How to Remain a Spiritual Pygmy (Part 5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Mike Abendroth and I am your host and glad to be your host. Today, we're going to go to part five on how to stay spiritually mature.

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And it has been a good theme. I want you to be mature. I want you to grow. I want you to move from a young child in the faith, little children, as John would say in chapter two, move to a young man, and then move to a spiritual father.

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We want you to grow. Actually, that's why we're on the radio. You can grow by discernment. You can grow by focusing on Christ.

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You can grow lots of different ways, but we want you to grow. Listen to what John says in 1

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John 2 12 -14. I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake.

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And so when you are a little child in the faith, you know your sins are forgiven. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the

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Bible tells me so. And you know for the glory of Christ Jesus, the Spirit of God and the Father, you have been forgiven.

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It exalts their name to forgive you. That's all you know. You know very little. You're just a child in the faith.

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And that's fine as long as you're new in Christ, but we want you to grow. And then the next set of growth chronologically is down in verse 13b.

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I'm writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. And so how do you overcome the evil one?

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It's through the Word. It's down in verse 14, because you are strong, young men, and the

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Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. You know the Word of God. You're not a child anymore just knowing the

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Father, 13b, knowing your sins are forgiven for his name's sake, 12b, but you have the

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Word of God dwelling in you. And then he says in verse 13, I'm writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

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And I'm writing to you, fathers, verse 14, because you know him who is from the beginning. You know him and you know him well.

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And so what we're after is we're after growth. And remember when you were a kid, maybe you had one of those growing beans or you were measured by your door and your mom would mark that now you're up to three foot and you know, am

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I growing? Because you can't perceive your own growth because it is so subtle. Similarly, when

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I'm now shrinking, I have a couple bad discs in my back. And so instead of being six two, I'm probably six foot and a half.

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That's it, one half inch. I'm shrinking, but it's imperceptible because I see myself every day and don't really notice it.

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So how do you know if you're growing? Well, if you look back in 10 years, if you're in Christ 10 years,

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I hope you see growth and I hope you see discernment. I hope you see a greater appreciation for Christ Jesus.

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And so today we're talking about how to grow in Christ Jesus, how to mature.

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And we're up to, I think number 11. Last time we were talking a lot about, if you want to grow, you need to have focus upon the objective certainty of Christian truth found in the scripture so that you never put a rank scripture below experience.

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You want to do it the other way around. Scripture trumps experience and you gauge the truth by the word of God, not experience.

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And it's very important to do that, but we're moving on. There's lots to talk about, but I always talk about that subject.

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And so, by the way, what will you remember? You will remember what your teachers are enthusiastic about and what they always talk about.

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So that's what we want to do is we want to remind you how to stay spiritually immature, number 11.

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And of course, if you're just tuning in today and you haven't caught the first five episodes of this topic, I have not forgotten that we want to present every man mature in Christ along with Paul in Colossians 1 .28.

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And the key to all this is Christ Jesus. And that was one of my earlier ones.

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And so I have not become a moralist. I've not become a how -to person. Christ Jesus is at the very center here.

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And as we move from the center, there are some other helpful things on No Compromise Radio that I could help you with.

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Number 11, you can stay spiritually mature if you put anything in your mouth that calls itself

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Christian, that you can put anything in, that you put anything in your mouth that calls itself

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Christian. If you think about little babies and they begin to do the inchworm and the army crawl and they can turn over, what do they do?

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They will crawl over and they will see a needle. And if they left to themselves, they'll put that needle in their mouth.

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That's almost how they figure things out. Let's put a marble in my mouth. Let's put a raw egg in my mouth.

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Let's put that dog food in my mouth. I know one kid in my family growing up would sneak over and put dog food in his or her mouth.

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But I don't want to say who it is because maybe that person's in ministry. Yum. So what show was it?

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Some science fiction show that the guys were eating dog food. That was all that was left. Alpo, back on No Compromise Radio, you will see children and it is a sign of immaturity to just go put things in your mouth.

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When you learn to grow up, you don't put those things in your mouth. You don't put things in your ear. Why? Because that's immature.

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You're gonna just hurt yourself. And so you have to be careful what you put in your mouth. And that is a sign of maturity. What should

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I put in my mouth and what should I not put in my mouth? And so if you listen to Ephesians chapter four, verse 14, you're going to think to yourself, it's the same thing when it comes to a growing

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Christian. You can't say to yourself, well, I just go to the Christian bookstore that for most of the time is more than just a ministry.

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They're a business. And so they'll sell things that aren't good for you. They haven't been reviewed. They just know that they make money.

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And they will say, well, we sell other good things. And so we'll sell arsenic, but that's okay.

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So when you go in and you say, I'd like to have my marriage worked on a little bit. And T .D.

