Lessons We Can Learn About Preaching & The Word Of God From The Reformation (Part 3)

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 today we have part three of our special message. And I was doing a

Zoom conference with Vineet and some men over in India the other day. India's time change is a little different.

They have a half -hour time change. So if it's 8 a .m. here, it's like, I don't know, 6 .30

p .m. there or something. So it's a half -hour difference. And this is part three, lessons we can learn from the

Reformation when it comes to preaching the word of God and preaching Christ. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Mike, have you ever preached through books like Nehemiah and encountered a long list of genealogies?

And how did you, you know, a few years back,

I was told that when we preach Old Testament narratives, we just tell the story.

We just outline the story and tell the story. And then it becomes more challenging when you come through to genealogies.

And I'm not talking about genealogies like Matthew 1 genealogies, but Nehemiah or numbers like the counting of, you know, the tribes.

So what do we do there? Because we want to be faithful and at the same time, we want to preach

Christ. Well, you just skip over those genealogies in Nehemiah and talk about leadership. All right, good question.

Team building, I know. OK, here's kind of what we do and then I'll answer the question. So at church on Sunday, Lord's Day, I said to myself quite a while back, why is there more scripture reading at a

Roman Catholic church than most Protestant evangelical churches? And I thought, I'm not going to be outread by Roman Catholics.

So we have a New Testament reading and an Old Testament reading that have nothing to do, that aren't related in terms of my sermon.

Right. So if my sermon was going to be on Romans 3, I could have somebody read

Romans 3 or I could read Romans 3 and that would be scripture reading. That's true. But we have something different.

And so we're reading through the Old Testament chapter by chapter. And so last week was chapter 11 in Exodus.

Very fascinating verse, by the way. The Lord Yahweh so discriminates between Israelites and the

Egyptians that not even a dog would bark, not even an Egyptian dog would bark at the

Israelites when they left. I thought that was just like such a wild verse. Anyway, Exodus 12 is going to be the

Passover. There are certain things in Exodus that have, you know, genealogies.

And by the way, whenever there's a long genealogy for public scripture reading, because we will read, we read all of Genesis, we're reading all of Exodus, we'll just keep going.

Maybe you men know him, Pradeep Tilak. I think he's from Chennai or someplace in the south.

I have him read because Pradeep got his Ph .D. at Southern. He's one of our elders. He's an Indian and he's a good pronouncer.

So what would I do? I would make Pradeep do it. Here's how

I frame it to our people, though. And this is what you're really asking. I like to say this when I'm reading a genealogy, because this is inspired, right?

It's in the Bible for a reason. The Holy Spirit put it in here with an iron pen, as Calvin would say.

I say to the people, why are genealogies in the Bible? And before I read this genealogy here, dear congregation, is what

I do with genealogies. I like to look at names that end in EL because that's short for Elohim.

They have the name God in them. I like to look at words that end with AH and that's from J -A -H or Y -A -H from the four letter name of God, Yahweh.

So I like to look at those. God knows all these individual people. I like to say that.

And there are things in the genealogy that are important for us. So what are those things?

And depending on the genealogy, I'll give them the reason. So, for instance, it's an easy one. But for the sake of this time here,

Genesis chapter five, I might phrase it like that. But what I would do before I read Genesis five is

I would say, remember what Satan said in the garden? You're not going to die. Surely you're not going to die.

And then I would read Genesis five with emphasis and I would say things like this.

So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years and he died.

And then I would keep reading. So all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years. And he died and I would keep reading.

So all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years and he died. And then

I would teach to the congregation and he died and he died and he died and he died. And the first lie of Satan was there's going to be no judgment of God.

So I would think of something like that so I could help the people as I would read through. And then

I would talk about how God knows in particular these people. If I'm in Nehemiah, I think that the problem with preaching something like Nehemiah, because and by the way,

I have not preached yet. I'm starting next week Nahum. I've never preached

Nahum. And Nahum, the way it's written, it's this fast like this horse that's running.

It's one hundred years after Jonah's proclamation to Nineveh and Nineveh repented.

And a hundred years later, they are back to exact same things. And now God is going to judge Nineveh. And we see that in Nahum.

I say to myself, how can I be true to the text? But also, what can I say knowing that Jesus has been raised?

I have to read Nahum in light of a risen savior. And so it'll be easy because sometimes it's, you know,

God is against Nineveh. And then I'll say, well, how do we know God is not against us, et cetera. So I think the answer to the question is you have to be very, very careful.

I would not make any excuse for genealogies. I would try to read them.

