Making Your Own Heart Clean (Part 2)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth.

Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

What damns more, gross immoral sin or self -righteousness?

I've told you the story many times. I remember when I was a seminary student at Master's Seminary and we had to go to evangelize door to door and I don't know if I've ever been more nervous in my life.

So you just go to the door, you take a deep breath and you knock with force. Okay, nobody's home, gotta go.

Knock on the door. Hi, my name is Mike Abendroth. I'm with Grace Church. We're here to tell you a little bit about a concert that we're having to talk about Jesus Christ and how you can be forgiven of sins and, you know, are you interested?

And the first guy that I remember, we visited several, but I remember a big guy, a

Harley Davidson guy, a brood of a guy. And I thought, man, I'm so dead.

I mean, he's just got like a 12 -gauge pump in his hip or something. I'm just blotto.

I'm gone. And with another guy, I thought I'll use him as a human shield. Hey, come on in.

No problem. You want a beer? Ezekiel 4 -9 beer, maybe. I don't know. I thought, you know what?

This is so easy. God has ordained my steps that I might walk in them. House number two, screen door was there.

It was a grandma coming. I go, she looks like my grandma. You know, I love like my grandma's sugar cookies.

She's going to just invite us, not for beer, but cookies. I love my grandma. Only she could take margarine and put them in cookies and make the cookies good.

Margarine is awful. Oleo is awful. She came to the door and said, hi, my name is

Mike Avendroth with Grace Church. Here to talk to you about forgiveness found in Christ Jesus and invite you to one of our concerts.

And the door slammed and the anger came and she said, I'm a Catholic. Now, whether Catholic, whether Lutheran, whether Episcopalian or Baptist, the door slammed was,

I've got my own righteousness. Thank you. I've got my own righteousness.

If you don't know you're sick, you don't go to the doctor. But if you know you're sick, you know you need to get help.

I'm not getting better on my own. I have no righteousness. I need righteousness.

If I'm going to stand before God blameless, if I'm going to stand before God with no sin,

I can't even stand before the holiness of God with one sin, not one sin. I need them all covered, everyone washed and cleansed.

I need someone else's righteousness because my own righteousness is a bad fig leaf.

Of religion and virtue, I'm clean cut. Therefore, I go to heaven. I don't look like you.

Therefore, I go to heaven. Something wicked this way comes.

No wonder God hates free will. No wonder God despises this idea where I am not touched by the fall in my will and I will by my own free will allow

God to work in my life. I'll take the first step and if I do that, then God can do the rest.

No wonder that is an awful way to think about salvation and not in a sovereign grace way.

If I were to give you a million dollars today and one year off and you were to go around the world and I will give you one more million when you complete the task,

I want you to go around the world and find 100 worst, deceptive, deceitful things in the world.

Get a little taxonomy chart, a little classification. One through 100 and find out the worst deceivers, the worst deceptions, the worst lies.

Go all around the world. You get a million dollars. Be very careful. Work hard for your money. There's another million once you give me the list.

100 deceitful things. What would you find? Here's what you should do. You should leave at the top number one blank because we already know the answer.

The heart is desperately wicked, deceitful above. Say it.

All else over number two, three, four, all the way down to 100. And it's the deceitfulness of our hearts that say, yeah, yeah, my faith saved me.

Yeah, my will saved me. I did this. I took the first step and then God does the rest. That's self -righteousness.

That's I've got a righteousness in me that makes God acceptable and move towards me.

When the righteousness we need is a righteousness from another, a different, an alien righteousness, a righteousness that Christ earns himself.

And it is so valuable because he's also God. It's so infinite that it can be bestowed on all those who would believe.

His righteousness cloaked on us is for those who say, I have no righteousness.

I agree that the law tells me that I'm sinful. And if God doesn't intervene, I'm going straight to hell.

Self -righteousness says, God, your way isn't my way. Your way is Christ alone. Christ plus nothing.

