Attitudes Toward Leadership And Hebrews 13 (Part 1)

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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

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Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we are live, at least

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I'm live today. I am alive. I'm thankful for that. It is Friday, June 12th, the real time.

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I probably shouldn't tell you when I record these because you're probably going to listen to this in late June, July, somewhere like that, probably more

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July -ish, and then you're going to think, well, that's old news. It's old hat. I'm wondering by the time you hear this podcast, this what used to be a radio show, we actually, well,

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I guess we're still on in Alaska, but by the time you hear this, I wonder if the

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Seattle government police free zone will still exist. My guess is no.

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Today, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about submission in light of our culture.

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But before that, I want you to know we have about a dozen spots for Israel. It looks like Israel 2021 is a go.

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I think we leave Logan to fly to Newark around 23rd or 24th of February.

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I think the flights are settled, but we have to still get some prices and everything's crazy because of all the

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COVID -19 stuff with the industry of the airlines, crazy. But Omaha Bible Church, Bethlehem Bible Church, and No Compromise Radio, some,

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I think even from London, will just meet us in Tel Aviv. Others, pretty much you're going to need to get, and the travel agent will help you, you're going to need to get to Newark, my favorite airport of all time.

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But that's just the way life goes. It's a nonstop Newark United flight,

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Newark, Tel Aviv on United, and off we go. Well, today, submission. Boy, that's a podcast

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I'd like to listen to, said no one. What if I was going to market a podcast?

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Our big thing is submission. What if I was going to put a strategy for the four

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P's of marketing for a local church? Product, price, place, and position?

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Wait, product, price, where to place it, promotion.

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Four P. I bet you they only have like three S's now for marketing. Everything's downsized. But what if I were to tell you, okay, here's a church and we're all about submission.

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That's what we love. That's our response to God is just to submit.

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We love submission. You used to see people's faces when

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I say, as I officiate a wedding, do you promise to submit? And I say that to the woman.

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Crazy. The marketing ploy for the church usually isn't submission.

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People that want to market the church, they never pick that. I mean, I don't want to market the church, but for sake of argument at the introduction of a show today, we can talk about that.

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But let's just think big picture. Is submission something that the

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Bible speaks to? Who has to submit to whom? That's a good question.

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I just alluded to wives to their husbands. That's Ephesians 5. How about children to their mother and father?

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Do you have a boss? Do you have to submit to them? Is there a government that citizens are supposed to submit to?

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Is there a mutual submission in Ephesians 5? I think you'll see that. Are you supposed to submit to the

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Lord Jesus? Yes. Are you supposed to submit to the church leaders? Yes.

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Not other church leaders, but your church leaders. And the answer is yes. And even the

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Lord Jesus on earth, He submitted, did He not? He submitted to governing authorities that were sinful.

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He didn't submit to the ungodly religious people. Because they were not ordained by God.

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He submitted to His stepfather, while Joseph was a saint in many cases, according to the

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Roman Catholic Church. And of course, he was a saint in terms of the Bible as a believer. He still was affected by Adam's sin and had a sin nature.

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And we don't see in the Bible that he did sin, but we know, of course, it happened. So now he wasn't a perfect parent.

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But he, Joseph, was a God -ordained father, stepfather, right?

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And Jesus submitted to him. And ultimately, we know that Jesus submitted to the Father on earth.

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You can think of the Garden of Gethsemane. You can think about even in the Covenant of Redemption.

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And the Son gladly takes on human flesh and a body that the

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Father had prepared for the Son. Psalm 40 and Hebrews chapter 10. And so Jesus submits to the

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Father's plan, incarnation, you know, all the way up through the death of Christ Jesus.

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And of course, we know that He's alive and He, Jesus, even submitted.

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The problem that we have in our society is we're rebels. We are rebels at heart. Our minds have been affected by the fall and they are crooked, perverse, full of iniquity.

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And even Christians have a remnant, have a hangover of sin.

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You might want to call it the flesh in Romans chapter 7, wretched man that I am. But we still struggle, right?

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Simul justus et peccator, simultaneously just based on the life and death of Christ, His perfect obedience,

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His passive obedience, active obedience, resurrection. And then I just got sidetracked.

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I looked outside for a second and it's a pretty nice day. At peccator, we're still sinful.

