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Pastor Mike continues preaching expositionally through 1 Corinthians.
No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.
Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.
It was about ten years ago that the governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, you might know him as Jesse the Body Ventura, said this, organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak minded people who need strength in numbers.
About the same time, Ted Turner said this, Christianity is a religion for losers. You know, all unbelievers think that about Christianity. Now they might dress it up, they might be a little more sophisticated, but in the back of their mind, they're thinking it's for weak people, it's for people that need some kind of emotional crutch.
It's for losers. So I've got a question for you this morning. How can some people who hear this message of the cross, this offensive message where this deviant form of punishment that is usually held out for the deviant people in society, crucifixion.
How can somebody look at the Christian one day, every day, all the days of their life as repulsive and repugnant, but then all of a sudden say, it's no longer repugnant, but it is beautiful. How do you account for that?
How do you account for someone who looks at the cross and says, this is for losers and I'm fine and I'm good and I'll just be good and get to heaven that way and let it be. But then one day they say to themselves, I want to worship that God.
I want to worship that God. How do you explain that? Is it fate? Is it evolution? Is it chance? Is it free will? Is it smarts? They finally were smart enough to realize if I'd like my sins forgiven, I better believe in this.
What ultimately accounts for a person who looks at the cross as offensive one moment and then the next moment they say, it's beautiful. There's basically two approaches. One approach says it's something in a man or in a woman that says, you know what, I better believe that.
And at the end of the day, they say to themselves, I must believe. And there's another approach and that approach is the answer lies only in God's will. Which one of these are right? If you're saved, which one describes you?
I believe by myself. It's option one. Option two, I wanted to believe and God helped me believe. Option three, God gave me sufficient grace to believe because Christ died and I cooperated. And option number four, this is the right answer by the way, God brought me to Christ.
He did all the work and he even gave me saving faith. How can a gospel that is repugnant and repellent become beautiful in the eyes of its beholders? And the answer is we'll learn today from the text.
It's not in man. It's not in the world. It's not in Satan. It's in God's will. Let's turn our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter one. If you're a visitor, welcome today, you'll need yourselves a Bible. There should be a Black Pew Bible in front of you.
You probably have friends growing up if you're a Christian. What makes you the Christian and them not? You're smarter. You're wiser. You have more Iwana verses memorized. Is the answer found in you? By the way, I'm glad for Iwana verses memorized.
But is the answer found in you or is the answer found outside of you? And the answer from the text today we'll see in 1 Corinthians chapter one is the answer to who goes to heaven and who doesn't. It lies in the nature and work of the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit.
If you want a title for today's message, I called it in my notes, From Repulsion to Attraction. How do you look at the cross and say, I don't want to follow this Jesus to I will abandon my life to follow this Christ?
The answer is in you or the answer is in God. We'll find out today. If you'll jump ahead for a moment to 1 Corinthians chapter six with me, if you would, let's even ask the question when it comes to Corinth.
How can you take these kind of people who used to worship themselves and other people and then turn them into Christ worshipers, a crucified Christ worshiper, no less? Look at 1 Corinthians chapter six, verse nine.
He's talking about people who live lives like this as a pattern, as a characterizing force in their lives. There are these sins and they don't go to heaven. It says, do not to be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, 1 Corinthians 6, 9, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers.
He could have given other names for the list, but these were the pet sins in Corinth. How can you take these people who love these sins, who saw the cross as offensive, foolish, and now they see the cross as holy, precious, wonderful?
The answer is found in verse 11. Such were some of you, but you were by yourself saved. But you were, by your own free will, made a decision to follow the Lord. But you were better than the guy next to you and you were saved.
But the text here, even as we'll see in 1 Corinthians chapter one, but you were what? You weren't the active one, you were the receiving one. You weren't the actor, you were the recipient of that action.
But you were what? Washed. The answer lies in God. But you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God. If anyone in this room is a Christian, you are a Christian primarily and ultimately because God saved you.
