Ryan Jack Interview

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, my name is

Mike Abendroth, and what are those things called? Truffles or something? Lindor truffles?

Lint. Lint? Yeah, lint. Lint, but what's it say Lindor on there? I don't know, it sounds like some kind of city in Lord of the

Rings or something. I think they're 900 calories each. Well, today we have a special guest in studio,

Ryan Jack. Ryan Jack, welcome to No Compromise Radio. Good day, Mike. Thanks for having me. Do you normally listen to the show? I knew you were going to ask me this.

I thought you were going to ask how many episodes have I listened to. How did we meet?

How did we meet? Well, through your son. Yes. And I think we were at In -N -Out Burger and you offered to fly my wife and I from Auckland to Mordor.

Mordor? It's a little prettier than that. And what did you do? What did you say? I thought to myself, how does this 20 -year -old college student have enough money to fly my wife and I around?

And I said, thank you for the offer, but we never made it from New Zealand to Australia, but thank you for the offer. Yeah. And I think you missed an opportunity, but dodged a bullet.

So... I know. Will I ever go back? Probably not. So we met through Luke. You're from Australia.

Not much of an accent. When was the last time you were back? And is it as bad as they say it is regarding vax, jabs, mandates, passports, et cetera?

Yeah. I mean, it's been ongoing for almost two years. I flew back in March when the pandemic first hit.

I remember I was like two days into work from home in California, and my dad calls me saying,

Ryan, you got to get over here and help me with the business. So in March, I flew over and was there for about four months helping out in the nursing home industry.

And didn't you have to be sequestered for 14 days or something? I did. Yeah. I remember I arrived in the airport and my dad wasn't there to pick me up.

And I'm like, well, where's my dad? He calls me, he says, hey, I can't risk getting COVID, so I'm going to put you in a hotel. Because you have to quarantine for two weeks, but not necessarily in a hotel yet.

That came a week after. So I quarantined with my sister, didn't leave the hotel room for two weeks. How'd you get the food?

They slip it out of the door? Yeah. What if you were extra hungry? What would you do?

Too bad. My parents were disciplining me for not providing food. Yeah, but to show you how evil the world is and how wicked and sinful people are, weren't some of the guards guarding you, sleeping with some of the lady lock -ins?

Because the lady lock -ins would exchange their bodies for access to the town. Wasn't that true? And it actually caused one of the big outbreaks that we had in Melbourne, was through that.

Because they were working a couple of jobs and that was one of them, and they'd go spread it to the community. Crazy. How old are you,

Ryan Jack? 25, 26 in a month. So, seriously, okay. What's your middle name? Andrew.

Ryan Andrew Jack. Yep. And does anybody mess around with you about Jack Ryan and all that stuff? Everywhere I go.

Seriously. If they see the name, they'll make a note of it. Yeah, because, you know, on my phone, it can say Abendroth Mike, the incoming.

Yeah. So people are like, okay, Jack Ryan's calling me. And whenever you're like on a list, they always start with the last name.

So I'm always getting Jack Ryan. I didn't actually know that until I started playing rugby. And then people would start making comments about it.

And I was like, oh, who's this Jack Ryan guy? Interesting. What do you want the American evangelical audience to know about Australian evangelicalism?

Is it the same? Is it different? What goes on between the two countries? More influence of the

US into Australia, vice versa? How's that all work? Yeah, I think it's interesting. You have like a really big

Brethren group, an Anglican group. So I think it's a little more influenced by the

UK, but I remember being there and nobody knew John MacArthur, who was like my hero at the time, but everybody knew

John Piper. And so all my Christian friends, John Piper was really big. Mark Driscoll was really big.

Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Now, when I think of Anglican and Brethren, Brethren, of course, are conservative in lifestyle and stuff like that.

But the Anglicans in Australia, my guess is they're like Anglicans in Africa.

That is conservative. They're not pro -homosexual, et cetera. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't really know much about it at the time, and I still don't know all the nuances, but I remember going to this

Anglican church, they had a youth group that I go to on Friday nights and they would pray to the

Trinity and Father, Son, Spirit. And I'd never heard that before. I'm like, why are they like, they'd have five minutes for each one.

And I'm like, that's interesting. I've not heard that. I don't think he's from New Zealand, but I think Graham Goldsworthy, he's Anglican Australia.

Yeah. Isn't that right? Yeah. Luke, is that right? He puts his hand up. He's our fact checker. Yeah. So we recorded two shows with Luke, and then

Renee and Luke are now in the studio audience behind the plexiglass there that...

