2021 Summer of Interviews: Brad Isbell interview (2020)

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, a ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth. And as many of you know, the format of the show is pretty simple, 25 minutes a day,

Sunday sermon plays on Monday's show. Tuesdays, I talk with my associate pastor about church issues.

Thursdays, I usually talk about the book of Hebrews and the Lord Jesus, the high priest. And then

Friday, I usually go after somebody, kind of woodshed Friday. But on Wednesdays, I like because I get to talk to fellow pastors, fellow elders, theologians, authors, superstars, and even today we have a mega church elder.

So Brad Isbell, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio today. Oh, well, I'm glad to be here.

And I'm not a mega church elder, of course, we're thoroughly small to medium,

I guess you'd say. Well, I heard that the average church in the country is still 65 members.

So we're, or maybe that's in the PCA, maybe it's nationwide, but my church is a little more than two and a half, about two and a half times that size.

Well, Brad, you joke around a lot and so do I, but with joking aside, whenever I get to travel and I'm speaking someplace and the, you know, dear pastors out in the middle of India in a village or maybe someplace in rural

America, when they hear that I don't pastor a large church, they get encouraged because I think there's this vibe that goes around in Christianity, of course, with, you know, assets, buildings, and cash, and you don't have anything to say unless you've got a lot of followers.

Why do you think that's so prevalent in America today? Well, I guess it's, you know, we hear about the prosperity gospel, the most brazen forms of it, but we're all wired to think that if you're doing things right, you're going to be, you know, you're going to be heavily blessed numerically and financially.

And we only have to look at the Bible to see that that's not so. So again, there are soft prosperity gospels and hard prosperity gospels, and I would even hold that some of the, you know, we're going to transform the city and we're going to love the city to life, and we're going to redeem the city for Jesus.

You know, those even smack a prosperity gospel to me sometimes, and they set people up for disappointment, and we should avoid that.

Well, I think there was an old writer that said, an old English writer that said something about thinking that he was the object rather than the subject of Christianity, and once we take our eyes off of the author and finisher, the

Lord Jesus, then it's inevitable, I think, that it becomes about us, the city, size, growth, etc.,

etc., and so, but I don't think Isaiah or Jeremiah got the memo about having a large following.

I know there were many people who didn't, who were not non -successful in earthly terms.

Of course, if you do look at the early church, they experienced incredible growth, but we know that was supernaturally, that came about supernaturally, and we know that they did it in far less than ideal circumstances, but there's no formula.

You know, many of us grew up in evangelicalism where there was a new formula or technique or program every few years that was going to win the city, the state, or the country to Christ, and we know that there's no such automatic formula.

There are things that we're supposed to do according to the Great Commission, but we're not guaranteed a mathematical type of success, and, you know, faith is not by sight, and what we see as success is often, it's probably not real success.

Well, today we're talking to Brad, and he's known also on Twitter as Chortles Weekly. That's not with two

E's, weekly, but W -E -A -K, and I think we first met on Twitter, Brad.

I've since had you on two times on the show, and I've been on your radio show once, PresbyCast.

I encourage all our listeners, probably many of you already listen to PresbyCast, regular shows that come out.

I'm kind of at a loss today, Brad, because I'm listening to you at regular speed and not 1 .5.

Oh, well, that's, you'll just have to deal with that. I know. Well, one of the things that you say here on your

Twitter account is you describe yourself a PCARE, that is a Presbyterian Church of America ruling elder, and then you have something called a term coiner.

And I thought, well, you know what, with my Heno language and other things, I thought, well, I'm competing with Brad for a term coiner, but you did coin something that's very near and dear to my heart.

One time you called not just people Baptists or Reformed Baptists, but there's a no -co -Baptist, so what's the difference between a

Reformed Baptist and a no -co -Baptist? Well, that's a really good question. A bad taste, maybe.

I'm not sure. Yeah, that's right. A tolerance for inappropriate memes, I'm not sure what that would be, really.

Well, once in a while, you do send me things that I don't know if you're too afraid to post or you just want to duck and let me take the hit, so then

I just usually post them. I've been doing that my entire life. You know, there's always the kid that gets other kids in trouble, and I was probably always that kid.

Well, all joking aside, I'd encourage our listeners to go to PresbyCast and listen. You can listen on your typical podcast downloader, iTunes, etc.,

or go to the website, and I think it's important for a lot of Baptist listeners, which

I think we probably have many, but for them to get some insight into the Presbyterian life while many

Baptists love reading Presbyterians and understanding soteriological, theology proper, hermeneutical issues that pretty much all come from the

Presbyterians. I know there are some exceptions, but I think what some Baptists don't understand, things like general assembly and how sessions work and what goes on between ruling and teaching elders.