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Jakes seemed to be a guy who likes couples to work on their marriages. And Joyce Meyer thinks it's about time to quit crying and time to man up or woman up.

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Maybe that sounds good. That's what I need. But you need to know how to discern and to say,

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T .D. Jakes denies the Trinity. And Joyce Meyer believes that Jesus was born again in hell.

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And I better watch out. But I ought not to put that in my mouth. And you say, well, they call themselves a Christian.

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Well, the angel, Satan masquerades as an angel of light too.

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That doesn't prove anything. Listen to the emphasis of growing up and maturing in Ephesians four.

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As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves.

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Just think of an ocean. And carried about by every wind of doctrine. By the trickery of men.

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By craftiness in deceitful scheming. Going into a bookstore and buying a

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T .D. Jakes book is just like going over and taking a dog bone and having the baby put the dog bone in its mouth.

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It is not good. It is not right. You go and take a sharp pencil that's laying there or a toilet cleaning brush and put it in your mouth.

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It's the exact same thing. You say, well, you know, I really, the

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Shack book is really good and it's helped a lot of people. Well, it's maybe helped people become more idolatrous because it's got a wrong view of God, a wrong view of the

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Spirit, a wrong view of man. I don't want you to be children tossed to and fro anymore.

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I want you to be a mature person. And that's what Paul is trying to do here. Lincoln, the commentator said, children contains a double contrast to the mature person.

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Not only do silly infants contrast with the mature adult, but the plural of children also contrasts with the singular of the mature person.

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I want you to not be at the receiving end of words like this in 1

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Corinthians 3. Paul said, and I, brethren, could not speak to you as spiritual men but as to men of flesh, as to babes in Christ.

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I don't want you to be tossed to and fro. And just imagine that agitation. You are at the mercy of the waves, no progress being made.

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That is not going to help you in your spiritual maturity when the wind comes and blows here and there and swings you around.

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I remember when I was growing up as a teenager, I'd take the canoe out of the Missouri River lots of times.

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And if the wind really came abruptly down onto the mighty mow and you were in a canoe by yourself and there was no one in the front, that wind would swing the front end of the canoe around and it would just take you where it wanted to take you, that is the wind.

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And so you've got the current of the Missouri River and then you've got the wind. And so the only way you could maneuver is to turn around and then what was the back now in essence becomes the front of the canoe and paddle that way.

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Yet even on some occasions I couldn't get anywhere because it was so windy and I actually had to jump out of the canoe, grab the rope and swim the canoe back to shore because it was so windy.

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You don't want to be the person who is vacillating and unstable, tossed here and there because you aren't able to discern.

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You need to grow up and what you'll do to stay immature is read anything and anyone who calls themselves a

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Christian. No, I want you to be anchored by the word of God. I want you to not just spend your money on books because you like the cover or the topic.

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You don't want to just listen to any wind of doctrine. People say, well, you know,

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I pride myself, I don't really want to know much doctrine, Jesus is my creed.

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Well, I guess that sounds good on the outside but when you dissect it and take it to its logical extreme, it's not going to work because Jesus taught doctrine,

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Jesus was doctrine, Jesus sent his apostles to expand the doctrine and to tell us more doctrine and so when you have the song, don't know much about theology, that's not a good thing.

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I do not want you to be tricked by people and to be gullible and if you don't know the word of God, you just assume, well, if they said they're

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Christian, that's fine, there are people who will manipulate you. There are people, listen, 1

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Timothy 4 says, but the spirit explicitly says that in latter times, some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.

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By means of the hypocrisy of liars, the demons don't come and talk to you, I am a demon.

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No, they talk through people, they talk through liars, they talk through hypocritical lie speakers seared in their own conscience.

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As with a branding iron, what are some of the things that these hypocritical lie speakers say as a mouthpiece for demons?

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They forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods, which by the way, marriage and foods,

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God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. I do not want you to fall prey to these wily coyote types of preachers.

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Men are women because they will use sleight of hand. Sleight of hand there in Ephesians 4 is cubia, in throw of the dice, it's trickery.

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It's a dice trick, except it's with your soul. And so don't say, well, he says he's a

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Christian, therefore I'll read it. That just shows immaturity and it will keep you immature. And so why don't you say to your pastor, pastor, help me read some good books.

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I'm gonna read one book a month for the next year to learn and grow, help me. And then if your pastor has any clue, he'll say things like, okay, let's start with the attributes of God by Pink.

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Then I want you to read knowledge of the Holy by A .W. Tozer. I'd like you to read the sovereignty of God by Pink.

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I'd like you to read, and the list will go on and on and on, things about Christ Jesus and his great work.

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That's what you need. We don't want you to fall into their games and be deceitfully taken away by a

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Benny Hinn or someone like that. Charlatans who contradict the word need to be refuted.