I don't want their germs. I know. I know. I know. And you met at the master's university, master's college?

You met Luke and Renee? Yeah. Yeah, I did. First impressions. First impressions.

Well, it took about two years for Renee to take to my liking, or maybe the opposite. He wasn't a big fan of me for a little while, but I won him over eventually.

Renee can be that way. But once you win him over, you're set. And he's your biggest advocate. I mean, he is a hype man to the fullest.

So I'm glad that that's happening because you don't want to be not in his good graces.

I know. Sometimes those Filipino gang guys, I mean, I'm scared. They just come out. I know. I know. And what about Luke?

Did Luke become your friend first or vice versa? How'd that work? I think we were kind of kindred spirits because we both started in youth ministry.

He'd already been at Grace for a year doing the youth ministry, and then I joined after. And we were side by side, or the roommates, or whatever they call them, something.

And we talked a lot about relationships and assurance and trying to figure out what does that really look like?

How do we ground our assurance and whatnot? So I think we bonded over that because I was on a similar journey during that time. We don't say journey on this show.

Yeah. You know what? I knew that was a word you would hate. I tried to avoid it, but it slipped out. Do you like the band

Journey? Only Don't Stop Believing. That's all I know. Okay. I mean, they're good musicians, but not really my kind of style.

Who have you been listening to the last 24 hours? The Smiths. A band I'd never really listened to before until the last 12 hours, and I can't stop listening.

Okay. That's fun. We get to, as Christians, just enjoy a whole panoply of things, including secular music, like classical music.

I always thought it was funny. People are like, I never listen to anything but sacred music, and then they're listening to some classical music composed by some crazy man.

I appreciate that because I think God made people that perform music pretty well, and so I don't think

Christians are the only ones that are good at that. True. Now I have a book in front of me, and I'm going to read you part of a song since this leads right into that, and then you just tell me what you think about the song.

It's of a religious nature, and I found this at the ... It was given away for free.

Okay? Hail, holy queen enthroned above, O Maria. Hail, mother of mercy and of love,

Maria. Triumph all ye cherubim. Sing with us, ye seraphim. Heaven and earth round the hymn.

Salve, salve, salve, Regina. O 'er life, our sweetness here below, Maria.

Our hope in sorrow and in woe, O Maria. Was that the Smiths? I like the sound of ...

What? Was that the Smiths? That's the best line. That's the best line yet.

Was that the Smiths? No. That is a hymn to Mother Mary from the

St. Joseph Sunday Missal and Hymnal. Revised liturgy. Yeah. I'm surprised you kept it this long.

Yeah, yeah. Well, no, it just makes it kind of fun because I do that, and if I'm ever doing a radio show, if you were to listen someday to No Compromise Radio, it's nocompromiseradio .com.

Sometimes if I don't know what to do, I just read something from the message. Okay. Let's hear it. What do you got? Do you think you could do a better job of translating than the messages done?

Yes. I'm not trying to be prideful, but ... That's good. Overwhelmingly, yes,

I believe it. True story. When I first started working on verse -by -verse exposition,

I started with the book of James, and there are nuances that you translate from the

Greek that would probably take too much space to have a

Bible. So in other words, it'd be five times as big, but I would do my own translation.

I thought every book I preach through, I'll do my own translation, and one day I'll have the Mike Abendroth translation, and I thought that was a great idea.

I'm glad I didn't do it, because that's the last thing the world needs, is the Mike Abendroth translation. But if I would have it for my own self, based on my own exegesis, that wouldn't have been a bad thing.

Yeah. Well, I've got a question, I guess, for that. Is there a word that you get frustrated at that's not translated right?

Is there any particular ... I know like the ESV, you know, the begotten Son, that's obviously a big qualm we've got, but is there anything that you have, you're like, oh,

I wish they translated this word better? Let's see. You know, obvious words, when you look at Lord God, Sovereign God, and they've got mixtures of Yah or Yahweh or Adonai, and they kind of combine things, and it's some

Elah, it's not even El or Elohim. Some of those things I think are interesting. I don't want to have to look down on my notes for that.

The slave thing, I don't care about really, one way or the other, because I think that's overdone with the legacy deal with the slave.

So I don't really care about that that much. What would be some of those? I can't, you know what?

I can't think of ... That's some homework. Yeah, yeah. I'm always happy to have young guys on to just give me more work to do.

Well, hey, you've given us enough already. So you were at my home the last week, week and a half or something like that.