And if anyone here is not a Christian, you are ultimately a Christian. I hear somebody snoring. Whoever's snoring better wake up right now. I actually hear snoring here at the church. Either they're snoring or they're clearing their throat, one of the two.
You can take that out of the tape. If you're not a Christian, what could ever make you a Christian? You? I know lots of people who have tried to make themselves Christians over and over and over. We're going to see in the text today that God is the one who must call.
If any of the Christians were ever going to be saved, it had to be God. If any of you are saved, it had to be God. If any of you have loved ones who you want to be saved, you will wait a million years until they reform themselves and come up with their own faith, or you will do what you know you're supposed to do.
You pray that the God who saves will save them. Now let's go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. The big picture here is divisions are in the church. Chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4. And Paul is saying, let's not follow people to cause divisions.
And he's going to say now in chapter 1 verses 18 through 25, if God saves, if he does it all, then why follow Paul? Why follow Apollos? Why follow Barnabas? You should follow God. If God is the Savior, follow God.
Unless God intervenes, there's no hope for anyone to get saved. And when God does intervene, there's nothing but hope. Look at verse 18. Let's have a little review. I counted the other day. I think we're about 18 or 19 messages into 1 Corinthians.
There are 16 chapters. You can do the math if you'd like. But we're spending extra time in chapter 1. We'll breeze by other chapters because the foundation will be laid. Verse Corinthians chapter 1, 18, for the word of the cross is to those who are perishing, we saw last time, foolishness.
But to those who are being saved, it is the power of God. The doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Someone dies in the place of another. Jesus the God-man dying in our place, being raised from the dead.
That cross word to unbelievers is just moronic. And it's always been that way. Verse 19, the Old Testament is quoted to confirm it. Paul, like Jesus, says, for it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever.
I will set aside. No man-made scheme of coming up with how do I get my sins forgiven will ever work. He asked four bullet point questions. Staccato kind of questions, machine gun style. Where's the wise man?
Where's the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? T .S. Eliot said, all our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance. All our ignorance brings us nearer to death.
But nearness to death, no nearer to God. Where is the life we have lost in the living? How did God make foolish the wisdom of the world? Verse 21 answers that question. Still in review, for since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, no human reasoning can somehow get you to know God and to have salvation.
God, he wouldn't have to do this. He didn't have to do this. But God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached, the God-man dying on the cross, to save those who believe. For indeed, verse 22, Jews ask for signs.
We know people like that today. And Greeks search for wisdom. But what do we give them? We preach Christ crucified, but we preach Christ crucified to the Jews' stumbling block and to the Gentiles' foolishness.
How do you dress up an execution? You've heard it said, you can put a lot of lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. And you can take soft lights. Do you ever see actresses and you see the picture of what they look like without makeup or actors, and you go, wow?
And then you see them, soft lights, beautiful matting, wonderful work with photography, and you go, that's pretty good. You take the cross that was reserved for deviant criminals. Jesus dies, certainly, as the Holy One, but in the kind of death that would be for deviant criminals.
And you can put soft lighting, backdrop, but you can't make it look any better. Jews stumbled over this idea, but Paul said that is the saving gospel, so that is what he preached. Listen to this from Deuteronomy.
And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he is put to death, you hang him on a tree. His corpse shall not hang all night on a tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day, for he who is hanged is accursed of God.
How do you take this death where God even curses that person who hangs on a tree and then say, that's my Messiah, when I'm looking for some political Messiah? And we realize that God the Father has punished God the Son, not for the Son's sins, but for our sins.
Gordon Fee, the great scholar said, it is hard for those in the Christianized West where the cross almost for 19 centuries has been primarily a symbol for faith, to appreciate how utterly mad the message of a God who got himself crucified by his enemies must have seemed to the first century Greek or Romans.
