Deceivers Top Ten

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

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

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

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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

Mike Abendroth. Michael Lee Abendroth is my name, Steve, but I think I wanna be known as ML from now on.

Like ML Carr. See, that's the one thing I don't like about it. If you had to do ML, then

I automatically think of a Boston Celtics player. Was he not North Carolina Charlotte player?

He might've been. I think I liked him then. That sounds right. Well, yeah, because they were kind of the Cinderella in the tournament, right?

So that made them exciting. Was it Blue Pastel? No, that wasn't. No, Blue Pastel is

North Carolina. I don't remember what their colors were, but I do remember them being the underdog and kind of exciting in the tournament.

There's a thrilling tournament this year, glad Florida won. Won it all. It's super.

I'm so happy for the Gators. I'm a Gator hater, actually. Steve, I saw the article by Andy Webb.

It was printed March 21st of this year and the Aquila Report republished it.

It's called The Deceiver's Top 10 Tips for Making Sure You and Your Family Have a Miserable and Fruitless Experience in Church this

Sunday. Wow, those would be good to know. You know what, Steve? It sounds like a Puritan title where, you know, it's a whole paragraph is the title.

Yeah, they're really good at that. He has a subtitle, How to Make Sure that Your Church Attendance Doesn't End Up Damaging Your Friendship with the

World. Ouch, ouch. Well, I mean, isn't that what

I think a lot of churches are designed to do? Steve, let's talk about this today, but before we do that, have you been making any gospel -centered desserts from the

Gospel Coalition blog or anything like that? Every dessert I make is gospel -centered until it hits my gullet.

I have no idea what's going on in evangelicalism, but it makes for good radio. Gospel -centered desserts, gospel -centered, you know, gospel -centered snowstorms?

We have gospel -centered... Well, like donuts, you know, like there's a, it's the donut, man.

There's a hole in the middle of your heart, you know, that Jesus has to fill up through transubstantiation and fusion.

Last... Because there's a hole in the middle of your heart. Okay? Okay. Steve, let's use

Andy's top 10 tips, and then we'll just go off on our own.

Okay. Right, so we'll admit ahead of time. How abnormal. Yeah, that's right. We'll admit ahead of time that these aren't ours, that is, the statements, but the comments henceforth would be.

I must include this disclaimer. Any of the comments that are not reflective of No Compromise Radio shall be disregarded.

What about Phil Johnson gonna get sued by Rodney Howard Brown? You see that because he posted that video?

I did see that, and you know, to be honest, I can blame Rodney Howard Brown. That is one of the funniest videos with that Benny Hill.

I didn't say Benny Hinn, but I wanted to. Benny Hill music in the background. Well, I mean, he has his own comedy show, no doubt about that.

Okay, so top 10. Okay, number one, try to stay up as late as possible the night before. You know how many times

I've heard this comment? You know, somebody says, well, I can't make Sunday school. Why not?

Because I really just can't get up that early. That early? It's like 10 o 'clock. Or, you know, somebody says, well, where,

I say to them, well, where's your child? And they say, oh, you know, he or she stays up, watches

Saturday Night Live, and then plays Xbox, you know, or whatever. They're usually up till three or four in the morning.

It was a creature double feature. Well, it's the one night of the week they get to stay up late. Well, Steve, what we're not trying to do is tell people in a legalistic, cultic way.

Speak for yourself. I'm trying to be legalistic and cultic. What time you should go to bed on Saturday night.

8 .30. It does strike me oddly, Steve, that if someone was gonna go on a hunting trip on, let's say,

Saturday morning, or they're going to golf on Saturday morning, they were gonna go into, you know, they're gonna go downtown on Saturday morning.

Friday night, they've got everything ready, right? They get the gas filled up with, the car's filled up with gas.

They've got their golf clubs out. Everything's ready. Oh, if I wanted to do something on Saturday morning, I usually stay up till 2 .30,

3 o 'clock the night before, you know, so that I'm a zombie the next day.

Well, this is a true story. Once, Pastor Steve, before he was a pastor and he was just Esteban, he was,

I think, hearing me preach or someone else preach, and he'd worked a couple of double shifts or something. I think you were in seminary.