It snowed last night, and you were shoveling today. Yeah. Was that part of penance, or you just like to be outside and help?

I think it was just to help me avoid purgatory. So when that whole thing happens,

I'm going to just work my way, and you're really good at offering jobs for us to do. Well, in light of that, then tell me how you were ...

You always tell me you were born a Christian. Tell me a little bit about that. Well, I thought

I was born a Christian, and then I realized that you have to be born again. And it comes later in life once you actually can understand knowledge, assent, and trust.

So that came a little later in my life. I didn't know how to articulate that when I came to faith. But I think,

I don't know, Deuteronomy 29, 29, the secret things belong to the Lord. I came to know the Lord at some point in my youth,

I think maybe around 11 or 12. Okay. So you have not lived some kind of crazy, profligate lifestyle, at least externally?

Yeah, definitely not externally. I've been always very aware of my own sinfulness and that I can't earn my way to God, and it actually brought a lot of insecurity, because I thought for a long time that my sin isn't getting any better, so does that mean

I'm really a Christian? Because I thought sanctification is just this upward trajectory. It's like a company's profits, it just shoots up and up exponentially.

Right. Real estate market. Yeah. But then I realized there's a lot of recessions in my life. That's right.

And you live in, let's see if I can think of the town, I don't think it's

Camarillo, Carpinteria? Do you live there? A little further north. I go to church in Carpinteria. You live in Goleta.

Oh, south, come on. How do you know these little niche towns? You live at, what's that jail called again?

What's that thing where they let people out for weekends? Okay. Ventura. No. Santa Barbara.

Yeah, there you go. That's the retirement village slash party city for all the college kids. Best Parker, I like that, yes.

And you go to a church there? Tell us about the church. I do, yeah. I go to Christ Church Carpinteria. We have

Twitter, Facebook, Bo Beckenham is the pastor. You can listen to his sermons on Spotify if you want, they're really, really good.

I've been going there since March. And before that, there was a bit of a split from Reality Carpinteria, and we meet there in Carpinteria, but it's been there for only about eight or nine months.

And it's a faithful, expositional, Christ -centered church, maybe 200 people.

Pastor Bo is a faithful, Christ -centered preacher. I've been there,

I think, once or twice, and we had lunch with him. Yeah, we did. So, I really like him. Do you remember what we ate? No, but I remember he wears cool boots.

He does. And always a sports coat. Yeah, that's true. And he's got the total California look, the beard and all that stuff.

Yeah. What did we eat? We ate Italian food. We did. Yeah, some classic pizza. Right. That's right.

That's right. So, why do they say Reality Carp? Is that like the carp fish?

That's what I always think of. I would never say that. I know it's Carpinteria, but we go to Reality Carp. It's because it's...

I'm like, we go to Reality catfish. Yeah. You don't call it like Beth Bible.

Well, that's true. That might be a better name than Bethlehem. I don't know. People might get confused. I think Beth Moore might be preaching here or something.

Oh, the Anglican strikes again, except that's the unconservative, non -conservative

Anglican. So, you go there, and do you have a ministry yet? You're pretty new. Yeah. A lot of it's pretty...

And it's infancy. We've got a youth group, about 30 kids come. I've been able to teach there this past semester, and I'll be teaching again.

I've been doing that for about three months, four months. And we just started like a prayer night, and then just a typical

Sunday morning service. Okay. Is that lady that we met at In -N -Out

Burger, does she still attend? I haven't seen her the last couple of weeks, but she had been going the whole time. Okay.

Yeah. Rose. Okay, Rose. Okay. And what's Bo preaching through? He's going through John.

So, we're up to John 20, I think we just... This week will be the first couple of verses of John 20.

Okay. And he's been doing that for, I don't know, three years. Does he meet with guys and go over systematic theology?

Is that true? Yeah. We've got a Tuesday night theology study. We've been going through Beakey Systematics, and we had finished

MacArthur's back in the summer. Better than Grudem's. Oh, yeah. We're not going to go into that one. Crazy.

Yeah. Okay. And so, you master's university graduate now at Christ Church.

By the way, that's my favorite all -time church name. Really? Christ Church. Why? I didn't know that. You've never said that.

Well, I just think, okay, whose church is it? It's Christ Church. Christ Church. I mean, I guess Redeemer's fine and other things like that.

I wouldn't call myself Redeemer Presbyterian if No Compromise Radio was more Presbyterian than I was.

