Racism, White Privilege and CRT (Part 2)

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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

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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.

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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 today we're doing another Facebook Live, Ben Mercedes is helping me out, and by the way, thanks

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Ben for all your help with No Compromise Radio. If you like the videos that we have now, the little two -minute videos that we put out on the

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No Compromise YouTube channel, that's Ben's handiwork. Ben, actually, you made it into American Gospel as well, that second one.

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I saw your name on the credits. I will say that if you need some wedding videos and all that other stuff, he'd be a good one to call if you like the quality of the work here.

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So, Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. If you want to order the book Sexual Fidelity, just order the book online and I'll send you a free copy of Things That Go Bump in the

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Church, so that will be through September. One of the things I think I'm going to do at the church here soon is have some men's conferences, men's meetings.

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I want to talk about sexual purity and pornography and temptation.

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So many people deal with this. Of course, I can't think of anybody

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I know who doesn't deal with sexual temptation, but how do we work through it in a biblical fashion where there's hope, where there's the power of the gospel?

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So, maybe we'll videotape those and put those up as well. I do think there is a pandemic in the church, and it has nothing to do with COVID.

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I think it has to do with pornography. That's the real pandemic. So, maybe that'll be the title.

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I have no idea, but I want to make sure we put some hope into that as well. So, just a couple things that might be coming up here on No Compromise Radio today.

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If you want to make a comment on Facebook Live, and I see the comment, if you ask me a question in that comment section,

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I'll try to give you an answer, unless it's too controversial.

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You know, in the old days, I just would be controversial because it would sell. Controversy sells. Now, who cares, right?

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I'm 60 years old. People sometimes ask, could we pray for you in any way, shape, or form?

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And the prayer would be, if you don't attend the church here, the prayer would be that I just would finish well.

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I'm 60. I don't want to have any kind of major controversies or improprieties or blow out of ministry.

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I just like to be able to finish well. So, who knows that'll be, when that'll be? 10 years from now,

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I hope I'm still preaching. Can you imagine, could we be doing No Compromise Radio in 10 more years? That'd make 20 years of No Compromise Radio.

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I think I originally started it for several reasons. One was because I have lots of thoughts about crazy evangelical stuff, and instead of jamming them into sermons on Sunday, let's focus on Christ on Sunday, and then

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I at least have an outlet now to tell you what I think. So, last show, we talked a little bit about discrimination, favoritism, partiality from the book of James, James chapter two.

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And of course, we've got all these liberals, and that's really what the social gospel is. Remember, if you want to boil everything down theologically, you'll be helped if you remember law and gospel, not just for this problem with social justice, social gospel stuff, but in all kinds of other areas as well.

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So, law is, do this and live. God gives us commands. He wants us to obey.

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And then the gospel is, God, the Son, has done this in your place, and He's paid for your sins in your place.

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And so, do and done. And if you figure that out, law and gospel, it'll be a good way to view all kinds of problems, including the social gospel, which is all do, right?

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Anytime you hear, well, it's so systemic, and we can never get rid of the stain, the stain of racism can never be extracted, then you automatically say they don't understand law and gospel.

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It's all law, and that's what liberals do. It's all law. It's just a disguised

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TED Talk without the cool lighting. Speaking of cool lighting, there's this orb here in front of me.

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It looks like it's the sun, but you can't see that, but I can.

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Ben's hiding behind that, so I don't know. Are you playing any games over there? Call of duty or anything?

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No, just on the feet. He's just on the feet, okay. Maybe he's going to start texting me questions. So anyway, when it comes to all this, remember law and gospel.

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Remember, and of course, law reflects the nature of God. There's nothing wrong with law, but if you'd like to please

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God by doing the law, you better do it perfectly. Therefore, you're going to need

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Jesus, who was born of a woman born under law, that He might redeem us, right? So law, gospel, you need to have some good news, and the good news is

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Jesus is the Savior of sinners, and He cleanses all kinds of sins, and He eradicates every type of sin because His death at Calvary was great.

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I guess I could put it this way if we want to talk a little bit about this. Jesus's death on the cross was great enough to overcome adultery, fornication, all kinds of sexual impurity, gossip, slander, self -righteousness, ungodliness, unrighteousness, blasphemy, idolatry.

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Just keep on going. But Jesus's death was not great enough to forgive, cleanse, and then empower people who have shown partiality, discrimination.