Brad, if you could give our listeners kind of a summary, what would you like, without blasting Baptists, what would you like the

Baptists to know about Presbyterian life in general that you think maybe most Baptists are ignorant about?

Well, I think a lot of Baptists are Congregationalists, and by default, they kind of grew up Congregationalists and they value independency, and they see virtues in the

Reformed system of doctrine, of soteriology, maybe even worship doctrine, but they, for one reason or another, will not buy into the accountable system that is

Presbyterianism. And I think there are very few examples anywhere in the world of Baptist -type churches that aren't accountable in a real formal way to other churches.

You have associations, but you don't have Presbyteries, and you don't have one Baptist, you know, you don't have all the

Baptist elders in one area checking out the meeting records and reviewing the practices of other

Baptist churches in the area. So I think there are a few

Reformed Baptists who would like to be a little more accountable and a little more

Presbyterial in their system of church government, but I believe it would be encouraging if there was some move in that direction.

And I think that's one of the reasons I'm often critical of the Gospel Coalition, because I think they're very light on ecclesiology, on church order, and high concepts are nice, but there's some real practical benefits of being accountable.

And of course, let me say on the front end, this doesn't ensure orthodoxy or fidelity, it doesn't overrule total depravity.

We could talk about all kinds of problems in Reformed and Presbyterian churches, but just the presence of those problems doesn't, you know, doesn't invalidate the system of accountability, which we actually find in the

Scriptures. It's not something we've made up as far as we're concerned, and I'm sure the

Baptists and the Congregationalists don't think that they've made their system up either. Well, here in New England, where Jonathan Edwards used to be,

Solomon Stoddard, I don't know if it's his grandfather, what was his relationship to Stoddard, but Stoddard was known as the

Pope of New England. So these days, if I just consider myself, you know,

I don't know whether it's the line of the Roman Popes, the Avignon Popes, or the Conciliar Popes, what if I am the Pope of New England now, self -designated, and then

I don't have to worry about these other issues? Well, I think you would be a benevolent ecclesial dictator, a sort of a philosopher king.

So I'd say go for it. I'd say try that. Try it. Yeah, what would they say?

The cure to hedonism is to try it. It's fascinating. The other day I was looking at Hebrews, and I'm preaching in Hebrews 12, and he's basically saying, look out for other

Christians and help them, and this is not a race that you run by yourself, and he uses the word episkopos, to look out for, to oversee, and he calls even the congregation, and this is not my argument for congregational rule at all, but just thinking about church government, everybody should be an

Episcopalian, was kind of the subtitle to my sermon. It didn't go over very well.

Oh, really? Yeah. Well, that happens sometimes. I know. Brad, regularly

I've heard on Presbycast, you have taught Sunday school classes at the church you're at there, the

PCA church, and the ones that have played on Presbycast have been on worship, the doctrine of worship.

How do we go about worship? Give our listeners a little bit of kind of flyover philosophy on how do we approach worship and kind of what you came out of, the liturgy you came out of, and the liturgy you're in now, and why it's important, and the reason why

I ask this question is because I've liked your classes, and I also just got done teaching the end of Hebrews chapter 12, and he was talking about Zion and Sinai, and if you're going to go apostate, the only place you can run back to is

Sinai, and you're not going to be able to survive, so don't do that. But for us, we've come to Mount Zion, this great gospel, grace,

Jesus Christ, we have this relationship with Him, and we worship

Him, and we're in His family, et cetera. And then he says something very interesting. He talks about shaking the world,

Jesus is going to come back, and then he said, therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, everything else is shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe.

And you'd think this would be for maybe unbelievers, but he says, for our God is a consuming fire.

So in light of that, give me your update on worship, or your overview on worship, and why it's so important, and how you go about it.

Well, I can't remember the three or four Ps that I used in that class. Interbaptist is coming out?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I just saw the opportunity and took it. I guess it was sort of a joke for my own pastor, who at one time was a

Baptist, and actually was, I think he worked at Apron and Rogers Church, and he was actually a serial alliterator, if you will.

He always used his points. But I think one of them was the priority of worship, and I think that's especially, it's become apparent how important that is in these days of coronavirus, which we find ourselves here in 2020.

What we're missing is the corporate gathering of the saints together to worship, and what we've had to do is to strip away all the extra stuff.