100 % Christ. God opens Lydia's heart. And then she believes that's your way.

God, your way. God is exerting 48 as many as were appointed to eternal life. Believe your way.

God is you cause salvation. The result is my faith. But my way, God, is

I believe and I let you save me. Spurgeon says the

Lord is very wroth against self -righteousness. I do not know of anything against which his fury burneth more than against this.

Because this touches him at a very tender point. It insults the glory and honor of his son,

Jesus Christ. Don't you hate self -righteousness? Don't you hate it in yourself?

Hate it in yourself before you hate it in others. I read this passage and I go, those scoundrels the scribes, those scallywags, those

Pharisees. They're awful. They're wicked. And you know what? It's true. And I'm worse.

I'm worse. It wasn't for the grace of God.

We'd still be doing what we were doing before. Trying to get to heaven on a rope made of the sand of our own self -righteousness, as Whitefield would say.

Matthew 12, 10. They ask him, is it lawful to heal on the

Sabbath? So that they might accuse him. They've got all these traditions that they've added to real

Mosaic Sabbath law. They don't care about the healing of the man.

Some of these traditions are so embedded in Judaism that the enemies of the Jews would attack on the

Sabbath because by tradition, not by the Bible, the Jews would think if we offer any resistance to some opposing horde of armies, then that would be work on the

Sabbath. And so the Jews would just get slain. False teachers didn't care about the man, but the

Lord does. And Jesus knows what they're thinking. Listen to Luke, a parallel account. Jesus knew what they were thinking.

And he said to the man with the withered hand, this is in Luke, rise and come forward. And he rose and came forward.

Come right here to the center. You Pharisees want to spy? I'm going to have you come right to the very front.

And then it says, after looking around at them all. You can just imagine Jesus looking at every person in the eyes, establishing eye contact with them.

Come forward. You guys want to spy center stage of the center ring of the

Pharisaical circus. And of course, you know, when you remember the

Old Testament, what was the Messiah going to be like? How would you recognize him? What would he do?

Oh, yes, eventually he was going to have a great triumph. And we know about his second coming. But when he was going to come the first time,

Isaiah would say things like this about him. Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

Jesus quoting Isaiah, but making it for himself. And Luke four, because he's anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the

Lord's favor. How are you going to know the Messiah is here? Because he's going to do what you're going to see in just a moment.

And that is heal the man to be kind and compassionate. Jesus says to them in verse 11, quite a probing question.

Which one of you, just making it personal, which one of you scribes and Pharisees, self -righteous, who has a sheep, falls in the pit on a

Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep?

So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. But Pharisees, if you follow what you've been teaching, you wouldn't get your own sheep out of the ditch.

You just leave it. But I'm telling you, you would, if you got a sheep in the ditch, you would not just go over on the

Sabbath and say, here's a little hay, here's a little clover, here's a little thing of water, and we'll see you tomorrow morning.

You wouldn't do that. You'd go over and help that sheep. But you're basically saying by what you're teaching, you wouldn't do that.

You don't want to help people on the Sabbath. You want to murder them and you want to murder me.

Mark says, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill? Is it right to save a life or to kill?

I'm going to save this life and you want to kill me. Aren't people more valuable than sheep?

Verse 12, of how much more value is a man than a sheep? Sheep's in trouble on the

Sabbath, help it. Men are more valuable than sheep and they're in trouble on the Sabbath, help him.

So you want me to wait till tomorrow to cure this guy.

When I can cure him today, why would I have him suffer for one second longer? I'm trying to do good.

You're trying to kill me. Mark says, they kept silent. It's an ongoing silence.

It's the sound of silence. Verse 13, look at this glance of Jesus.

He says to the man, stretch out your hand. Now the original in Matthew, the

Greek is, he says to the man. Why? Because oftentimes you'll use present tense to make it vivid, to make it graphic.

It doesn't read well for history to say, he says to the man, but that's the text, he says to the man.