And you just went and stood up in the back of the sanctuary so you wouldn't fall asleep during the sermon.

But you didn't say, well, I've got to sleep in because I worked two doubles. No. Well, and I mean, that's something I learned during the academy because Sheriff's Academy, the one like felony, you know, to use a legal term, the one thing you could not do, it was not acceptable in any way, shape or form was to fall asleep during class.

So if you felt yourself getting, you know, kind of a little wobbly and some of the lectures were not all that stimulating, you'd go to the back of the room.

And so I just thought, okay, this makes sense. And if I was working an extended shift or something like that and I was zonked during church, then

I would just get up and stand up so I could pay attention, you know, because it's hard to fall asleep when you're standing up. If you can fall asleep when you're standing up, you are really tired and you shouldn't be anywhere.

But yeah, people need to obviously think a little bit about Sunday and go to bed at a decent time on Saturday night.

Steve, regularly we have Saturday night preacher problems, and that would be, we can't sleep.

And for whatever reason, and I'm not attributing everything to some spiritual warfare in this present darkness, and Frank Peretti's quoting things in my brain subliminally.

Yeah, but if I get zero sleep, one hour sleep or eight hour sleep,

I show up. And that's not just when I'm preaching. That's all the time because the

Lord Jesus Christ, who's King of the church, who ransomed the church, who purchased the bride, calls out, calls his people to come worship him on Sunday.

And so that's what I do. Get together, doesn't matter if you're in a building or not, get together with other saints and sing the praises of the risen savior.

I'm too tired. I just, I don't understand that. Well, just one more level, Steve. I have to,

I have to kill the big boss. And it's harder. This is pretty easy. Imagine, this is an easy analogy,

I think, for people to get, people who are sitting on the edge of the seat going legalist, legalist, legalist. Just imagine, you know, it's

Monday morning. I couldn't go to work. Why not? Too tired. I stayed up too late

Sunday night. Your boss would love that, right? So positively, we want you to just get ready on Saturday night, what the

Ebendroths do. Everybody's got to get their clothes out and the kids have their stuff and socks and shoes and ironed and shine shoes and all that.

We're just all ready. Bibles are out. We have breakfast planned. We have lunch planned. So there's no chaos because nothing says chaos on a

Sunday morning like, I can't find the socks. Where's the diapers? There's no. And the more kids you have, the more prepared you need to be on Saturday night, right?

I mean, there's just so many, so many things that go wrong and it's just multiplied the more time, the more children there are involved.

Number two, from Andy Webb, Deceivers Top 10, tips to make sure you basically get dogged at church on Sunday.

Do nothing to prepare your heart for worship. Steve, you got to prepare your heart. I'm just praying for my heart.

Well, you know what though? I will say that there's something to that. If you just show up, you know, having left the vehicle where you had your

Led Zeppelin tape up, but you know, at 11 or whatever, you know, and you're just rocking all the way in and talking about whatever kind of worldly thoughts you're having, you just sort of show up.

It isn't going to be quite the same for you. You know, it's just not going to be. Steve, what

I like to do when I get up on Sunday morning is I like to grab a cup of coffee, sit down with my

Bible, and I know, along with the rest of the church family, what the scripture reading will be that week because we're just going sequentially through books of the

Bible. And so this last Sunday, it was Revelation 22. And so I got up and read Revelation chapter 22, started thinking about things and how great this worship service was going to be.

Why? Because I'm reminded of the truths in scripture. I get to see the face of God, Revelation 22, for I have a curse imputed to me, and then

I consequently sin, and yet there's no curse in heaven, all because of Christ. And I was getting fired up.

My heart was getting ready, right? And if you're not a pastor, how about if you get up, read scripture, and pray for your pastor, pray for the sermon, pray for the worship team?

Well, exactly, and I think, you know, if you show up with the attitude of joy and gratitude and everything from the beginning, you know, how much better is that than sort of having to wait till two -thirds of the way through the sermon and all of a sudden go, oh yeah, oh yeah,

I am a wretch, and oh yeah, you know, it's so much better. You just get so much more out of the service, and I agree with you.

