Jesus & Political Correctness (Part 1)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry, my name is

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Mike Abendroth, and it's Realtime Saturday, September 7th, and I don't think

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I've talked much today. You know how your voice sounds funny when you haven't talked much? It's not like that early in the day, but anyway, if you listen to the show, thank you.

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If you have millionaire friends, tell them about the show. We've tried to do our very, very best over the last nine years not to ask for money, so we won't start now.

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What else do I have for an announcement? One of my friends, Scott Clark, R. Scott Clark, from Westminster Seminary, Escondido, will be here at the church in Massachusetts, Bethlehem Bible Church, October 11th and 12th for a mini -conference, kind of a play off the

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Beatles' song, You Say You Want a Revolution, Instead You Say You Want a Reformation. Scott's going to be here to talk about law gospel, biblicism, nuda scriptura, sola fide and its modern detractors, and much more.

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I'm going to do a Q &A after the first session on Friday night, and it won't be the congregation's questions, it'll be my questions, because they're going to be theologically loaded and informed.

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And you're like, here you go again, my kids are going to say, there's dad sitting in the studio and laughing at his own jokes.

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Well, you might as well have some fun with this show, since that's what life is about, right?

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Just fun. Just kidding. Info at NoCompromiseRadio .com if you've got a question. If you want to go to the website,

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NoCompromiseRadio .com, and you can pick up a variety of things there. Israel 2020, not

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February 2020, but 2021, that is a year from this coming

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February, so that's only a year and a half away, with Omaha Bible Church and Pat Ebendroth, and I'm hoping to have some type of Rome extension.

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That's what I'm after, is a Rome extension. I think I'm going to be in Rome next year.

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My wife and I celebrated our 30th anniversary, and so I'm going to take her there for the 30th,

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I think. I think we went for our 15th or something. One of the nice things about speaking, you're already over there, and then the wife flies over and meet.

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When it comes to travel, I don't know if I really want to travel that much anymore. I'm not really...

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In the old days, I would want to go see Indonesia, sorry, I'm in New England, Indonesia, and go see,

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I don't know, Nepal, lots of different places, Kathmandu, wherever I would just go.

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I don't know if there's any place in the world that I really want to see that I haven't seen, that I'm willing to pay to go to.

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I haven't been to Alaska, that would probably be fun, to be in Alaska one time. I heard

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Japan is cool, and I don't know. I probably will make it back to Germany because of the

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European Bible Training Center that I'm adjuncting at, or for, or with, and I'll probably make it to Rome for the anniversary, and I'm going to Canada, as a matter of fact, this...

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If you're a pastor in Canada, I'm going to do some preaching seminars with my friend Pastor Steve Flippen, and that will be, let's see, that is going to be

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October 1st and 2nd and 3rd in Saskatoon, so you can email me if you want information about that.

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And if you're a New England pastor, I'm going to do a preaching seminar for New Hampshire, New England pastors this

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October 4th and 5th, NACP, New England Center for Expository Preaching.

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You can pull that up. Well, today, I want to talk a little bit about offending people, since we can do that pretty well around here.

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By the way, don't get on Twitter unless you have to, unless you're going to be prepared to be assaulted.

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You just have to remember the style and mode and means of communication, and then you get it.

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And for me, I think it's just a guilty pleasure, at NOCO Radio, man, I just, sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's my brother and I going back and forth, sometimes

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I try to post positive encouraging K -love things, and other times I post things with weird responses.

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But the culture today, it seems like the capital sin in the culture's eyes today is not murder, it's not abortion, it's not slander, it's not lying.

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What's the capital crime these days in the culture's eyes? And it's not sexual sin, not homosexuality, not adultery, but I think if I had to boil it all down, maybe the new cultural offense is, in fact, offending people.

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The virtues of this post -Christian era seem to be tolerance, acceptance, we're not going to agree, so don't bring up the differences, don't offend,

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I don't want you to make me feel bad or upset or annoyed. Actually, offensive speech, one definition includes causing someone to feel resentful, upset, or annoyed.