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What are we talking about? That's why if Jesus isn't involved in a discussion about Jesus involved in this topic, then forget it.

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So here's what happens. You've got a bunch of evangelicalism, a bunch of evangelicals talking about racism from critical racist theorists who are pagan, ungodly, not believers, and they use the same nomenclature, the same language, the same talking points with the same definitions, and no wonder there's no good news because it's coming from an unbelieving system.

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Crazy. There's an old punk rock song, and the theme is, the lyrics are,

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I'm not crazy. You're the one that's crazy. Institution. My brothers,

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James 2, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism.

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The Lord Jesus is involved with this, right?

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The glory of the Lord Jesus. And so I want to make sure, as we talked about last

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Facebook Live, do we have any questions yet? Still on record. So James gives a little illustration.

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He's really good at this, by the way. He, the way he writes, it's, you feel like you're there. You think that you're in the room.

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Listen to what he says. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, so he's starting to set this up a little bit.

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You got these two people, literally gold fingered. You got a gold fingered man.

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He comes in. You got somebody with kind of shabby clothes. Somebody walks in with,

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I don't know, Armani suit, and he's got a Rolex watch.

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And what else do you wear? Some, I don't know, some $500 shoes. Does Stephen Furtick wear $500 shoes?

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Does he, Ben? What are those shoes he wears? This guy walks in and then there's somebody who walks in and it looks like and smells like they're homeless.

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What do you do? By the way, it was 30 years ago, almost. Kim and I were newlyweds and she had this kind of white couch that I inherited when we were married and it wasn't white, white.

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It was kind of a little off. It was, I don't know, Berber kind of carpet look. I don't know. And I was teaching

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James 2, this very chapter. And that night we had a homeless guy that was invited to come to the

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Bible study, come into the Bible study, and he was a car mechanic. And so homeless car mechanic.

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And you can imagine all the grease and dirt on his jeans. And we had,

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I don't know, 25 people in the small little living room of that house. I think the house was 1 ,100 square feet. Wish I owned that house right now.

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It's worth a lot of money. And he, we have folding chairs, right? Seriously, if I would have been going to, so if I would have gone to somebody's house and I would have been all dirty,

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I would have sat in a folding chair. But this guy, Denny, he comes in and he sits on the white couch.

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And I thought, Lord, this is my sermon illustration right here. Somebody comes in shabbily dressed.

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When do you ever say shabby? And he sits on the white couch.

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Well, what do we know about these two guys in James 2? Are they believers? Doesn't tell us.

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Do they attend regularly? Doesn't tell us. Do they have friends that are elders or deacons?

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It doesn't tell us. And the text says in verse three, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, you sit here in a good place while you say to the poor man, you stand over there or sit down at my feet.

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Here's the thing. It's so crazy, but it's true. It happens. Donors, big shots, the ones with the cash.

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This is what we do, right? This is how we act. And James knows that because obviously the

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Lord knows it. And maybe you could just say, well, you know what? I gave the poor guy a choice.

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You stand over here, sit down at my feet. The insidious nature of sin.

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Well, I guess maybe what if we did this? What if John the Baptist walked into your church service? Where would you put him?

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Overflow room? Jesus calls John the

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Baptist the greatest man ever born of a woman, right? And where would we have him sit?

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That's really a good question. It says in verse four, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

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And the answer is yes. So today on No Compromise Radio, we're just talking a little bit about judging people externally, judging people, discriminating, showing partiality.

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We want to make sure we don't do that. I think we're prone to do that. So we want to be very careful.

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Remember, you think about people this way. They're either in Adam the first, unbelievers, or they're in Adam the second, believers.

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That's how we think of people. We have to think of people in addition as image bearers of God, right?

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Made in his likeness and image. Men, women, both image bearers.

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Young people, older people, image bearers. Rich people, poor people, image bearers. How do we treat image bearers?

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But the focus really has to do with making sure we do this through the lens of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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We don't want to show discrimination. And by the way, I don't want this passage to be robbed from me by a bunch of crazy critical race theory people.

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Um, you ought to listen carefully when people are now saying, you know what?

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Anything involving critical race theory. That's what Al Mohler, I think he just said it. We're not going to have at our school.

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But there are professors at the school that teach it. What are we doing? Why is that?

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This should not be happening. You want to have a degree in critical race theory.

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That's up to you. It's a free world. But I don't want it at Southern Seminary. I don't want it at Southeastern.

