation is a gift. Salvation is an earn. So how do you get salvation? How would you get goodwill from God? He has to be the one giving it to you.

And we're not universalists. He didn't give it to everyone. Thankfully, he didn't give it. I mean, what if he decided to give it to no one, but thankfully he gave it to some and that's just the nature of God.

All that to say, I'm sitting here in the studio today and I just once in a while pick up the message Bible just to see what it says. At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God's praises.

And again, my focus is not on do angels say or sing, because the text says here, say, and we're like, they don't sing, they say, okay. Glory to God in the heavenly heights.

All right.

So far, so good. You think about glory, you think about temple glory, you think about the glory of God, pillar of fire, pillar of cloud, Jesus coming back with the glory cloud and all those things.

Perfect.

Peace to all men and women.

Okay.

I mean, I get it. It's not that big a deal to me. Men and women, humankind, peace on earth with whom he's well pleased. No, here it's peace to all men and women on earth who please him. Now the only way to rescue yourself out of that one is the only way you please him is to believe the son that he sent.

But that's reading way too much into it. Who pleases God? I thought last time I checked Romans eight says no one pleases God. As a matter of fact, I do have something in front of me. It's a real Bible translation.

Best thing you can do, by the way, even if you don't know Greek or if you do know Greek, have about four solid English translations and read those. So you can go to Bible Hub, type in Luke 2 52 and pull them everything up.

In this particular case, it's Luke 2 13 to 14. I think if memory serves, remember, memory sometimes doesn't serve and the message Bible doesn't have verses in it. It has chapters, but not verses. Romans eight in a real Bible.

What does it say? What did I think? In verse six, for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

It does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. Verse eight, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Whoa.

All right. All that to say, my name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. And if you've got questions, you can always write me Mike at No Compromise Radio. And when I get good questions, you get this sound effect.

So that's what I'm after. Send me a good question. When you hear this music, you'll know I'm going to answer the question.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

Does that make sense?

Yes, it does.

All right.

Assurance: Why Weak Faith in Christ Still Saves

I want to talk a little bit about assurance today, like I love to talk about. I don't know about you, but sometimes my assurance levels are low. Would that describe you? Now some of you are at the top of the world.

I've met people before that said they've never struggled with assurance. And here's my pitch. My pitch is, is anything on earth perfect? There was something on earth perfect, the Lord Jesus, of course.

But what do we have that's perfect? Oh, well, is salvation perfect?

Yes.

Is justification perfect?

Yes.

Because it's based on the perfect righteousness of Jesus. That type of thing.

Okay.

Fine. Is union with Christ perfect?

Yes.

Okay.

Let's just say those are given. Redemption's perfect. Proficiation's perfect. Reconciliation's perfect. Accomplished what it's designed to accomplish.

Okay.

I get that part. But just in life in general, well, let's just do it this way. Is your faith perfect? And you say no, because sometimes it's weak. Sometimes it's faltering. Sometimes it's maybe questioning a little bit.

Sometimes it's just flickering. Sometimes it's on full speed ahead. But thankfully, you say to me, Mike, I have a little faith, a weak faith, sinful, tainted faith in the right object, Jesus, therefore I'm okay.

Amen. Praise the Lord. I'm with you. That's exactly what we're looking for. But on earth, your particular faith, I'm not talking about the object, but your faith isn't perfect. And so therefore, if your faith isn't perfect, it shouldn't surprise us that we waver with assurance levels.

Plus, we sin, I sin, and then that doesn't help our assurance, does it? And therefore, sometimes when you are alone, especially, and you get the phone call, you have prostate cancer, you're like, what is going on?

Then you say, huh, I'm in the hospital with COVID lung, and I used to be on two liters of oxygen, and I'm up to 60, and they want to think about the vent, and I'm sending passwords to my wife, and life insurance policies, and you're like, I'm never going to get out of here, this satanically induced COVID isolation that I can't talk to anybody, hardly even the doctors.

The doctors would, there were exceptions, but a lot of times the doctors would call on the phone, talk to me, and then gown up, and then come in for a quick stethoscope, and then get out, because you're not allowed to ask them questions when you have COVID.

Then you get the call, well, you have leukemia, then, well, you have an aneurysm, it's just.

Like, what?

I thought I exercised a lot, I thought I ate pretty well, I don't know about genetics, obviously that's not working too well in my favor. Mom died, dad died, non-smoking lung cancer, grandfather prostate cancer, grandmother leukemia, I think the list could go on and on, and then environment, who knows where that house in Omaha was, what it was built upon, sludge somehow, sewer sludge, I have no idea.