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Well, probably this radio show isn't for you, right? That's the tagline. I need a new tagline, I need a new intro,

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I need new music, I just haven't gotten around to it. This is not my day job.

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I'm thinking about moving the little studio, which isn't much, to my home, then

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I could just record things at home, but I don't need this Brickley thing anymore, since Friel never has me do the show, so that'd make it easy for me to move it home.

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How about speech that causes anger or feelings of being hurt or upset?

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That's pretty much offensive speech. And then you can go into hate speech as well, something that's cruel or derogatory.

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And I think this attitude that permeates society is part of Satan's grand scheme and plan, or at least he's fueling it, or maybe at other times, using it.

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And that is, when you think of evangelism and how we need to talk to people about the only God, exclusivity of Jesus Christ, literal bodily resurrection, sin, that people sin and need a savior, that's offensive to them.

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God's law, since it's a reflection of his character, exposes sin and it actually offends people.

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If they come face to face, if an unbeliever comes face to face with the idea that their life, instead of counting for a little less than they thought, counts for negative when it comes to being a creature that God has made.

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This is a day and age of self -esteem and feeling good about ourselves. I mean, I guess we do have a vestige of, we need to tell people the honest truth with objective lenses, right?

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The doctor has to tell you you have cancer and it's a binary thing, right? You either have cancer or you don't.

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In the old days, of course, even in the 60s, I read an article where 90 % of oncologists admitted they wouldn't tell, they wouldn't disclose a terminal disease to a cancer patient.

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And now it's flipped around, 90 % will, and a lot of that has to do with just the way we think, laws, et cetera.

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I mean, IRS agents and financial planners and other people, there's objective truth. The passage

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I want to look at today and probably the next couple days, even though it'll all be today for me, is

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Matthew chapter 15. And this is the Lord Jesus.

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And I want you to think through the lens of hate speech and offensive speech.

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Of course, Jesus, maybe people will see him as doing those things, but of course he's holy and blameless and never sinned.

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And of course, if our definitions of propriety, they might need to be changed in light of how

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Jesus acts. That is to say, if you watch Jesus in Matthew 15 and you think he's rude and offensive and sinful and ornery and not loving neighbor as self, then you need to reanalyze your framework or your grid that would make you think that way.

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In other words, whatever Jesus does is right. He is the standard. He is the word incarnate. And when you see

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Jesus deal with people, he's going to talk to them about their sin and expose who they are.

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Right? Now, here's why it's important for the listeners today. It's important for me too. When we're evangelizing and talking to people about God and his word, while we aren't

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Jesus, of course, and we might do things the wrong way, we still have to talk about the truth. And this is offensive to people.

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People don't like it. The only time they're going to admit and confess and completely agree with their state as unrighteous, as an enemy, as ungodly, as helpless, as sinful, as crooked, as perverse, as lawless, as...

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I mean, you go down the list of how God describes creatures who rebel against him and his son, the list is pretty long, transgress, trespass, miss the mark.

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You get the idea. Well, when God is working on a heart and drawing that person to himself, what happens?

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Instead of, I'm offended, who are you to tell me I'm a sinner? What do you mean my grandma who's sweet doesn't believe she's not going to go to heaven?

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When the heart prepared by God and being drawn by the Father as a spirit is convicting, that heart's going to go, you know what, you're right, you're right.

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I don't have anything else to say. That's Romans 3 .19. Every mouth is shut because of the law.

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And then when that mouth is shut, then of course apprehension of the good news, belief in the good news, is the next response.

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Well, we're going to see Jesus in this passage, and I just like to watch

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Jesus interact with people. Now, the book of Matthew, of course, if you ever go to a book of Bible, you need to say to yourself, what's this book about and why is it written?

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Then the particulars in that book will be more easily understood.

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Comprendo? Comprende? Comprendamos? I could try to parse the verbs for you, but I get my

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Spanish and my Greek mixed up. I mean, Hebrew, forget it, I can't do it. But if I'm trying to, you know, luo, lueis, you know, that kind of stuff, is that a mixture of Greek and Spanish, right?

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Ablo, ablas, abla, ablamos, ablain, ablain,

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I don't know. Matthew is

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Jesus, the King. Gospel of Matthew is shorthand for the gospel, our good news, of Jesus Christ, according to Matthew.