You know, I'll get up, and a lot of times, I've got my coffee and my iPad, and I just go to the chapter, because I know what we're going to be reading too, and you know, it's a great way to start the day, so.

Steve, I think some of the best advice I've ever received, and so now we'll give it as a team,

No Compromise Radio, just begin to pray, Lord, I am so selfish, I am so self -centered,

I'm a consumer, I'm the one who, I, I, I, I. Help me to be focused on the

Lord Jesus this morning and His church. Help me to go to church to worship, that is to serve and to give honor and to give reverence due to His holy name, and to help other people instead of going to get, which we do when we go to worship services.

We get fed, right, by the preaching of the word, and we get emotionally stirred through some of the music and stuff, but I'd like to go to serve.

I'd like to go to worship. Help my heart for that. So wait, you're trying to say that maybe our goal should be when we go there to love the

Lord our God will our hearts, soul, mind, and strength in our neighbors, ourself, that that should be the purpose.

I mean, if we have that kind of attitude going in, I think we'll just get a lot more out of it. Number three, the deceiver's top 10 tips for making sure you and your family have a miserable and fruitless experience.

Arrive at church late and leave church as quickly as you can. I don't wanna say this is a pet peeve, but I have mentioned that we need to start some kind of ministry for people who are consistently 15 to 20 minutes late, some kind of secondary function, like we can greet all the late people out in the lobby and just kind of, hey, so glad you're late.

Well, but my watch says. It's all subjective. And it's funny, because last

Sunday in Sunday school, I did mention, because we're talking about love and loving within the body of Christ, and I go, you know what?

A lot of times I hear people say that they don't have any friends or they don't feel loved or whatever, and I notice that those are the people that leave immediately.

It's like the school bell at the end of the day, you know, where everybody jets out. Well, as soon as the closing prayer's done,

I mean, they've got their sprinting shoes on and they're done. Well, they might have something else to go to, but regularly it would be nice to fellowship afterwards to talk about what maybe they've learned about the

Lord and rehearsing the gospel with other folks. Steve, I'll do a confession right now.

I'll enter in the confessional booth. Could you please close the curtains? I'll hear your confession. The confessional at No Compromise Radio would be nicer if the donate button was more frequently used.

But anyway, we would get up to go to worship services at Grace Church, and we had a bunch of little kids, and I would be ready on time, because I got stuff ready and I was concerned for myself.

My wife would regularly be late and then come to find out I'm the big dope head.

I thought I was the righteous one who could get ready on time because the fruit of the Spirit is punctuality, of course.

That's the 11th fruit. Don't ever say fruits. It's fruit, but I can just disobey by doing this stupid thing.

But Kim was the one getting all the kids ready, and so she self -sacrificially and lovingly and worshipfully got all the kids ready, and then so she was last.

It dawned on me, if I just help my wife with the kids, she'd probably be on time too, and why wait to get to the church building to serve other people?

Maybe I should serve my wife by helping my kids get ready in the morning. Preach it. I can't feed the kids.

I've got my tie on. My shoes have just been shined. So this goes back to dads, you wanna be good leaders.

Let's get everything taken care of on Saturday night. Let's pray for the pastor. Let's pray for the worship service.

Let's have everything ready for breakfast. Let me help feed the kids. Steve, for me, if I just get up 15 minutes earlier,

I don't have the rush of time, I'm gonna be tired one way or the other. So just get up and get things done.

I mean, there's the crazy thing, right? If you can't get there on time, get up earlier.

But what I notice, though, the most of most is that the people who generally, this isn't always true, but a lot of the people who are late have some kind of coffee cup in their hand.

It could be from a variety of different places, but they have time apparently to stop for coffee on the way to church, but.

Steve, I think it relates to the Masonic symbols that Dunkin' Donuts might have, in my opinion, compared to Pete's Coffee.

Masonic, all right. I just got some Pete's Coffee in the mail today that I showed you. That was nice of the listener. I don't know how to detect possible poisoning, but we'll give it a shot.