So our assurance levels go up and down, and this is going to sound pretty prideful probably, but I write books on assurance, and sometimes I wonder about my assurance. Now without having any schadenfreude, does that make you feel better?

I technically didn't write any books on assurance, I wrote the 6 ,000 word intro, that's a common theme, Gospel Assurance Devo, Gospel Assurance Guide, S. Lewis Johnson, Colossians, S. Lewis Johnson on Romans, I didn't write any of those, but I get the royalties.

All right, I split the S. Lewis Johnson one with his son Samuel, although he just puts it in the trust and it goes to Christian organizations I'm sure, that's the kind of guy Sam is. I cash mine and spend it on, I don't know, coffee, bills, other things.

I have a nice Rodecaster Pro 2 here that I spent some of that money on. Can you say right now with confidence, the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me? Can you say that? You want to say it, right?

That's Galatians 2 .20. Can you say, Jesus is my risen savior, Jesus is my friend, Jesus saved me, Jesus is my.

Mediator.

And when we talk about assurance, we're really talking about the knowledge that you surely have Jesus and he surely has you. To have him is to have it, to have Jesus is to have assurance. Why do we always talk about assurance?

Lots of reasons, because if talked about properly, the focus is on the Lord Jesus, right, instead of a morbid introspection as the primary, well, we don't ever want morbid introspection, but if we look to ourselves and see the fruit of the Spirit of God, fine, I think that's secondary, but objectively we, and primarily we, look to the Lord Jesus and look at him.

So one of the great things about assurance and why we do it on duplex karate radio is because it ends up making you talk about Jesus. When you talk about assurance, you need to talk about Jesus. I know most people don't think that way, and they're thinking, you know, if you want to know if you're assured or not, you know, do the reformed, do the syllogism, you know, the Bible says that Christians love God, I do, I love God, I love God some, I wish I loved him more, I therefore am a Christian, that kind of thing.

Although a lot of people today with the syllogisms, they don't put the struggle in and they don't put the desire in. They say, do you obey God? Christians who obey God, do you obey God? Well, if it's just that simple, then I go to self-righteousness and I go, yeah, I don't look at pornography, I don't cheat on my wife, I work, I provide for the family, I try to help other people, or if I am honest with myself, then I say more things like this.

After 30-some years of being a Christian, I can't believe I'm still so selfish and don't love people like I really want to. I mean, even then after I fail, I then think, I sure wish I would have done that differently.

I don't really know what I was thinking, what got into me, kind of a Romans 7 thing. Many times, it's this binary on-off when it comes to assurance, and instead of saying to struggling Christians, weak Christians, sinful Christians, Christians that are struggling with assurance, people that have professed the faith for 30 years, would you like to obey Jesus more?

Would you like to deny self more? Would you like to surrender more of your life to Jesus? Does it pain you when you don't? Are you grieved when you sin? And if you talk like that, I mean, to use the language of R .C. Sproul, why would an unbeliever be sorry for any of those things?

Well, the only reason is maybe it's just hurting them on earth in the sense that if you're selfish towards your wife as an unbeliever, then you might get that back in kind. But here we think, oh, I really have a desire to do something.

I want to be trusting Him more. I want to be obeying Him more. The struggles are good. And when Christians need to be assured, Jesus is the primary answer, then we look to the fruit and evidence of Spirit of God's work in our lives.

That is true. I'm not saying we don't. We do, 2 Peter 1. Yet in both of these, we go to scripture, right? That's kind of what I'm after today. When it comes to assurance of salvation, you need to find that in scripture, because in scripture, you're going to find Jesus, and then you're going to find this is how Christians act and or want to act and or strive to act, correct?

That's exactly correct. And so, one of the things I've loved about preaching through the gospel of Jesus according to Luke is that Luke 1 .4, it really is the hermeneutical interpretive template for all the gospel of Luke.

And that writer, Luke, wants you to be certain that this is the right Jesus and that you're trusting in Him. He writes to Theophilus, the God-lover, that's the guy's name, God-lover, and all, you know, let's see, Theophilus, God-liker, God-liker.

That reminds me of things like this.

You belong in the circus, Spock. To the dog-faced boy.

Star Trek, that was such a good show, wasn't it? I mean, if I went back now and watched some of it, obviously hammy and cheesy and everything, but as a youngster, I mean, Tarzan, Batman, Johnny Quest, Star Trek, took me a long time to figure out how to say Star Trek versus Star Track.

I even drove down to, I think, Kansas City with a buddy and we saw, at a Star Trek convention, we saw a lot of people dressed up like Spock, Klingons. It was easier to dress up like Klingons during the first, you know, first, you know, the original stuff, because they just look like a person with bushy eyebrows and darker makeup than all of a sudden, you know, Worf kind of Klingon.