The reader wants you to understand for you to be there as it were.

The man stretched it out and it was restored healthy. Hygienic is the Greek word, like the other.

Mark says, before the man stretched out his hand, Jesus looked around them with anger. And then he was grieved at the hardness of their heart.

Righteous indignation, a holy flash. And then an ongoing grief.

He's not called the man of sorrows for no reason. Now don't you love this?

Verse 12, verse 13. He said to the man, stretch out your hand. He said to the man, here's some

Latin phrases for you. He got out some incense, put on some robes, some funny hats.

He made an incantation. He slew them in the spirit, knocked them over with his coat.

Now think about it. He says. Now what are the

Pharisees going to say? How can this be work on the Sabbath if you say? He's only saying, they're talking.

Jesus talks, he talks with authority. And he says, stretch out your hand.

This is the God who creates the universe. This is the Genesis 1 -1 God. This is the

God who speaks things into existence. Don't you love it? In Genesis 1, we're talking about the stars that God made.

It's almost like a throwaway line. I know it's not a throwaway line, but you know, what else did God make? And he made the stars also.

Psalm 29 speaks about the voice of the Lord, who is Jesus. The voice of the Lord is powerful.

The voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. The voice of the

Lord makes Lebanon skip like a calf. The voice of the Lord hues out flames of fire.

And the voice of the Creator, the eternal Son of God says, stretch out your hand. And through his words, nothing but talking, not accused of doing a work now, his hand is restored.

By the way, when people are on Daystar and TBN and every other heretical kind of TV show, and they're doing all kinds of miracles, you ought to ask yourself this question.

The miracles that I see, are they like the miracles that Jesus does, that the apostles do?

And the answer is no. Jesus heals immediately, completely, with authority, spectacularly, undeniably.

Did you know in John 3 and in John 11 and Acts 4, they bring in people who have seen the healings.

These scribes and Pharisees in Matthew chapter 12 could not deny the healing power of Jesus.

It's undeniable. Until false teachers and false miracle workers go to children's hospital and heal everybody with CNN there, you know they're charlatans and fakes.

They're not healing like Jesus did. Spectacular, undeniable.

Spurgeon had a story about a dentist in the 1800s, and he had a little cure, a momentary cure for a toothache.

Couldn't get the thing off the ground, couldn't sell it. Nobody wanted to buy it. And he thought, you know what,

I've been selling this as a momentary cure for a toothache. I'm going to change it to an instantaneous cure for toothache.

One man said, business became a lot better. Jesus heals with a word.

He must be the Messiah. This is a valid confirmation, and He's authentic.

Now think about this for a second. He's commanding the impossible. What's the text say? Stretch out your hand. What a great picture of salvation.

Don't you think of salvation when you think of this? Well, you ought to. Stretch out your hand.

Can't stretch out my hand. I'm in the flesh. I'm an unbeliever. I can't do any good thing.

Romans chapter 8 says those who are in the flesh cannot please God. I have no ability to stretch out my hand of faith.

I'm depraved. I'm fallen. I have original sin. I have my own sin. I can't do anything.

And yet Jesus says to this man, stretch out your hand. And He said to us when we got saved, stretch out your hand of faith.

We couldn't do it. How did we get saved? What a great picture of the inability of an unbeliever.

Vance Havner said, what the unbeliever needs is not a boost from below, but to be born from above.

Stretch out your hand. Friends, did you know when you tell unbelievers to repent, to believe, to trust, to follow, to forsake, they can't do it because they're depraved.

They're fallen. Adam's fall was real. I wonder if we could bring up the man with the withered hand here and ask him a couple questions.

Let's ask him some questions. Did you stretch out your hand?

The Pharisees didn't stretch out their hand. That was me. I stretched out my hand. Of course

I stretched out my hand. I'm the one that Jesus healed. I'm the one that Jesus brought to the center.