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Well, let's keep moving. We're No Compromise Radio Ministry. Today we're on chapter five or chapter six, show five or six on how to remain spiritually immature.

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Here's another way to remain spiritually immature. Number 12, compare your pastor to Christian celebrity pastors.

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Well, as a matter of fact, just do TV church and get the best preaching money can buy. Listen to what

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Weirsbe said. It is sinful for church members to compare pastors or for believers to follow human leaders as disciples of men and not disciples of Jesus Christ.

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The personality cults in the church today are in direct disobedience to the word of God. Only Jesus Christ should have the place of preeminence,

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Colossians 118, end quote. If you have an internet access, you have access to the greatest preaching pretty much in the world.

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You can find the greatest preachers of the world because they have video ministries and audio ministries.

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And I praise God for that, that you can have access. But to then compare your pastor, and maybe you're out in the middle of Vermont someplace, and here's this faithful man that nobody will ever know about who may actually have more rewards in heaven than another well -known pastor, you need to be careful not to compare because those men are not gifted in the same way.

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Your pastor might even be more godly. Now, we don't know the motives of men's hearts, and so you want to be careful that you don't continue to compare your pastor to a celebrity.

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And you say, well, Mike, you're such a nobody, and maybe people at your church are saying, well, that wasn't a very good sermon.

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I need to go home and listen to MacArthur to actually get fed. Well, by the grace of God, A, I don't think that's true, and B, anybody can tell you

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I don't preach as well as John MacArthur, but I preach from the same book. I have the same

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Holy Spirit. And as the Puritans used to say, a lot of people preach the Bible better than I do, but nobody preaches a better Bible because it's the same

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Bible. And so, by the way, if you're not a pastor, if you're a pastor, A, that should encourage you, and B, if you're not a pastor, you should be encouraged because you can still evangelize.

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Maybe you're not the evangelist David Brainerd was. I doubt you are, but you still have the

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Spirit of God, and you have the Great Commission, you have Christ with you, and lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. That is a great promise for your evangelism.

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I had Carlton Truman on, Carl Truman for a while, Carlton Truman, Carl Truman for a while, a while back, rather, and he said this in regard to this topic.

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The American church reflects the culture. Ministries built around individuals, around big shots, churches that focus on God -like guru figures, all of them pointing to one door.

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I have lost count of the conversations I've had with church people anxious to tell of who they heard at this conference, of which person they corresponded with, of how this opinion or that opinion would not sit well with this demigod, and is therefore of little value, and of course, of how anyone who disagrees with or criticizes this chosen hero must, of necessity, be morally depraved and wicked.

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Carl has a very unique way of writing, and it's a very true, it really cuts. One man said, some

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Christians lean too strongly on certain leaders, seemingly aligning themselves more with earthly leaders than the

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Lord of the church. See, one of the good things about having a pastor locally, with a small enough congregation that you can actually know the pastor, is that you'll say to yourself, that pastor is a sinner.

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That pastor is frail. That pastor doesn't always live up to what he preaches. He wants to, and he confesses it when he doesn't, but he is a regular sinner saved by the grace of God.

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He is, some days having his bad days, some days he feels good, some days he's short with people, some days he's very patient.

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He knows who he is in Christ, he's a forgiven man, and he really has a desire to proclaim the full counsel of God.

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And that's exactly what happens. And so when we have a person who comes in through the video tube, you don't really see their life.

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Now, of course, you know they're sinful, you know that they are, in fact, not perfect, but it's very, very difficult to put in right perspective these celebrity personalities.

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Now, to be faithful and to give credit where credit is due, most people that I know, for instance,

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I know John MacArthur, I know John MacArthur personally, see, I'm throwing his name out. John has never struck me as a guy who has tried to promote himself and to catapult himself into a personality.

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If you ask him, what did you expect the Lord would do in 1969 when you took over Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, it would not be, you know, millions of study

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Bibles, millions of books, millions of tapes, millions of this, millions of that, millions of all the others.

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He wouldn't have thought that at all. Here's what Truman goes on to say, joking aside, there is one other aspect of American culture which is perhaps the most obvious at this moment in time, the cult of the individual celebrity.

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Now, celebs in the vacuous hoo -ha that surrounds them seem to be a cultural universal, one that scarcely distinguishes

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America from Britain, but a closer examination reveals that there are significant differences between the way celebrity functions in the two cultures that are instructive.

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In Philadelphia, football is about as Donovan, is all about Donovan McNabb, and the fortunes of the team are intimately connected to him as a person.