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I'm not going to, um, uh, let it affect and infect what happens at Bethlehem Bible Church, where I pastor, where I am right now.

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Because once that gets in there, uh, the goal or the end game isn't we all get along and love one another and we do all the one another's together.

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That's not it. It's a divider. And so when you think about unity and you think about this, those things don't exist together.

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Listen to Leviticus 19. Do not pervert justice. Do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

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So here's how I see people. I see people, I guess I could say Jew or Gentile, but most people I know are

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Gentiles. I see them as in Adam one or in Adam two. I see them as believers or unbelievers.

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I see them as humans. There's one race, right? There's not two races, not five races, not anything else.

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And so James goes on and says, listen, and you can hear the appeal. My beloved brothers, has not

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God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?

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Okay. Why'd you tune in today? Maybe this is why you tuned in here. It's worth it.

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When you want to solve racism, discrimination, partiality, favoritism issues, you need to talk about the glory of Jesus and election.

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Predestination. Really? Yeah. Has not God chosen those that are poor? We're going to talk about the sovereignty of God in election.

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Show me CRT people. Show me intersectionality people. Show me white privilege people. Show me white microaggression people.

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Show me systemic racism people. Talk about the glory of Jesus and unconditional election. I know, crickets.

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And therefore I reject and stiff arm everything they have to say. I would rather listen or watch a

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Munsters episode. I don't know why last night on YouTube, I was looking for something and it popped up, you know, the things that scroll underneath the making of the

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Munsters. I would rather watch that. What time do we have?

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I've got plenty of time. I'd rather watch a Munsters scene with, what's his name?

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Who was Butch somebody? Dan Patrick was, I don't know. Was that his name? Butch?

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Ben, did you ever watch the Munsters? Unfamiliar. Well, they had the

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Adams family and the Munsters about the same time. And then what happened was people got tired of the two seasons of the

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Munsters and then the Adams family. And according to this documentary last night, Batman came on the scenes and wiped the floor with the

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Munsters and Adams family. And so it disappeared with the Munsters and Batman.

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So think about it. What does the text say? Has not God chosen those who are poor?

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I'm going to look down my nose at poor people and God's chosen poor people?

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That doesn't mean he's chosen every poor person. That's not the point. You'll have to look at the context. But I want problems framed in solutions acknowledging the triune nature of God.

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That's what I want. That's what you should want. So when people begin to run their mouth about all this stuff, they're giving all this law and they're not giving you any hope.

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They're not giving you the lens of the sovereignty of God. They're not giving you the lens of the glory of Jesus.

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They're not giving you the lens of, you know what? If you have been a racist, you can be completely forgiven.

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If you used to be a racist, you can be turned into somebody that's not a racist. There's hope for you.

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The gospel has a double benefit. The double benefit of the gospel is you're free from sin's penalty.

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You're pardoned freely. And the second benefit is you're free from the power of sin.

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And you have the power of the Holy Spirit. So before you always had to say yes to sin, let's say you were a racist, and now you can say no to it.

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So you're going to come and tell me that it's latent, it's systemic, it can never go away, and the stain can never be removed.

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Well, I reject that. And I think that's foolish, sinful, unhelpful.

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But it probably makes you a lot of money and gets you a lot of followers on YouTube, Facebook, etc.

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Thinking through any sin problem has to be done through the lens of the triune nature of God.

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It has to be. Or it devolves into self -righteousness or depression.

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Self -righteousness, when you go, you know what? I'm really not as bad as everybody else, and I deal with it and everything.

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But if you're honest with yourself... I mean, I fall into the self -righteous category when I'm not thinking rightly, but I know people that fall into the other category.

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And that is they're actually honest with themselves. And they realize, you know what? Love God, love your neighbor.

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I don't do either of those. And even those two great commandments. It's like CRT people and critical race theory people, they've made the second commandment the first great commandment.

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I know the second commandment, love your neighbor as yourself, is a great commandment, but it's not the greatest commandment.

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The greatest commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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And by the way, if somehow you think, you know what? 600 and some laws in the Old Testament. The good news is we only have two now, summarized.

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We only just have two. You think the first one's actually easy to obey? Really? No.

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It's the hardest commandment in all the world to really obey. And that's why we need Jesus. Not only for pardoning our sins of not obeying it, but also for giving us the power to obey it.