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We still sin. So what happens is you see the rebels. If God has ordained government,

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Satan, I'm sure, in the flesh fuels anti -authority demonstrations and attitudes.

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Since the Lord has ordained, not just the government, but also family and structure in the family, you see an all -out assault on, in particular in the media, male leadership.

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And then you have God ordained leadership in a local church. Therefore, you have an all -out assault on that.

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Sadly, from the inside in too many cases, people hate submission.

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It is not something that you love and gravitate toward unless the work of the Holy Spirit has done a great job.

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Well, He always does a great job, but He's done a job in your hearts. And even then it's a struggle.

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We are like the book of Judges. Every man wants to do what's right in their own eyes.

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If I can talk that just a little bit. But Christian, there are many aspects to holy living and wanting to live a righteous life.

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And I think it's fair to say that submission, if not at the center of our response to God, is super important.

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By the way, my friend Christian Harris listens. Hey Christian, what's going on? Hope to see you this summer. When I say things now to believers,

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I say Christian. And so then Christian said to me the other day, every time I say Christian, his ears pop up. So Christian, we painted our house last year.

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Christian essentially did all the hard work. But I stood on a ladder for four days. I was so tiring to stand on a ladder.

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My calves, come on. The Lord Jesus has ordained the structures of family, government, right?

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The church. And if you think of rebellion, it's ultimately against who?

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The government, parents, father, elders of a local church.

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It's against the Lord God because He's the one that gives authority. He's the one that delegates authority, whether that's to husbands, to presidents and prime ministers, to bosses in a company, as we see some of the application of Ephesians 6 there, and to the leaders, overseers, bishops, elders in a local church.

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And so you say, well, I'm against authority. You're ultimately against the authority of the

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Lord Jesus. Submission is important. Now, in the book of Hebrews, we've been marching through Hebrews.

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I regularly talk about Hebrews on the show because it's my job is to preach through the book of Hebrews and shepherd the people here at Bethlehem Bible Church.

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And therefore, this is kind of, as you know, this is almost my practice. I want to talk about these subjects.

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And then I can hear myself talk. It's good practice. I can say, oh, I didn't say that so well, or I said that fine, and I should just repeat that.

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I have different shows for different reasons, but today I wanted to talk about submission. Twelve chapters of Jesus, Jesus, Jesus in Hebrews.

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And Jesus is better. Jesus is superior. Jesus is the end all. Compare Jesus to anybody else or anything else, including old covenant,

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Moses, Aaron, prophets, angels, just line them up. And Jesus is better.

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And if you think that Judaism is better than Christianity, the issue is the great high priest, the

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Lord Jesus. He is better than the old covenant for lots of reasons. He never dies, right?

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He's always living to make intercession. His death was once and done, not repeated, not over and over and over and over.

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Once for all done, right? Once for all time done.

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No other sacrifice needed. No other priest needed. Sometimes there were bad priests. Sometimes there were good priests, but there's never been a priest like the

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Lord Jesus. And that's really what's going on. All right.

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I just got a text, something about a power outage. We've been learning a lot in Hebrews 13 about holy living and the law of God.

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You know, we don't try to live up to God's law to get into the kingdom. That's impossible or to stay in.

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But because we're in these laws come from heavenly father, not a legal judge.

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Our relationship to God has changed, but his law hasn't changed because his nature hasn't changed.

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Just our position as we relate to him. And we want to realize that the

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God who loved us so much that he sent his son to rescue us also wants us to live holy lives commensurate with our calling.

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And this is how you do it from whether it's chapter 13 about loving brothers or being hospitable or remembering those in prison, honoring the marriage bed and marriage itself of being content with what you have.

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Remembering leaders don't be led away by a bunch of weird foods, be willing to suffer.

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Praise God. That's your sacrifice of praise now and do good and share.

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Those are the commands we've seen so far in Hebrews 13. Now here comes a new one that my purpose today is explain it a little bit, but also take it from the hands of authoritarian leaders in a local church.

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Obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who have to give an account.

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Let them do this with joy and not with groaning for that would be of no advantage to you.

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Fascinating. People already kind of bristle. They know it's there.

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It's in the context of a local church, of course. I don't think this has to do with government leaders.