They have self -pronouncing Bibles online that you could look at. And so if you've got a big section with names, here's what

I do. And this is going to sound really stupid. But when I pronounce a name and if I think it might be wrong,

I just act like it's right. Because I'm not trying to I'm not trying to snow anybody.

I'm not trying to fool anyone. I'm just trying to pronounce these names as best I can. And the Lord knows. And so I'm going to read every one of these things.

We have been reading through the Old Testament in the mornings. And I got to Genesis 38 and I'm like, you know what?

Is this appropriate for public declaration on a Lord's day? And Onan spilled his seed on the ground.

I read it. I didn't look up. I just kept reading. So what are you going to do?

Right. This is this is important. So if I say, well, genealogies aren't important and they're just a bunch of words, we can't pronounce them.

You could say a lot of things, but it's going to be incumbent upon every preacher to make sure that people realize that genealogies are important, even if they don't know why.

Even if they just think, you know what? God knows all these people by name and he knows you by name as well.

And while you're not in the genealogy, your name is written in the book of life. That's how I would do it.

Vicky, is it OK if I have a question? Yeah. Yeah. All right, Mike, I really appreciate how you started talking about how we can portray

Jesus as judge and we need to make the move towards portraying him as advocate to our preaching and our ministry.

And also you highlighted pietism and piety, the difference between that. So my question to you would be when these convictions, when

God was creating them in your heart, what were the top three changes that you had to make in your preaching when you started moving towards a law, gospel distinction and things like that?

Good. Thanks for the question. I started preaching the book of Hebrews, oh,

I don't know, five years ago or something. And I began to think to myself, you know, there are differences between faith and faithfulness.

Right. So we want to encourage people to be faithful. That's true. But when you read the word faith, we all too often translate that into our minds as faithful.

So if you go, for instance, to Hebrews 11, which is called the Hall of Faith. But we make it into the

Hall of Faithfulness by faithfulness, Abraham. And of course, you could look at chapter 12.

Don't kill me. Sleep with my wife. She's really my sister. Chapter 20, the same thing. Genesis 16.

I don't care what God says about the seed through my wife. Here's Hagar. Abraham has a lot of faults.

And so I began to think, you know what? It's by faith. It's faith in the Messiah. Right. Haven't we all struggled and thought, how could

Samson be in that list? And the answer is not found in Samson's life, but the one he trusted in.

And so I began to see faith and faithfulness distinctions. And that's why the just shall live by faith.

And so that was the first kind of realization. Then I began to see how he talked about who Jesus was in chapter one, two, three.

He's better than the prophets, better than the angels, better than Aaron, better than Moses, better than, you know, the old covenant.

And I started to see, here's who Jesus was. Then I got cancer and I realized that while I can externally do things and I, by the grace of God, am faithful to my wife and I, you know, don't steal church money and I preach every week and I could be, you know, counted on to take care of my family, etc.

But it revealed not an unrighteousness in me, although I have several areas of unrighteousness, but a self -righteousness.

And so here's why I'm telling you that. When I realized I was much weaker than I thought and my self -righteousness was real, no righteousness,

I thought, you know what, I'm hurting. I have cancer. I'm concerned.

I'm anxious in front of people. I feel like I present as strong and confident.

But in this little office of mine downstairs in my basement, Lord, help me.

I don't know what to do. So that made me think, you know what, how do

I, what do I need preached to me in times like this where I'm hurting and struggling and not very strong?

If I'm the pastor and I'm now realizing I'm a lot weaker than I thought, what do

I do? I need the Lord's balm. I need to understand that, you know, this is a

God who loves me, even though I have this and loves me in this. And I thought, you know what, that's how

I ought to be preaching to the people. I see it in Hebrews. Here's who Jesus is. And then

I think, but I need that balm applied to my life. And many times, men, when

I meet an older person or somebody who's really struggled in life, I'll say to myself,

I like them. I like the way they act. I like the way they're tempered. I like how kind they are and how they deal with things.

I think a lot of that comes with trials and suffering and difficulties and hardships as God chips away our pride and our self -righteousness.

And we realize, you know, the older we get, we're even more reliant on him because we realize how sinful we are and how self -righteous, at least

I happen to be. So I think the answer to the question is, that was a perfect providential storm of God in my life to make me realize objectively, here's what these struggling

Christians needed as they received the book of Hebrews, right? They're getting persecuted and their houses are being taken away.

They're on the run. And then it was solidified in me subjectively where I could actually see that.