But that's another story. That's for the city. Do you think it's missing out on the apostrophe S? Like, is

Christ Church or do you want it Christ's Church? Well, depends if Christ is a city or a person or a title.

That's a good point. Christ, yeah. I think it should be Christ's Possessive Apostrophe Church.

Is that what it is? No, it's just Christ Church. Oh, it's Christ Church. Christ Church. Is it no longer your favorite now?

Yeah, I'm going to have to talk to Bo about that. Okay, yeah. Maybe write him a letter. Yeah, what do you use for translation? Ooh. ESV?

I think so. Ahemos. I think he uses multiple. Although Beaky is King James, although I saw in Reformation Heritage books, sometimes they all use now the new

King James, which kind of surprised me. I submitted a manuscript to them and they said, would you be willing to put this book in the authorized version,

King James version? I said, of course. They still didn't take it. Good idea. If you had to write a book, what would you write?

Does it have to be spiritual? No. I don't know. Probably something about ownership. I'm a big ownership guy right now.

Really? Yeah. Like Jocko stuff. Okay. Ownership or assurance. Maybe both. Yeah.

Okay. Well, maybe you could talk about too much ownership, Jocko good stuff could turn into bad assurance.

Yeah. Because when that alarm rings at 4 .30 and you don't get up, what's that telling you? What happens? You're not good enough.

If Jocko was your roommate, would you always get up at 4 .30? Yes. He wouldn't let me sleep in. Okay.

Well, I'm going to do what I did with Luke and I'm going to look at this little sifted silver, John Bletchard compiled quotes, and I'm just going to read you a quote, just taken out of nowhere.

And then you just tell me what you think. David Martin Lloyd -Jones. Ooh, good one. If you do not desire to be holy,

I do not see that you have any right to think that you are a Christian. Interesting.

Oh. Because it's a Dr. Jones, I like it. I know,

I know. I do think it's true. I think...

All right, let's put it this way. Should Christians have a desire to be holy? Of course. Yes. No doubt. Should Christians base their assurance on their personal holiness?

No. I think it's the cart before the horse thing, too. Okay. You got to have that desire. But what if somebody's enslaved into some carnal kind of sin, something carnal, all sin is probably carnal, and now they're not sensing assurance like they used to, because God hasn't moved but they have.

Right. That's legit, don't you think? Yeah. I think that... And I think a lot of people's experiences are that. You know, we go through these seasons and sometimes the flesh is winning a little more than you'd like it to.

Okay. So if you do not desire to be holy, I do not see that you have any right to think that you're a

Christian. Yeah. Doesn't mean that you're not a Christian. Yeah. But just like when we meet people and they'll say, I've been living with my girlfriend for six months,

I say, based on your own profession of faith, 1 Corinthians 6 says, fornicators will not inherit the hand of God, so you should not be calling yourself a

Christian. But I don't say to them, you're not, because I'm not the judge. If you're a fornicator by lifestyle and habit, i .e.

1 Corinthians 6, you're not, but I don't really know those things. I've kind of moved away from telling people they are or aren't saved, but I do go back to the, if this is what you're professing and living like,

I don't know what assurance you can have because of that. And I don't know, I mean, I'm not God to judge you, and He'll do that ultimately, but the

Christian doesn't want that, and is it a theme of your life? Right. And I think when we look at,

Ryan, different camps of sanctification, I think every camp says we want to live a holy life.

Christians should live holy lives. It's just, is it the ground of your salvation, or is it the grateful fruit and evidence of your salvation?

I think that's where the rub is. Yeah. Those categories were helpful for me when I was trying to figure all that out. So helpful.

Yeah. Tell me about coming from Master's University, I'm sure you learned a lot there, even about ownership.

Yeah, yeah. And then studying on your own, maybe more Reformed theology. Yeah. Anything else change?

Law of Gospel now, a different view of assurance, ground evidence, anything else?

Oh, yeah. Especially recently, the covenants. Oh, I should have thought of that. Yeah, yeah. Covenants of redemption, covenant of works, covenant of grace.

Yeah, but if that's not really, I don't see in the Bible, it says covenant of redemption. So how can that really be in there?

Well, I like what Fesco said. Oh, I'm quoting Fesco. Oh, you were behind the scenes with Fesco, weren't you?

I was. I thought you were supposed to be in that room. You were. Dang. Did I just say dang on the radio? I was your representative.

Yes, that's right. You're my vicar. You're my vicar. So we'll tell that story in a second. But Fesco said what?