Yeah, I'm a little dubious that there would be poison in there because none of our no -co listeners would ever do such a thing.

Steve, what I think I'm gonna have to start asking is don't buy it at a store, package it up, and send it to me.

I'd like you to give your credit card information to Pete's headquarters. Then if they ship it, I know it's safe.

Oh, man. Remember that Seventh Day Adventist guy who said, just send us all your guns?

And then after he got corrected legally because you can't send guns in the mail, just sell your guns, send us the money.

Yeah, just sell them all. Number four, schedule something you really want to do immediately after church.

Now, what he means by that is, what? Is it okay to go out to lunch afterwards?

Absolutely. Is it okay to do lawn bowling like John Calvin? Yeah, I think what he's saying, though, what's something that you would have to set up at an appointment?

Well, okay, here, let me give you an example. Just a random thought came to my head. Pick a movie that you want to see and a starting time that's like 20 minutes after church ends.

So you have to bolt in order to get. Steve, I think that's right.

Jingle your keys, fidget, and do everything you can to indicate it's time for the service to end.

If all else fails, writes our author, pinch the baby and pretend to be taking her out of the service. Motion to your family to follow you.

I mean, I could just imagine this. It's one of those times where Mike's kind of looking and he goes, oh, you know what?

I've got just a little bit more. Oh, we can go over, you know? And you're just sitting there going, no, no, no.

We've got to get out of here. We've got to take our kids to the Little League game or we've got to fill in the blank.

I mean, nothing says I'm here to worship the Lord like I can't wait to get out of here. Number five, try to participate as little as you possibly can during the service.

Well, you know, the number one way that people fail to participate is singing. I mean, you know, it's so interesting to me.

I'm redeemed how I don't really love to proclaim it. People just sit there kind of folding their hands, biting their tongue.

I don't want anybody to hear me sing. Okay, how about if we just, as an act of worship, sing?

I'm not playing Angry Birds. I'm checking cyberhymnal .com. And if you think

I'm playing Angry Birds. Steve, what I have to do is when I have my iPad mini that I preach from,

I turn it off for several reasons. It goes to airplane mode for several reasons. One, I don't need any notifications while I'm preaching.

Yeah, that would be bad. Veterinarian 1 .30 in the afternoon. I always schedule it too close to church.

And secondly, I don't want to be able to quickly check a text or an email because I need to be focused on other things.

Yeah, well, I would have some genuine problems there because like you would show up, if you sent me an email, you know, it would be like in my

VIP thing. So it would show up and kind of like block part of my screen. I'd be like, Avondroth, get off my.

Now I feel bad. My self -esteem is much lower because I don't have you in my

VIP. How does that affect your self -esteem? I feel bad now because I had to admit it.

And that made you feel bad. When you feel bad, I don't even know there's a VIP thing. I do this though,

Steve. I tell the kids. He's a total Mac geek. They can't, my children, they have eye touches, eye pads, eye mouses, whatever they have.

Eye chokers, whatever. Yeah. Choke chain. Eye everything. People want to have those wrist watches, the eye watch.

There's an eye choke chain now. You just look down. Anyway, I don't let my kids bring their electronic devices to church on Sunday because I don't want them to be tempted.

Bring a real Bible with paper, onion skin paper. Yeah. Yeah, it's okay.

Number six, get angry at perceived slights and stay angry for the rest of the service or the rest of the week if possible.

I mean, can you imagine the pastor gets up there and he thanks some people who were involved in some activity that you were also at and he leaves you out.

And so you're just sitting there stewing during the whole thing. Or Steve, you could identify with this one because I know

I can't. After all, you told the pastor about Aunt Mabel's operation last weekend.

He didn't mention her in the announcements or the congregational prayer. And that, what's her name? You know she was giving you the stink eye about your skirt.

And that what's his name should know that sitting by himself right in the middle of the row your family sits in is rude and inconsiderate.

I mean, you know, with regard to the prayer requests and the prayer that accompanies the scriptural reading, the pastoral prayer,

I have to admit, I'll just say it right now as miserably as I can.