Those are a little bit more difficult to dress up as. Uh, like in the original Star Wars, I think, you know, who's the big, you know, Jabba the.

Hut?

I think it just was like a man until they figured out the other thing. Okay, back on track, Mike. Why do people listen to the show? I have no idea, but I do a lot of ADD stuff because that's just the way radio's supposed.

To be.

I mean, this is the perfect format for my mind, just jumping all around here, there, hither, thither, pal, mel, Luke 1 -4. See, I knew we could figure it out if I just thought long enough. It's perfect for assurance because this is the right Jesus.

Jesus Born Under the Law to Redeem Those Under the Law

And you read things in Luke 2, for instance, and you say to yourself, why is this even.

Here?

Jesus getting circumcised, Jesus getting presented in the temple, sacrifices for Jesus and Mary at the purification.

Why?

Well, if you read Luke 2, 22 -27, five times, I think more than the rest of all of Luke combined, you're going to hear a word and the word is called law, lar. Five times in verses 22 -27, law, oh, you got to, you have to include verse 39 too, sorry.

In verses 22 -39, five times, law, law, law, law, according to the law of Moses, Luke 2 -22, as is written in the law of the Lord, verse 23. Verse 24 said in the law of the Lord, verse 39, according to the law of the Lord.

The key point at No Compromise Radio, Duplex Gratia today, Jesus was born of a woman. That's what we've seen so far in the book of Luke, natural birth, wasn't a home birth. It was a barn birth probably.

Hey, if you really want to be biblical, we're not talking home births, bathtub births. We're not talking swimming pool births, underwater births, midwife births. We're talking barn births. Were you born in a barn?

Yes, I was. I'm trying to be like Jesus. What would Jesus do? Well, what was done to Jesus? He was born in a barn. I can just see here my dad, when I have bad, when I had bad table manners and he would say things like, were you born in a barn?

I should have said no, but Jesus was.

What's it to you?

Whack.

I got hit at the dinner table. Not with a closed fist. My sinuses are so bad and I'm hoping the leukemia medicine is going to help take care of that because there's all kinds of other things that are going on with me.

And I think my manners will get better after I have some of these drugs because right now I can hardly breathe out of my nose. I have strips on that I wear at night and maybe like a little steroid inhaler, but I can barely breathe.

Well, that means I eat with my mouth open because if you have your mouth shut, you have to breathe through your nose. And so I say to Kim once in a while, I'm sorry, I'm having to eat with my mouth open.

I mean, not like gaping wide open, but maybe my manners will get better. Jesus was born of a woman born under law to redeem those who are under the law so that we might have adoption of sons. And I want you to know, dear Christian, if you struggle with assurance, you need to be looking at Jesus.

If you don't keep God's law, like you know you should, Jesus did. Even before he was born, God arranged it so he would have godly parents that would make sure everything that needed to be done, that he would be a perfect Jew under the law.

Of course, later in his life, when he would be baptized, not for himself, but to identify.

With us.

But here, even the identification of Jesus underneath things like circumcision, because that was the law, right? On the eighth day, you were to circumcise your child. And here Jesus, as Donald Gray Barnhouse said, started suffering then.

He probably, you know, the suffering started earlier, I'm sure in terms of just even an infinite one day old. But here we have circumcision. Circumcision means, you know what, you need really your heart circumcised because you're a sinner and you need to be reminded of that and you produce sinners.

The very core, right, in your reproductive organs. Remember, you need internal circumcision of your heart. Did Jesus sin? Did he need that? Did he need to be purified? Did he need to be washed? Did he need to be cleansed?

No, he was holy, holy, holy. He was the God-man. Hypostatic union with God and man. There's nothing unholy about Jesus. He's inherently holy. He's perfectly righteous. Why is he born under the law, law, law, law, law?

Answer, to redeem those under the law. Therefore, when you want assurance, you go to these passages and think in Luke chapter two, he's doing this for me. He's my representative. God has perfectly worked it out that Jesus has been sent forth by the Father, born of a woman, born under the law, Galatians 4, to redeem those who are under the law.

Jesus did it for you, not for himself. He's a public person. He's a federal head. Jesus paid it all for you. He obeyed for you. And when you stand on judgment day, dear Christian, it's not with your weak faith that will get you in there or get you out of there.

It's not if you did too many works or not enough works or your works were tainted. It has to do with Jesus' perfect works because he was born under the law and obeyed it for.

You.

Isn't that good? Isn't it good to talk about Jesus? I gave enough. Do I say no compromise or do I say do a bunch of crap to you?