But it is precisely the depth of this scandal and folly that we must appreciate if we are to understand both why the Corinthians were moving away from it towards wisdom and why it was well over a century before the cross appears among Christians as a symbol of their faith.".
Isn't that interesting? We accept it as a symbol of our faith. There's a cross that hangs right up there. But for 100 years, the Christians didn't even do that. You can feel the scandal that went along with this crucifixion.
So back to my original question. If everyone sees the cross as offensive or foolish or somewhere in between or both, what causes someone to believe? How does anyone believe would be a better question?
And here's the answer, verse 24. Here is the answer. But to those who are the, what, called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
There is more than rejection. I'm happy for that. As a pastor, I'd hate it if I knew all the messages would only forever be rejected. God turns the light on. And look at that name, the called. What a name that is for Christians.
I like it a lot better than the lost, the damned, the sinners. I love that name, don't you? The called. Now, I meet people all the time. Oh, what do you do for a living? And I say, well, I'm a Bible teaching pastor.
Oh, I can feel their words pat my head on the, pat my head. Oh, that's nice. You just stay over there in West Boylston in that nice little suburb there. Oh, that's a nice calling you have. That's a vocation you have.
You're called to that. Well, that's what we say, but that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says this is something that God does. He calls. To the called people, the cross is no longer repulsive. It's precious.
If God has ordained that man's wisdom can't come up with the cross and how to be forgiven, then God better do something. And he does. God himself calls. But to those who are the called, Christ becomes the power of God and the wisdom of God.
And we call this theologically what? Effectual calling. When God calls, miraculous things happen. Now, what happens to the Jews? I'll give you the outline in just a minute. But what happens to the Jews?
They say, we want powerful signs, do signs and wonders powerfully. Jesus doesn't do signs and wonders powerfully. And they think Jesus is weak. God turns the light on. God opens the heart like he did for Lydia.
God says to these Corinthians and the Jews at Corinth, you used to think the cross was weak and despised and a scandal. You want power. You aren't going to get power. Then God saves the Jews and Jews look back at the cross and they go, what?
That's the most powerful thing I've ever seen in my life. God raised himself from the dead. There's power. The Greeks, they say, you know, we want wisdom. That cross is foolish. God does a work on the Greeks heart.
And then they look back at the cross and they go, how could the holiness of God, the love of God, the grace of God and the wrath of God all be reconciled into one? At the cross, that's wise. That's wise.
The Jews would think about the power of God in creation. Paul says, think about the power of God in recreation. Now, here's what I'd like to do today. I'd like to talk a little bit about this calling.
And then I'd like to look at three passages that talk about that call, the effectual call. What is the effectual call? Right there in verse 24, who are the called? So let's talk about the call and then let's look at three passages today.
And I think you'll be riveted when you see these passages and very encouraged, especially if you know unbelievers. Let's talk about the call first. The call has two components to it. What is the call?
The first call is the external call. I'm going to give an external call right now. If you're not a Christian today, you must believe the gospel. I'm calling you to faith. I'm calling you to say you'll die one day and stand before God and then you will be undone unless you have a sin bearer, Jesus Christ, the risen savior.
I'm giving you the call. That's the first call that's found in the Bible. Does it sound familiar? When Jesus said, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That's called the call.
It's a general call. It's given to everyone and it's given verbally. It's given with decibels. It's given with an auditory action. Paul did it. God is now declaring to men that all men everywhere should repent.
Certainly, the creation says there's a God. Your conscience says there's a God. But the two kinds of calls that are out there, the first one is external. We tell people to believe. Repent and believe.
This call, by the way, this external call can be resisted. Stephen was preaching and he says, you men are what? Stiff-necked. And you preach the gospel to your friends and they go, forget that. You know what the stiff arm?
You know what a stiff arm is? Somebody's going to try to come and tackle you and you just give them one of these right up in the jaw. Wham. You preach the gospel and people say, forget it. That's the general call.