I'm a human being and I forget things. We try,

I try to write things down, I try to print them out if I remember them or whatever, but sometimes I forget. Maybe some of it,

Steve, is your theology because there'll be a newborn and everybody's excited and celebrating a new member to the church family, but then you just give me all the information about the baby's really unregenerate and there's no additions to the church because they're not saved yet.

We've had a new viper added to our brood. But that is hard.

There are so many new babies being born around here, which I honestly rejoice for that fact, but it's hard to get their names down.

I mean, can you imagine if we're around for, you know, you and me, if we're around for 20 years now,

I mean, the church is gonna be huge just by natural growing up. Seriously, yes,

I know that's true. Number seven, don't take notes or discuss anything related to the sermon or Sunday school.

Steve, why would you recommend people take notes during a sermon? Well, I can give you several reasons.

One is you will be a lot less likely to tune out. You know, we can all like kind of wander during a discussion, let alone during a sermon.

But the second thing is if you really want it to, if you want the word of God to impact you, the pastor has an outline for a reason and part of that reason is he's trying to make a point.

And so if you wanna get the point, one of the ways to get the point is to take the notes. Steve, if you're falling asleep, that wakes you up by taking notes.

If you have a bad memory, then you take notes because now you've heard it, you write it, you see it, you can go back.

If you're a dad and you don't want to come up with a complete new program for Bible study with the family, why don't you just take good notes and then open up the

Bible and then talk about the passage? Well, and it really does kind of help you learn.

Like you said, I mean, repetition is one of the keys to learning. And so this is a form of repetition, so that's good.

Good, all right, we've got a few more to go. Number eight, pack the rest of your Sunday full of diverting things.

Now, I don't know, maybe this guy's more of a Sabbatarian than we might be, but I think if you worship

Sunday morning collectively as a group, I think that's as a group collectively, corporately in communion.

And then Sunday night, if you rest in the afternoon, watch a basketball game, shoot a couple hoops, do

I care? No, but I think what he's trying to say is if the activities kind of overcome the whole idea of it being the

Lord's day, then maybe you're just doing too much. I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt. I'm not a Sabbatarian, but I do tell the kids, let's try to get our homework done on Saturday so we don't feel that rush of homework to get done for Monday morning by doing it on Sunday.

Hey dad, can I stay home tonight from Sunday service? Because I still got homework

I need to wrap up. Which leads us to number nine, make sure you only attend the worship service in the morning, the morning worship service.

Yeah, I try to go to the Saturday night service too. Oh, you're so bad. You're so bad.

Well, here's what I would say about Sunday night services. They're not very popular anymore with commuter churches versus community churches.

It's very difficult. I would say we have that experience here. People drive a long way and it's hard. But one of the excuses that I don't like is when young parents say, well, we got these little kids and they're on a schedule, they have to go to bed and all that.

That's why we, the Ebendroths, had a schedule six other nights of the week. So if you break the schedule one night a week, the kids just fall in line.

I don't revolve the world around my kids. The kids go to Grace Church on Sunday night.

The kids go to BBC on Sunday night and then we go home and then we go to bed. That's just what we do. See? Okay, 30 seconds, 60 seconds left.

We've got one to go, Steve. Do everything you can to make sure that the other members of the congregation remain strangers to you.

Well, part of that would be bolting. The other part would be not moving around. So the service is over and you just kind of look around like,

I wonder if anybody's gonna come talk to me. Steve, we don't have that greeting time at our church where you go find someone else, but there's always those people that never go greet others.

They just stay in their spot. It's not because they're in the middle of the pew row, but you come to me versus seek out people.

Well, some people are anchors of the congregation, therefore they don't have to move. Oh, okay. I'm like an anchor.

Well, and the reason we don't have that fellowship time anymore is because we don't have time for it. We're very structured.

We have to be in. That's right, we have no time for fellowship. I think if you're too busy to have no time for fellowship, then we must be too busy.

Well, we just got a lot of time constraints like we do right now. See Mike Abendroth, Steve Cooley, No Compromise Radio, Tuesday guy at nocompromiseradio .com

or info. See you then. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. 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.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.