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This is local church leaders. He's already talked about them in verse seven. And he wants you to grow.

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He wants you to live a life of holiness and purity and submission. This is unlike what some preachers do who are scolding and just throwing people the law unattached to the person of Christ Jesus.

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Alexandra White said, there is such a thing as sanctification by vinegar. It makes a man accurate and hard.

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When people come being tempted by sin, broken by it, ashamed to confess the mess they made. It is not a

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Calvinistic pastor who has been sanctified by vinegar they need, but a pastor who has been mastered by the unconditional grace of God and from whom ironclad orthodoxy has been torn away and the whole armor of a gracious God has been applied.

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The armor of him who would not break the bruise reed or quench the dimly burning wick. And that's the attitude

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I think this preacher has as he's delivering these commands in light of who

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Jesus is. Motivation to believe and to keep believing and to obey is all the finished work of Jesus.

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It's who Jesus is. Not necessarily even atonement based, but the person of Jesus based union with him.

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He's the high priest. It's not just what he's done for us. It's who he is. Yes. And he does things for us.

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I'm not going to argue that, but really who Jesus is. And this writer wants you to be acquainted with the mercies and privileges in Christ Jesus and what he's done for you to use some language of John Owen.

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Ever read John Owen? I'm starting to do eight pages of Owen a day. I missed one day in the last month, but I caught up 16 pages the next day.

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Eight pages of Owen a day keeps the Richard Baxter -isms away. That's my little slogan. Don't think that these commands are harsh, are mean, restrictive, vindictive.

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That's a satanic trick. That's a twist -a -rama. That's a tilt -a -whirl. Remember writing the tilt -a -whirl when you were a kid?

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They kind of look like those red things, platforms tilted a little bit. And these things spin in a circle as a platform goes up and down.

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You take the little metal rail and hold it down by your lap. It's not an upside down thing, but just kind of spinning.

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I remember riding the tilt -a -whirl, whatever it's called now, with my grandma.

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Grandpa said, I can't do dizzy rides. Why, grandpa? Well, now that I'm 60,

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I don't do dizzy rides. I don't know. I mean, I don't have any grandkids yet, but let's say if I get some starting in a year or two, then that's going to be 62.

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By the time they're ready for tilt -a -whirl, they'll be five. I'll be 67. There ain't no way. Come on.

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It's the providence of God. Kim and I didn't get married until I was 29. She was 25.

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And then we waited a little bit for kids. And a little harder time than we thought maybe of having them.

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And then now they're older and some of them, nobody's married. No grandkids.

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How does a Tuesday guy have, I don't know, what, five, seven, nine? I don't know.

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Anyway, when it comes to submission, we have to submit to our leaders.

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And this is coming from a God who loves us and He knows what our best is. So what we're going to do today on No Compromise Radio is we're going to look at this verse and just kind of talk about it a little bit as He gives the final two commands, really, obey and pray.

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How do you treat your leaders? It says, obey your leaders and submit to them. And then verse 18, pray for us, the leader said.

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So we are going to be talking about leadership and submission in a local church.

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Now, when I was a kid, we watched Telly Savalas.

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What was he in? Who loves you, baby? Kojak. We watched Kojak. We watched

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Dennis McSomebody, who was McLeod.

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Dennis Bride, Dennis McBride, Dennis somebody. We watched

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Columbo. And I didn't really appreciate Columbo till later in life. But Columbo, always disheveled.

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And he would walk out of a room, almost shut the door and pop his head back in and say, what?

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Just one more thing. Just one more thing. And then he began to ask questions.

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And he would, because of his excellent keen eye for observations, he would have solved it.

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And then he confronts the people with inescapable lines of questioning Columbo because of his observations.

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So when it comes to Bible study and hermeneutics, observations are important.

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Therefore, you ought to observe. And I'm going to just have a little outline today. And for next time, observations regarding Hebrews 13, 17.

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Obey your leaders and submit to them. Observation number one in no particular order. Did you notice?

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That's the whole Columbo thing. Did you notice? Did you observe? Did you notice or observe that this is given to the congregation in the form of a sermon, not given in the pastoral epistles?

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Did you notice that? What are you talking about? Wives, submit to your husbands,

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Ephesians five. He's not saying that to husbands.