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It's not good news about Matthew. Matthew is the reporter. He's the one talking about this historical man,

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Jesus, this divine son, right? He's the God man.

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He is perfectly God, perfectly man. And he,

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Matthew, the tax collector, displays Jesus as the sovereign democratic leader, the sovereign republican, let's see, plutocrat, oligarch, oh, there's all kinds of words.

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No, he is the only king. Out of all the kings, he's the king. Out of all the lords, he's the

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Lord. And Matthew is written so that you understand that Jesus is the long -awaited

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Messiah King that the Old Testament has pointed to and described in great detail with shadows and echoes and types.

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And it doesn't surprise you, probably, to find out that this is the first book in the

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New Testament with all this Old Testament contained in the book of Matthew, that is, quotes and allusions and ideas.

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Matthew 21 .5 pretty much summarizes the book, Behold, your king is coming to you. That's a good summary statement of the book of Matthew.

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If you look at the bookends, Matthew 2, where is he who has been born king of the

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Jews? And then Matthew 27, above his head, they put up the charge against him, which read, this is the king of the

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Jews. Therefore, everything in this book, you should be thinking it's about Jesus and it's about Jesus as king.

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And the writer wants the readers to believe, to bow the knee, as it were, in faith.

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He wants you to think rightly about your sin, that's called repentance, and rightly about Jesus, that's called faith.

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And this is not written just to be written, it's to be written so that it is to be believed. And of course, excuse me for the wheeze, at the end of the book, there's this commission from Jesus the king.

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That is weird. Excuse me. I don't have a cough button, but that one I couldn't control, sorry. Jesus, the great king, is

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Lord over all these nations. And you can think back even to Ephesians, not

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Ephesians, but Psalm 2. I said Ephesians because my Bible's open to the book of Ephesians.

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I'm actually going to turn this down and then call it. All right, let's hope that worked.

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Well, let's go to this passage in Matthew 15, and let's call Jesus the heart exposer, the heart surgeon.

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This is a familiar scene in the

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Gospels where Jesus is after the false teachers and he's there to correct them and to inform them and to expose them, battle with the false teachers.

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Matthew 15, then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why do your disciples, disciples break the tradition of the elders for they do not wash their hands when they eat.

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Now there's a difference between the Bible and tradition and not all tradition is bad.

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Obviously when you elevate tradition to scripture, that would be bad. When you elevate scripture, tradition over scripture, that's bad, that's worse.

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Traditions aren't bad, but what happens when you're not content with the Bible, you start adding rules and rules multiply and multiply and multiply exponentially.

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And these leaders, Bible leaders, Pharisees and scribes, conservative Bible teachers, they started having other laws and they placed those laws on people, which even made it worse.

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It's one thing to elevate tradition. It's another thing to elevate tradition over scripture. And it's another thing to elevate this tradition that you made up and you elevate it in the minds of the people that you're supposed to be shepherding.

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That would be bad. And here it's cleaning hands. We're not talking about antibacterial cleaning.

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We're not talking about wash your hands before supper. Wash your hands after you use the restroom.

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That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about uncleanness in a ceremonial way. And of course there are ceremonial cleanliness issues in the

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Old Testament, obviously, but this is all above and beyond. This is extra. This is Bible plus stuff, right?

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You can always tell weird teaching when it's the Bible minus or the Bible plus. Barclay says that man who ate with unclean hands was subject to the attacks of a demon called

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Shebta. To admit to wash the hands was to become liable to poverty and destruction. Bread eaten with unclean hands was no better than excrement, period, paragraph, end quote.

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Maybe the beginning, it started off good, but then it just spiraled out of control. And Jesus' men, while Jesus would have them do what the

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Bible says, they're not under any of these other rules. And of course, if you've got a rule at your table, no elbows on the table as a dad,

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I don't think there's anything wrong with having a rule. But now saying God said that rule, and this is how you have to be holy and pure and clean in God's sight, that's a different story, right?

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So we have to kind of make sure we're understanding it. And Jesus is going to not let that go.