Well, I don't want to butcher it, but you know, his whole thing was that you don't have to define a covenant by the shedding of blood.

It's really on God's end of making, you know, a promise or a... Yeah. Who's got the quote?

Maybe O. Palmer Robertson, a covenant is a bond sealed in blood.

Yeah. Is that right? And what do you do if you have a... Is it a covenant without blood?

Right? And then there are some very interesting covenants that people make and is there blood involved?

But Fesco doesn't do that. What does he say? Just it's a generic, it's an agreement, it's a pact, it's a bond. Yeah. I know that's a simple definition he gave.

Yeah. You know, the other thing he said that was really helpful for me was talking about, did Adam and Eve receive grace before the fall?

Well, that's a big one. That's a big one. Yeah. Would there be any reason to have grace before the fall?

Right. And of course, guys like Frame and others, they'd say, since God is gracious, he's always exercising his attributes and so there's for grace before the fall.

But I don't think you're going to read anybody who is a strict covenant theologian who's going to put up with any grace before Adam's fall.

Well, and if you're a Calvinist, it doesn't make too much sense. I know. I know. I know. So that's why they don't like covenant of works because how can it be a work covenant when it's under the auspices of grace too?

So covenants, by the way, I always like to say, Ryan, you've probably said this or heard it said, people said, well, the word covenant of redemption is not in the

Bible. Well, I know the word Bible is not in the Bible either. Or the classic Trinity.

Yeah, I know. But it's an underlying theme that you see throughout the whole scripture. It's kind of this biblicistic thing where you're like, well, if it doesn't say that, then how could we believe it when it's just so crazy?

So the covenants, right? The covenant of works, grace, covenant of redemption. Anything else? Has your eschatology changed?

It's shifted away from a dispensational view, but I don't know if I am knowledgeable enough to say or have a conviction yet that, you know, is it post pre -Aumil?

I don't know. I mean, I kind of lean towards maybe an Aumil understanding. I just don't, I mean, the whole covenant structure makes sense to me, and I think that lends itself to an

Aumil view. It's interesting. One of the new professors at Master's Seminary said that he believes in the covenant of redemption, covenant of works, and covenant of grace, and that he can believe those three things and still be dispensational pre -Aumil, or you could be historic pre -Aumil, you could be post -Aumil, or Aumil.

I thought that was an interesting statement coming from a Master's Seminary professor. Yeah, and I think it's made it more confusing on my end because I'm like, well,

I guess dispensational viewpoints have shifted throughout time. So, you know, you gotta...

Which dispensationalism? Yeah. Yeah. Which one do we believe in? Yeah. Who's your favorite dispensationalist?

John MacArthur. Okay. Who's your least favorite dispensationalist? Darby. Darby.

Darby. Okay, Darby. That's good. Oh, man. Darby's dispensational view is, just makes my skin crawl.

Yeah. So, you go to Omaha for the conference that I was supposed to be speaking at.

By the way, I was pretty terrified with Matthew Barrett and J .V. Fesco, and I would have to get up and speak. I love some of the guys that were there in New York City speaking, but they weren't kind of the powerhouses.

I mean, I had been already reading some of Barrett's stuff, which is good. And then, Fesco, I did not expect him to be as articulate, and he just knows everything.

I know. And his background is Calvary Chapel, so he knows us, so he knows how to kind of talk Yeah. Yeah. He really knows how to communicate.

That's cool. And so, you guys, I think Pat did some Pactum stuff. I saw a picture of you there behind the scenes.

I would have loved to hang out. Anyway, I was gonna be very particular. Sometimes I just get up and run my mouth and do the whole preacher deal, but I was gonna be particular about how

I talked about Trinitarian things. Yeah, you gotta be careful. I know. I actually wanted to kind of run it by somebody before, but I didn't get to go, and I'll go another time.

Matter of fact, the two messages that I was supposed to preach there, I had worked on a lot. I'm gonna end up speaking on those in Ohio this

May, Lord willing. That'll be good. Pat and I at Community Bible Church, Beloit with Pastor John Tucker.

Anyway, the time went by fast. You did a great job. Thanks. First time? First time being on a podcast?

I'd be nervous if I was on a podcast talking about opportunities in Jocko. Well, this is my big break. I think this will spiral you into infamy.

That's great. Infamy. Thank you. Finally, you'll listen to a No Compromise radio show. I will listen to my own. Ryan Jack, thanks for being on.

Thanks, Mike. 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 bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.