We're not going to have Sunday school again any time soon, and we've canceled our Saturday men's group, we've canceled our

Wednesday night activities, but we work very hard to maintain Lord's Day worship, which we always tell new members and people who are inquiring and that sort of thing, that the most important thing we do every week is worship on the

Lord's Day. And everything beyond that is, I'll use a Southern term, it's gravy.

It's good if you can get it, and it can be helpful, but it's not the most important thing. So the priority of worship,

I remember when I was a Southern Baptist, the Sunday school material would say that our number one method for not just discipleship, but for making new converts, is

Sunday school or children's church. And they pushed all these man -made things as the main thing, and then they would devalue worship by having a contemporary service, and a young person service, and a service for the old people who are about to die at 8 o 'clock, where they sing a couple of hymns.

And that tends to devalue worship. So worship together on the Lord's Day, all ages and types of people together, using the biblical elements of worship, and nothing more, nothing less.

I think these days, when we have to choose carefully what we can do in church, and we can only do so much, and some of it has to be online and other, or in smaller groups is what we're doing.

We've got three identical worship services on Sundays, so we can get everyone there safely.

But I think it points to the importance of worship, but it also calls into question worship that's too complicated, or too technology -driven, or that's too tied to a building.

And we're learning some things, I hope, in these days. Brad, as you were walking through that, it made me think of a quote

I heard probably 25 years ago, and it was someone expressing their thoughts about the priority of worship and Lord's Day worship, where our

Savior, the Lord Jesus, calls us to worship Him with other Christians that He has redeemed.

And this particular author, I wish I remember who it was, said, you know, what would a church do if they canceled everything except Sunday morning worship services, corporately, and maybe some prayer meetings?

What if everything else was gone, and then would anyone show up, right? Because what about the

VBS, and what about the kids' program, and what about this, that, or the other? And some of those, obviously, are fine, but I don't think the

New Testament church knew anything about these other things. It was the issue, even wasn't private

Bible reading, although I endorse that, and I do that. But it was corporate Lord's Day worship, right?

Yeah, we always say, we call ourselves an ordinary means of grace church, which means we rely primarily on preaching and sacraments, and that's just mostly where it's at.

We don't think that every other, that other things are prohibited, but we do try to prioritize that, and it's easy to have, you know, what they call mission creep, or to become bloated where you've got this staff, and most of it has nothing to do with Lord's Day worship, as we see in some big churches.

You can have a church that has their own school, and all of a sudden, the school becomes more important than the church.

Any number of things can draw our attention away from the main thing.

Well, I'd encourage our listeners to go to Presbycast, maybe the archives, to listen to some of Brad's worship material.

I thought that was excellent. Brad, I think that mission creep, isn't that a song? Doesn't Radiohead sing that?

I think so, yeah. Okay, good. All right, I'm going to change things up a little bit here, and I'm going to read something, and the game is,

I read something, and you tell me from where it comes. What am I reading from? All right? It's just going to be a fun little thing.

If you don't know, that's fine. Nobody listens to the show anyway. It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin.

You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience.

We all did it. All of us doing that which we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it.

All of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose His temper and do away with a whole lot of us.

What was I reading from? Oh, I don't know. It sounds

British, but I don't know who the individual writer was. All right, well, that would be Eugene Peterson, Ephesians chapter 2, 1 to 3.

Okay. Oh, so that was his paraphrase. Okay, that was his paraphrase. There you go. I got it.

Okay, well, I'm sure some people have profited from some

Peterson things, but I'm not a big... It sounds like the living Bible to me, which I sort of grew up with, and don't miss.

We are about the same age, probably. How old are you, Brad? I think I'm 55. Okay, well,

I'm 60. You should have more respect, by the way. I'm 60. I grew up going to church, and we had living

Bibles. The one thing about the living Bible that we used to have, it had really kind of... It was hardback, but it had that kind of plushy cover.

I wonder... That was kind of a new thing, that squeezy, plushy cover. Did you have one of those?

No, I'm so young that I had a living children's Bible. Oh, yeah, you did.

I do remember that. I think my dad had one. It was green. And I do remember that padded cover, now that you mention it.

Well, of course, it's right to be critical on certain things, and we want precision. The Lord wants precision.

But I just think about some of the things I was taught as a Lutheran in a very liberal church. I still learned that the

Bible's God's word. God was triune. Some other things. So I'm glad that God took even that system and taught me a few things.

Let's see, what else do I have here in front of me? Tell us about what's your take on the whole

Revoice thing? I think you've got a show coming up soon, but by the time this plays, your show will have already hit.