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Of course, you know, this is dated, but that's all right. When the Eagles play the Cowboys, yes, it is the Eagles versus Cowboys, but even more so, it is

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McNabb versus his old dream, his own teammate and now rival Terrell Owens. And this is replicated across sports,

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Jordan, Johnson, Shaq, AI, A -Rod, et cetera. The cult of the individual personality as opposed to the cult of the institution seems deeply ingrained in the

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American sporting world. He said the same is true in politics and the same is true in evangelicalism.

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I'll never forget what Mark Dever said at Together for the Gospel, I think a couple ago, which must've been four years ago now.

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He said, we think the cult of the celebrity is bad, but we're going to use your desire to want to hear certain preachers because we have a message that needs to be told about Christ and the gospel, and so we'll use that against you to get you here.

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So there's nothing wrong with looking up to someone, having a mentor, being inspired by someone. Paul says you're to imitate me.

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Occasionally, he will say that and he means imitate me as I imitate Christ. He says that in another passage.

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But what we do at the local level is we say, Lord, thank you for bringing this pastor who will faithfully preach the word and try to live out what he preaches.

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Thank you for this Christ -centered pastor that you've given us here, because many of you know what it's like.

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I get emails all the time, maybe not every week, but close to it. We live in a part of the country or the world where there are no good

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Bible -teaching churches. What shall we do? So if you've got a good Bible -teaching church, you ought to be thankful to the

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Lord God Almighty and not compare, well, he's not like John Piper. He's not like Mark Dever.

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He's not like John MacArthur. He's not like Alistair Begg. He's not like R .C. Sproul, and the list could go on and on and on.

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Because what I think that reveals in you if you do that all the time is discontentment.

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It is a sinful thing, lack of contentment. It is grumbling, in essence. Of course,

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I listen to Sinclair Ferguson and S. Lewis Johnson, but I listen to them because they point me to Christ Jesus.

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They point me to the word of the living God. And so if you want to have as an adjunct for your spiritual diet, preachers that you can listen to on the radio and on the television and on the internet, not many good ones are on television.

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Well, I guess we've got satellite now, so some are. But that's what I want you to do. That's a good augmenting, but you ought not to compare yourself to pastors on, compare your pastors to these celebrities.

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Well, let's see what else. How to stay spiritually mature. We've got three minutes to go. This is number 13, don't serve.

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Don't give yourself to ministry. I could ask yourself the question, what's your ministry at the local church?

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How are you serving Jesus Christ by serving other people, whether it's in the nursery or the building or the building grounds or teaching or any other kind of ministry?

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What are you doing? Josh Harris said in his great book about, what is it,

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Stop Dating the Church. You need to read that book, by the way, Stop Dating the Church. Nice little book, small one, page 60 to 61.

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Do you want to know what's harder? Do you want to know what takes more courage and what will make you grow faster than anything else?

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Join a local church and lay down your selfish desires by considering others more important than yourself.

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Stop complaining about what's wrong with the church and become part of a solution. That's good, he goes on to say, we shouldn't even wait to be called on to exercise our spiritual gifts.

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If you would like to be mature and maturing, you ought to serve in the local church. If you want to stay immature, then don't serve.

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Just let others serve you. It's like the quote in the Sunday Express in London, most people wish to serve

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God, but only in an advisory capacity. Christians serve.

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If you see Jesus Christ, the great example that you have, he was a server, he was a servant.

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Remember Jesus in John chapter 13 with the men as he washed their feet?

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Jesus went around serving. He was always doing things that were well -pleasing to the Father. He loved the

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God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength and loved his neighbor and it showed. It wasn't just theoretical.

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And so if you'd like to grow in leaps and bounds, become busy in the work of ministry. You'll realize how difficult it is.

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You will pray more for your leaders. You will be more thankful and you will have the focus taken off of yourself.

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Complainers and backbiters, you will notice much more because they'll stick out like a sore thumb.

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And you'll begin to do that less and less because you'll realize ministry is difficult. It is very difficult.

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And when you begin to minister to other people, and some people aren't thankful, some people couldn't care less, you give help to some and they don't respond rightly, then you really have a gut check for your motives.

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Why do you do what you do? Why do you minister the way you minister? You minister for the glory of Christ Jesus, not for what works, not how you can gain something.

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I was listening to Chuck Swindoll a while ago because he's locally here on WVNE in the mornings and he said, how do you treat people that can offer you nothing, can do nothing for you?

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I thought, that's amazing, but that's Christian ministry. That's Jesus Christ serving people and ministering to them who could offer

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Jesus nothing. Here's the creator of the universe and he with compassion and love served them.

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So on No Compromise Radio today, we've talked about remaining spiritually immature. The last one we have is just never serve.

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So don't you wanna serve the King? Don't you wanna be found busy working for the

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King of the universe in light of his great forgiveness and his great Savior Christ Jesus? I think of course you do.

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Write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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

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