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Oh, husbands are there. They hear that. But he said to husbands, love your wives, right? Or he will say it.

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525. I think what we have, Houston is a problem.

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Here's the problem. I think husbands, I don't say it, but maybe

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I think it. Husbands use verses delivered to wives for control, for authority, for,

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I don't know, vindictiveness for something. I don't know. But it's one thing for God to say to women through Paul, submit your husbands.

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It's another thing for husbands to say to their wives, you submit to me. You obey me.

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You call me Lord. First Peter chapter three. You know what?

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You must submit to me. Now, I've been married for 31 years. Most of them are pretty happy.

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It's not like we never had our struggles. Why does God want submission in a marriage?

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Well, if two people in a marriage, husband and wife, have differences of opinion, and they can't come to an agreement, well, then maybe they'll split up.

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God wants that couple to be together. So one defers. One says, I'm going to tuck myself under the authority of God's Word and His sovereign power.

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And when God chastens my husband, I will duck, but I will defer.

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I will disagree, but I'll go along anyway. Now, there have been times, of course, in my marriage that I've said to Kim, what do you think?

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What do you think we should do? What about this, that, and the other? We sit and talk. And then I say, oh, you know what?

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She's right. She's got good insight. And then I do that decision. She changes my mind.

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Other times, she doesn't change my mind. And then I say, well, honey, thanks for all the input and advice, but I'm going to have to do this other thing.

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Now, she doesn't like it. She doesn't agree with it. But she goes along anyway, that submission.

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But I don't think we need to go running around telling our wives, you must submit. It's crazy.

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If you do that, stop it. And the other side goes as well.

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If wives are going around saying, you know, you're supposed to love me. I think that's less abused than the husband who says, you submit to me.

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If you have to say, you submit to me, why do you have to say that? She has to. You don't have to try to exert leadership.

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You already are the leader. So how does this flesh itself out here in the book of Hebrews? He, the writer, the human writer, is preaching a sermon.

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He's a preacher. He's a pastor. And he's telling people, the whole congregation, obey your leaders and submit to them.

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Now, it's true. It's God's word. You do what they say and you have a right attitude, obedience, and submission.

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But this isn't found in the pastoral epistles. You make sure you tell people and you make sure you get them to obey.

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You make sure in pastoral epistles, it is the responsibility of the people to obey you and submit to you.

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See where I'm going with that? This is not a verse that leaders, good leaders, shepherds, good shepherds need to whack people with.

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It's given to them by God, of course. But wives are the ones commanded to make sure they submit.

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You, church, are commanded by God, here it is, to obey your leaders and submit to them.

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But I don't want to use this verse against you. I'm not using it against you now. I'm telling you what the truth is and it is true.

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But this is not my trump card. This is not my weapon. No, not at all.

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Observation number two. Did you notice,

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I think Columbo there, that the congregation is told to obey their local church leaders, not anyone else regarding ecclesiastical bodies or anyone else.

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This is your local leaders. Did you see that? Obey your leaders and submit to them.

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We live in a day and age where, because of social media and access to information, you can actually listen to all kinds of pastors across the world.

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You can actually email them and get advice. People email me and I give you advice, but you're not to obey me or submit to me.

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It has nothing to do, I mean, if you're my children or you're here at the church or you work for me since I'm your boss at work, okay,

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I understand that. But this is your own particular leaders at the local church.

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Notice in addition, it's not leader, do what I say, accountability through plurality of local elders.

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Very important. If congregational rule was true, then it would be obey whatever the congregation decides.

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No, no, but it's the leaders. We're going to talk more about this next time. My name is Mike Abendroth.

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Maybe we'll do a little Facebook live for the next one. You can write me, info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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Or if you have a direct question, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. If you want to go to Israel, you write me.

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I send you the itinerary. I send you the form to send in your $300 to secure a spot and get you lined up because there's no spot saved unless you send in the money.

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Total refund by October 15th if you decide not to go or if we cancel. So I'd love to have you go.

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We need more NOCO people. I cannot have Omaha Bible Church have more people than Bethlehem Bible Church and No Compromise Radio.

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We wouldn't want that. In the fall, I'm going to begin teaching through the book of James. Very, very interesting.

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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 organization. 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.