So what's going to happen with the PCA and Revoice? If you had to fast forward five years, what do you think the state of all this is going to be?

Well, I'm not terribly optimistic, but also I'm not sure what's going to happen.

I'm optimistic in as much as I'm sure God's in control and He'll preserve

His church and glorify Himself. But as to whether we can trust men to do the right thing in every case,

I don't have a lot of trust in that, of course. I've been looking into it again because we are going to have a show next week, which that may be three months ago, depending on when you air this show.

But it's going to be with someone who's written a doctoral thesis on Revoice, and with someone who attended the first Revoice conference that we've interviewed before.

So it should be very, very revealing, and I think it's going to be very strong. But as I looked into some issues just today,

I was looking up some things. What struck me is how entrenched this

Side B Christian movement really is. There are a bunch of organizations that promote it, and of course

Side B, it sort of means, you know, it's okay to be a, quote, gay Christian, you just don't need to do the worst gay stuff.

That's my crude way of saying it, without being crude. And most, a lot of people in the

PCA don't think that's a viable way to go forward. That bringing, sort of chewing the meat and spitting out the bones of whatever gay stuff is, the idea that there's something good about that that we can glorify or accommodate, that's more than most of us can swallow.

But there is a faction in the PCA, and they would probably call themselves missional.

They would claim to believe the Bible, and I believe they do. They would be evangelical in many ways, but they have a particular bent towards the culture and concern for certain groups that they think are underserved, or certain demographics, or people who live in cities, or things like that.

That all seems to go together with this gay Christian emphasis.

And I'm not sure that the two sides can hang together long term.

And we're not going to learn as much this year about the prospects for that, because our General Assembly was canceled next

June in St. Louis. That General Assembly may be pivotal, and we'll see.

There's a report that's going to come out, a study report. It's been slightly delayed, I'm told.

But it'll be out in the next couple of months, is my guess. And it'll probably have something for everyone.

But I think the possibly destructive thing is, we'll have a year to talk about it before anyone can vote on it, or receive it, or cast it aside.

So, it's going to be an interesting year, coronavirus aside, and I don't know exactly what it will hold.

Brad, if we look at the landscape of evangelicalism and see what's happening,

I'm sure these kind of things have always happened with people, and there have been downgrades in England, and of course in America, and Europe.

What do you think we would call a group of Southern Baptists that left what seems to be a liberalizing of the

Southern Baptists? So, let's say the evangelical conservatives, they leave the Southern Baptists, and then the

PCA conservatives, the confessionalists, they leave, and they join with the Southern Baptist conservatives.

Could we form a new denomination, and if so, what would we call it? We'd call that a mess,

I think. I think that would be a quagmire, that's what you would call it.

Well, you know, the other day I learned something on your show. I didn't know about New Light Presbyterians, and so maybe this could be

Old Darkness or something like that. Yeah, I don't know. We're open.

I'm a term coiner, but I'm open to your suggestions. What about these churches that will say, you know what, we don't care, we'll accept baptisms.

No, no, let's strike that, because I know Presbyterians will accept certain baptisms. How about we will either perform believers' baptisms or infant baptisms, either one, and we'll just go for whatever you want.

Do you like that idea? No. I call them dual mode, and I mean, that's sort of like telling your wife you could take her a lever, you know.

I mean, have some conviction. And I think it actually debases baptism, but it also tells,

I mean, whichever way you come down on it, but it also says that you don't have a good grasp or a high regard for covenant theology, and we know that there's

Baptist covenant theology of two or three times. There's Reformed covenant theology. There are distortions of Reformed covenant theology, which leads to things like the federal vision, and so it's not easy, but I think

I like to say that as Protestants, we only have two sacraments, or ordinances, if you will, and I think it's kind of important that we're precise and strong on those, wherever we come down on them.

You know, Rome had seven, I think, and I guess when you had seven, maybe there was room for some diversity, but we only have two, and we should get those right.

Well, remember, I'm a no -co -baptist, so you're allowed to say sacrament on the show. Well, I just, you know, we, they're sometimes referred to as ordinances, things ordained, even in the

Reformed world. We sometimes use the word ordinance for other things, like preaching. Just ordinance in a more general, descriptive vein.

Okay, no, that's good. All right, well, Brad, we've got to wrap this up pretty soon here. Time is up. You probably have to go back to work, and so do

I. Has Scott Clark, our mutual friend, said anything to you behind the scenes in regard to how long he thinks it's going to take me to become a paedo -baptist?