It can be resisted. But there's another calling that's found here in 1 Corinthians 1. It's called the effectual call, the irresistible call, the invincible call, where when God calls you, now not externally, although it is through preaching, but internally, the spirit of God changes you and he will not be stopped.
God acts on the person on the inside and they respond. Why is one person saved and another lost? It is God who makes the difference. Remember, men and women in their natural states are corrupt, blind, depraved, unable to believe.
But when God does something to the heart of a person, that person responds. You say, no, I don't think they really respond. I think something else has to happen and they have to cooperate. When let's let's think about creation and then recreation.
When God creates a universe and says, let there be light, what does he say? Let there be light. And what happens? God's kind of up there tapping his toes. And I'm hoping lights free will will kind of go along with me and cooperate.
And so it'll all happen. No, God says, let there be light. And there's light. And same here with the effectual call. When God says it's time for Lydia, the pagan worshiper, to believe. Let there be light and the light goes on.
That's called the effectual call. Every year we go to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and sometimes we walk across it. They have all these huge fences and video cameras because people try to climb up and jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and kill themselves.
There's all kinds of, if you're going to commit suicide, please call this number. There's documentaries about people jumping off. I remember one guy, he finally climbed up over the railing, jumped off.
And he said, the second I jumped, I realized that was the wrong thing to do. He lived. Most don't live. He lived. He broke his neck. And then he tries to tell people now don't commit suicide. Now, you can run up to a person.
And if my family and I were there and we saw somebody climbing up, we could shout out, don't jump. We beseech you. Life's not that bad. Eternity's worse if you're not a Christian. Don't do it. And we could probably convince people not commit suicide.
But there is no way in the universe that you can ever go up to a casket with a corpse in it and convince that dead person to live. So how can anybody ever live? God must call. If you're a Christian today, you're a Christian because God made you a Christian.
You said, oh, I believed. Yes, you did believe. But you believe because God saved you and gave you the gift of faith. Let me show you three biblical passages that talk more about this. Let's go to the first one, John 10.
We're going to look at John 10, Luke 14, and John 6 today. That's my plan. We'll see how far we get. We're talking about the call, the effectual call. The general call is believe. Some people don't believe.
But when God works on the inside through the ministry, the spirit of God, through the preached word, you will believe. And Paul says, you have received the grace of God. Why fracture the church when you're following God?
Now, let's look at John 10 and let's talk about this call. Three biblical passages that should help create wonder in your heart if you're a Christian and hope for you if you've got unsaved loved ones.
If you're not a Christian today, then this should all drive you to one point. There's only one person that can save you, and that is God himself. And you ought to cry out to him, Lord, have mercy upon me, the sinner.
Look at John 10, verse 15 and 16, and then we'll look down at verse 24 and following as well. Jumping into the passage, John 10, 15, even as the Father knows me and I know the Father and I lay down my life for the sheep.
I have other sheep which are not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will what? Hear my voice. You might want to underline that and they will become one flock with one shepherd. Jesus says, I have Jews in my flock and I'm going to be bringing in Gentiles, too.
And they will hear my voice. Go down to verse 24, please. The Jews then gathered around him and were saying to him, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you're the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them.
I told you and you do not believe the works that I do in my father's name. These testify of me. But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep. Here it is again, just like in verse 16. My sheep hear my voice and I know them.
They follow me and I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand.
I am the I and the father are one. True or false? Every person heard these audible words. My sheep hear my voice. Is that what he's talking about? Everybody could hear it was kind of far away. He was by the Sea of Galilee.
It was kind of windy and there was other people talking and some of the people heard and some of the people didn't hear. Is that what he's talking about? No, he's talking here about this internal hearing.
My sheep hear my voice because I've called them from the inside. The wolves don't follow Jesus. They heard these false teachers heard the words of Jesus. They didn't follow goats. These other unbelievers.
They heard the words of Jesus and they didn't follow only the sheep followed. Why? Because the Spirit of God gave them the internal call and they followed.
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 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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