Did you stretch out your hand? Yes, I did. Question two. Did you stretch out your hand all by yourself?

I remember talking to my kids that way, all by yourself. Did you stretch out your hand all by yourself? That's the rub.

You ask a Christian, did you believe? Did you repent? Did you trust in the finished work of Jesus, the risen

Savior, who is a representative and substitute for sinners? Well, yeah, of course

I did. God didn't believe for me. You didn't believe for me. My parents by proxy didn't believe for me.

But I have another question for you, believer. Did you stretch out your hand of faith by yourself?

And any thinking believer ought to say, God is the one who caused my salvation.

I didn't make any decision for Jesus until God worked in me.

That's the real issue. Is salvation from the Lord? B .B.

Warfield said, we point out that the doctrine of inability does not affirm that we cannot believe. Listen, before you throw summer squash at me.

But only that we cannot believe in our own strength. We do not say when a man is unable to do the will of God, when we say that he is guilty of inability, or that when he is afflicted with inability, we do not say that he cannot believe.

We say that he cannot believe in his own strength. Did you stretch out your hand?

Of course. Did you do it by yourself? No. Who worked first? Who's the cause of your salvation?

Do I believe in the responsibility of man? Yes. Stretch out your arm. Do I believe in God's sovereignty and salvation?

Yes. God through His Word works powerfully. Which one do

I believe more? I believe the sovereignty of God first before man's responsibility, of course. Can you imagine when you evangelize your friends, or your kids, or you're praying for people to get saved.

You actually believe this very thing. Because you pray, God save them, God rescue them,

God deliver them, God shake away their self -righteousness, and God make them cast themselves on you and your grace for eternal life.

Don't you pray that way? Of course. Man left to himself can't do anything.

That man would still have a shriveled hand unless Jesus came up, and through the Word, remember faith comes by hearing a message about Christ, and this foolishness of preaching.

It seems like a foolish message. There's this God -man who dies on the cross in Palestine 2 ,000 years ago.

And it's also foolish to preach, because we're preaching to dead people, and dead men's bones, do they ever come alive?

And the answer is yes, at the sovereign will of God. Unbelievers are spiritually dead, and blind, and deaf, and hardened, and polluted, and unable to change their spots, and unable to change their spiritual skin color.

And unable to come to Christ until God regenerates their hearts.

And then they'll freely come. They will freely come. Well, let's finish with our text here.

We're moving on. Verse 14,

But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

Filled with rage, because when you are self -righteous, and you realize it's only through sovereign grace, they are filled with rage.

Luke 6 uses the word rage. They're out of their minds. They blew a gasket. Enough is enough.

You mean to tell me that my baptism, my good works, my holiness, my virtue, my confirmation, my being a good citizen, my going to church, my being a member, isn't good enough for you to find favor in me, then

I'm blowing the gasket. God saves people through His Word.

Physically, stretch out your hand. Spiritually, stretch out your hand of faith. Now, I love

John Flavel. He's a Puritan preacher. And he was preaching in England.

He came to the benediction. And here's what he said. He's supposed to bless the congregation.

This morning, I'm sorry that I cannot pronounce a blessing upon you. I cannot pronounce a blessing upon you, for not all of you love our

Lord Jesus Christ. And if any man loved not the

Lord Jesus Christ, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16, let him be accursed. How can

I bless you all when you're not all saved? By the way, side note, you think

I'm tough. Man was 17 years old in the congregation in England.

86 years later, that 17 -year -old, you heard it right, that 17 -year -old, 86 years later, is in New England.

He's 103 years old. And he couldn't get that out of his mind. If you don't love the

Lord Jesus Christ, you're accursed. And on that beach in Connecticut, God converted him.

He lived for three more years and died. His tombstone says, here lies a babe, three years old by grace, who died at age 106 by nature.

It's the word of God that's powerful. And he works through his word. And he does it because he loves sinners.

Transcribed by https://otter .ai