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Even if, like Heidelberg Catechism 114 says, or 104, I'm not sure. You know, we just have small incremental growths in this area of obedience.

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But we're striving to do that very thing by the power of the Holy Spirit. I don't know what time I have here.

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19 minutes. So my name is Mike Avendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry.

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What do we do, by the way, if we live in Antarctica? And there's only people who are

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Antarctican there. I don't know. Are white people there in Antarctica? I've been in Zambia before.

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I think maybe I was like one of the only white people in the entire... We had worship service in a tent.

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What do I do about that? How do we work through all these issues? The answer is, it didn't go through my mind.

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Till now, I'm looking back at it. What did I see? Well, because I've been given the lens of who

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Jesus is, we're all there to talk about who Jesus is. My theme that week was Jesus Christ, the

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Prince of Preachers. That's who we were talking about, the Lord Jesus. And what are the kind of background you come from?

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It didn't even matter. That's what's so great about when you think about the gospel. We're always talking about, or the people on social media are talking about all this latent systemic racism.

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Where are the people who will talk about, look at how Jesus has brought together tribes, tongues, nations,

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Gentiles, Jews, slave, free, male, female. Who could do that?

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I mean, we're out here in the middle of Nowheresville, just north of Worcester, Massachusetts, town of 6 ,000 people.

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I don't know how many people here are of color or not. I could care less how rich, how poor, anything else.

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You know what I look at? There's no bond that we have here. Zero, except Jesus.

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But because of Jesus, that bond is strong. That bond is important. That bond is,

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I don't care what you drive. I don't care what you wear. I don't care how many tattoos you have.

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I don't care what you dye your hair color as. Well, Luke, my son was at a fundamentalist school growing up.

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And Kim, I don't know what she did. She dyed his hair like in a leopard pattern or something like that. He was expelled.

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But the kid who would go down and, you know, he'd go down to the recess area and pull down the pants of other boys.

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He was just reprimanded. Luke, he had his hair leopardized.

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And so we had to re -dye it or whatever. I just am thrilled when

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I'm in India, when I'm in England, when I'm in South Africa. I don't know where have I been in life.

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New Zealand, wherever I am. And the unifying force, factor, determination.

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I'm not calling God a force, by the way. But it's the love of Christ Jesus because He loved us and He gave

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Himself for us. The man Christ Jesus. Remember, there's one mediator between God and man, the

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Jew Christ Jesus. Well, He was a Jew, but the man Christ Jesus, who's still now the glorified man in heaven.

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How could He pull all these people together? How could we have such a deep love for one another and a love for the

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Lord if we're so different? And we are. I want to hear people talk about that. But you know what?

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A tearing down, dividing, it sells, just like controversy sells. And if you talk about good stories, if you talk about how the gospel can bring people together, nobody wants to hear that.

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That's just like old news. So on No Compromise Radio, here's my summary advice.

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If you'd like to deal with the issue of racism, favoritism, discrimination, and partiality, it cannot be done properly and in a

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God -honoring way without thinking about the glorious Jesus Christ and the

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God who elects people. Those are two factors that if you don't hear people talk about,

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Christians talk about when they deal with this, then I want you to just tune them out. I want you to turn it off.

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Go listen to an unbeliever, Victor Davis Hanson, talk about stuff because he'll be wiser than these

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Christian fools who have brought in unbelieving, ungodly tools of analysis to then try to solve a problem without Jesus.

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I mean, talk about vacuous, talk about empty, talk about moronic. It is unbelievable.

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Well, my name is Mike Ebendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. I'm trying to look over there. I can't see very far. 23 minutes,

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Ben? Yep. All right. And so you can always write us. The good news is it's free.

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Um, I don't think this is so good, but it's true. I'm not always right. So that's why you should study to show yourself approved.

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But even in this passage, we hear James 2 thrown out there so much by these guys, these

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CRT guys. But do you ever hear about the glory of Jesus and the election of God? When you could read it in English and say, you know what?

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Yeah. Duh, Ebendroth's not very smart. He just read what the passage says. That's right. And so we just come to these issues.

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We're like, well, you know what? Um, I just believe whatever people say.

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A cursory, simple reading in English of James 2, 1 to 5 will help you.

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Well, my name is Mike Ebendroth. No Compromise Radio. Don't forget if you order Sexual Fidelity online, we'll send you a free copy of things that go bump in the church.

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God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth 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 6. 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.