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And he's going to use as the incarnate word, he's going to use the word, I mean, whatever he said it was the word, but he's, he regularly goes back to scripture, does he not?

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The Old Testament? He answered them. Oh, you're just like, here we go. And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

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That's it right there, right? That summarizes everything. I don't like to say mic drop, but it's over.

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And then he, he gives a quote for God commanded honor your father and your mother, whoever reviles father and mother must surely die.

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But you say, if anyone tells his father, his mother, what would you have gained?

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What you would have gained from me is given to God. He need not honor his father.

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So for the sake of tradition, you have made void the word of God. That that's what they're doing.

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You elevate tradition. You change the word of God. You've got all these little rules and, and King's X stuff, fingers crossed, and you've make a void the word of God.

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These are the Bible teachers. You hypocrites, Jesus talking to these leaders.

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Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

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In vain do they worship me teaching as doctrines, the commandments of men. And that is the heart of the matter.

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The heart. Okay. You think it's about fastidious rule keeping.

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I'm telling you worship is about the heart. Now, of course, we'll talk probably in another show about worship from the heart has to be in submission to the word of God.

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We're not talking about an emotive experience that I do whatever I want and have no rules.

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No, my worship think Nadab and Abihu is regulated by scripture. It has to be.

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We don't know how to worship the creator. So we're told how to specifically in the Bible. But if you just have external obedience and no heart, that's not good.

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And if you have external obedience to rules that aren't even in scripture and you think that's worship, that's not any good either.

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And Isaiah talks about that. You know, the two kind of go together, right? When you think about hypocrisy, what it does, it's just this external and might as well keep going if that's what

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I'm going to do. And it'll be external, not even to the Bible, but external to traditions that I've made up. I mean, it just is one big mess.

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And Jesus, I mean, just obliterates it. No wonder they want to try to kill him.

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No wonder they say he's got a demon. No wonder they say, you know, he's crazy.

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No wonder they say, where's this guy from again, Galilee? I mean, come on. I was studying this week howitzers, and these tubes are barrels with breeches like a funnel.

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And you've got a gun called a howitzer. And it's from a

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German word that means sling or basket. And those are pretty nasty guns.

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And here, Jesus, he's just shooting down their structures of hypocritical, yeah, hypocritic.

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It's that kid's song, hypocriter, hypocriter. You say one thing and do the opposite -er.

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Well, to be 59 years old and have tenure. I'm almost got tenure on the radio now, and therefore you can't really do anything about it, right?

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I just keep talking. And you know, instead of 1 ,000 people that listen to a show, you know, we've got 29.

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You know who you are, the elect 29. Jesus said, you know, worship has nothing to do with how do you wash your hands and your feet with these extra rules.

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You got a problem, Pharisees. You do external things, and you do it according to tradition.

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That's the problem. Is that going to take away what's really defiling the person?

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You say, all right, I don't want to be defiled. So far, so good. I want to be holy. So far, so good.

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How do I do that? Well, I just wash my hands a certain way.

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You know, I think about the scrub sinks in the operating rooms and how the surgeons and scrub nurses will be over there, and they've got their fingernails that they've got to get, and they've got all this iodine solution, and they want to make sure the water that drips off their hands goes down their elbow and then off onto the floor, not back up.

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You don't put your hands all the way down, and so things, the dirt doesn't run down if you have your hands, you know, below your waist, but you keep your elbows up and your hands elevated by your face.

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You know, there's certain ways to stay clean, but you're just making this stuff up, and this is how you are teaching people.

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I mean, I guess I could make something similar when you go to church these days and you can't learn about the Bible. You have to learn about self -esteem and everything else and happy and peppy and consumer, and I don't want to be bored.

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I mean, if you're going to learn the Bible, you know, maybe that's on a Wednesday night, but not Sunday. Well, I'm coming down to land the plane here in 20 seconds.

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Jesus is going to say in next show, probably tomorrow, it'll air, what is really defiling people, and it's not dirt.

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It's the heart. Out of the heart. Right? So that's what we're going to look at. Info at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

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Write me if you need any questions answered. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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.

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