So then I began to think to myself, and here's the last thing, and I'll pause. Why am

I the preacher trying to preach sermons on the Lord's day to the

Lord's people with mainly unbelievers in mind, trying to root them out, trying to say, you know what, if you're here today and this, that, and the other versus how can

I try to encourage the saints of God with here's who Jesus is. And in light of that, here's why you should respond with obedience.

And of course, at the end of my sermons, I regularly say, and if you're not a Christian, if you're not trusting in the

Lord today, I offer freely the Lord Jesus, come take water without price, et cetera.

You don't have to do anything in order to become a Christian. God saves sinners. God saves the ungodly.

You simply need to trust. You ought to repent. And you know, whatever I say, I'd say that, but I'm mainly preaching to Christians now and trying to give them encouragement in who

Jesus is. And even if it's a passage that I'm preaching through sequentially, that's heavy law, I'll still get to the balm of the gospel later.

There's nothing wrong with law preaching for Christians. It's only wrong if you leave them hanging with only law in that sermon and then don't give them the balm of the gospel after or before, however it comes out in the passage.

So anyway, beware. If you start to preach the book of Hebrews, it will change your life. Be very, very careful.

Amen. Mike, I have, sorry. You have a, sorry, just a million dollar question,

Mike. Yeah. That's the last one for me tonight. If you give believers so much gospel of free grace in Christ, won't they just do what they want?

I see the smile that you have there. Well, they will, and they will want to obey in honor of the

Lord Jesus. This is something that's happening in evangelicalism, and it happened back in the

Reformation. The other day I thought, you know what, I have John Owen volumes and I'm looking over at my library and I have the 16 volumes set by Banner of Truth.

I think Crossway's coming out with a new 30 volume, updated English. I have the seven volumes on Hebrews and then one biblical theology.

So that is 24 volumes. And the joke is always, you can get John Owen sets pretty cheap and they're in always good shape because nobody reads them.

So I'm starting to read eight pages of John Owen a day. And if I live long enough, when I'm about 65 in five years,

I'll have read all of John Owen. Why would I read John Owen? Well, I got four volumes done now.

And so I just keep reading eight pages a day. And I have a little slogan, eight pages of John Owen a day keeps the

Richard Baxter's away. So most of you know, Richard Baxter, he wrote the book,

Reformed Pastor and Banner of Truth published that. Sadly, he's not a reformed pastor.

And sadly, he began dealing with men in the army and he was a chaplain.

And so the men in the army said they were Christians, but they acted like unbelievers with prostitutes and other things.

And so what's the response for a pastor or a chaplain to people who are lawless?

Well, the answer is giving them the gospel. The answer is not giving them the gospel plus new laws to teach.

So volume five of John Owen is a volume on justification by faith alone, sola fide.

There are no antecedent conditions to faith. That is, there's nothing you have to do in order to believe.

Faith is the response to the gospel. And volume five is a refutation by John Owen of Richard Baxter.

Calling out Richard Baxter's false view of justification by faith alone. No wonder justification by faith alone's deviations in Baxter's life caused him to go around and visit his people in Kidderminster, England.

So often when you read it, you'll think, I never could go visit my people this much. Well, it's good to visit people, although if you have little children and you're always visiting other people, shame on you.

But it's not right to go visit people because you think I've got to make sure they have these extra laws to keep.

He, Richard Baxter, did not understand that although the gospel is free and although the gospel means that you can't be any more righteous in God's sight, the gospel should motivate people to obey.

And Romans six anticipates that very thing. People could take advantage of grace, but they should not.

And many times they're so captivated by who God is that they don't. So we don't need to fall into what's happening in evangelicalism now with a final justification based on your perseverance.

You may not to mark it down in your mind's will. Perseverance is not a condition of final acceptance in God's eyes.

It is never a condition. And I don't care if Piper says it, Shriner says it, Moo says it. I don't care who says it,

Richard Baxter. It doesn't matter. You are justified by faith alone. There's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

And it is simple to use Reformation language that good works are fruits and evidences, period.

They are not conditions. They are fruits and evidences. And if anybody comes along and they try to give you this, well, this is why we say it this way.

And this is how we say perseverance and condition and all these conflated things. Let's just go back to simple.

It's simple to say. Why can't these men, who I'm not calling out as heretics, but why can't these men just say fruits, evidences?

Because I think deep down, although I can't read motives, if you give people just the free gospel, they might take advantage of it.

But that's not my responsibility, whether they take advantage of it or not. My responsibility is a law free gospel.

That's my responsibility. Does that answer your question? Amen. Yes, Mike.

Thanks. Online at bbcchurch .org