No, believe it or not, you're not the only thing we ever talked about. Believe it or not.

Oh, that's funny. Well, you know, here's a good— It could have come up. It could have come up. Well, you know,

I normally sit in this office and record the shows by myself and laugh, and there's nobody here. At least

I have someone, you know, I have someone to laugh with, or you prompt me to laugh, so I'm glad for that.

Brad, I hope one day we could sit down and have some—I don't really eat Taco Bell. Last time

I ate Taco Bell, I threw up, got sick from it. Well, that's a sign of a weak constitution.

And I'm only getting weaker. My associate pastor used to say that I would go to India, because I have a pretty strong stomach.

I used to go to India just to kill the bugs there, but now we just Zoom people.

Brad, the website, do you have a website where you have some of the links and stuff so they can search easier than iTunes?

Yeah, you can go to presbycast .com. I think it is. We don't really do much with it, but if you get to our podcast page at presbycast .libson

.com, that's searchable for sure. It's not that hard. Find us on Twitter, and you can find the rest.

Okay, good. And, you know, for probably 10 years now, over 2 ,500 shows,

I've used the same intro, same music to introduce a show, and one of the things that I'm always convicted by, and that's basically not because I'm lazy, but I'm convicted by your show because you always have great bumper music, both to begin and to end, and it brings back a lot of memories when

I hear some of the music that you put on there. And I think sometimes I want to contribute to that, but I think it might be more rock and roll than Southern drawl.

Well, it's a method in our madness. We choose kind of some of the worst and most inappropriate

Christian music from across the ages, and it's meant to make the point that all music was once contemporary and that as silly as some of this stuff sounds, that we play what we now think is the greatest may also embarrass us in 10 or 20 years.

Of course, as Christians, we know that we do believe in sanctification, and we should hope in 10 or 20 years that we look back and think, well, why in the world did we do that?

And that may even apply to these podcasts. Well, it's interesting you think about hairstyles or clothes, fashion, and even contemporary music.

I'm not saying we shouldn't write anything, but I think you've really identified a problem.

Can these things stand the test of time? And even podcast, although on the preaching side,

I know when I go prepare a sermon to preach any place in the world, it's the same message, right?

I don't have to do any kind of cultural appropriation. Oh, I might say cricket instead of baseball if I'm in India.

But what makes Calvin's sermons on 1 Timothy so timeless? And that is because it's the transchronological,

I'm making up words now, omnirelevant word of God. So at least that will endure, right? Yes, yeah.

I mean, we talked about worship just briefly, but we should try to deculturalize our worship as much as possible, or maybe to transculturalize it.

In other words, if we sing psalms and historic hymns, we're actually reaching across time in a way to saints of the past.

And, you know, I don't think we want to do anything in worship that would scandalize those believers who came before us.

And I'm pretty sure that some of those, some of the apostles and great men of the past would not approve of some of the things that are being done today.

Well, Brad, your background might be similar to mine, but I know when I first was a Christian and I was really,

I hope I'm enthusiastic now, but I was brand new, very enthusiastic, wanted to invite all my friends to the church

I was attending. And then crazy things would happen, right? They didn't happen eight times out of 10, but a couple of times out of those 10, they'd be speaking in tongues or some kind of gibberish or some kind of weird things.

And I was always afraid, you know, shall I invite my friends and then they're going to think I'm a total whack job for these things that are done up on the stage slash platform.

But now the good news is we can just tell our people, and I regularly do. You know, we're going to have songs that praise the

Lord Jesus and his work for us. We're going to preach about the Lord Jesus, baptism, communion.

It's very similar. And if you transplanted a bunch of us into, you know,

Africa, the service would be pretty familiar. And I like that, and I know you do too. Yeah, that's important.

All right, Brad, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio. I'm glad for your ministry, and I always like to see what you post on Twitter.

I went for two weeks trying to be nice Mike Ebendroth and didn't do any kind of scuds. And so I think I'm done with that.

Ratings are low. Well, let me shout out to my partner, Rosby. And we don't actually call our podcast a ministry.

There may be podcasts that are, but we're basically friends who get together and talk about stuff and talk with people.

But one of the great things is we get to meet people all over the country and the world like you, so we appreciate that.

Well, I'm thankful for that compliment, even though it's my show and you told me that it's not a ministry. I said we didn't consider ours to be.

That means we don't consider yours. You have Bible teaching and sermons, and I'll call that a ministry.

Okay, good. Small M. Brad, thanks a lot. Thank you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth 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.