Sin and the Substitute (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

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

Sin, Forgiveness, and the Need for a Substitute

Take two. I was 30 seconds into the show, didn't really like the way I sounded, had bad self-esteem, self-image was bad, wasn't actualizing self like I wanted to, so I had to redo. Wouldn't that be nice to just be able to do that for your regular job?

But since this isn't my job, I'm able to do that. We just record the shows, like to say tape, although there's no tape left, and then play them for your broadcast consumption. Today, I want to talk about sin.

I just lost most of you right there. Okay, turned it off, that's it. Talk about sin, click. Today, I'd like to talk about sin and forgiveness and substitution. So our problem is sin, we need forgiveness, and therefore we need a substitute.

So that's what we're going to talk about today on No Compromise Radio ministry. Philosopher Seneca from Rome said, we have all sinned, some more and some less. That is absolutely true, we are all sinners.

And typically in America, Western world, even overseas, people will agree that there are sinful people and that people are sinners, at least abstractly. They will say, yes, society is full of criminals and sinners, people do bad things, people are bad.

But when it comes to the Nathan-like index finger saying, but are you a sinner against a holy God? Then there is some pushback. Ancient Prine's Chavarb, ancient Chinese proverb says this, one is dead regarding two good men.

There are two good men, one is dead and the other is not yet born. That's kind of interesting. Another Roman said, his name's Ovid, we all strive for what is forbidden. So we have a problem and that problem is sin.

Outside of Christ Jesus, the universal nature of sin. Robert Browning said, tis the faith that launched point blank her dart at the head of a lie, taught original sin and corruption of man's heart. Or how about Cassius, the fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.

So those are accumulated by S. Lewis Johnson. I was just listening to one of his sermons on Romans and I thought that was a good introduction to talk about sin and our need for forgiveness. After all, you don't really need forgiveness in your mind until you understand how bad you are and how sinful you are.

And so that's why we preach God's transcendence. That's why we preach his awful holiness. That's why we talk about who God is, therefore requiring perfection, requiring holy living since he is the holy, requiring obedience, requiring law keeping.

There's a legal system that men and women are under and they have fallen short. Therefore they need forgiveness. They need someone to live and die in their place. Let's see what else we have here on No Compromise Radio.

The Birth of Jesus and the Promise to Save Sinners

All right, here's what we're going to do. I found Matthew chapter one insightful and I was reading it around Christmas time and here's what Matthew one says. Now the birth of Jesus Christ, remember Jesus, Savior Christ, the Messiah, took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together physically, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

But as he considered these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. And all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to a son and he called his name Jesus. So what's in a name? Jesus, the rescuer, the savior.

Actually, I think there was conjoined twins just recently born and one was named Jesus and the other was named Emmanuel. I'm sorry that the twins were conjoined but I think those are pretty dumb names unless you are Jesus the savior.

And so he's called Jesus. Now, what you should probably tell me is, well, what about Joshua? Do you mind that for a name? I guess I don't. So then I guess it's fine. Jesus. This passage in Matthew chapter one talks about what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. If you look at the Old Testament, salvation from sins was a promise that was not just an isolated promise. Oh, certainly the rescue from Egypt was spoken of more.

That is the temporal rescue of the people out of the clutches of Egypt. But that was all given as a paradigm for God's saving, not just temporally but spiritually, eternally. And so when we think of sins, I think of salvation.

And this was not a new concept. This was not a novel concept. It's not something that God grew into and said, well, this is plan B. This was predicted. This was anticipated. This was in the mind of God and eternity passed and then it fleshed itself out in the Old Testament.

Listen to these great passages. By the way, if you're a sinner, you should be encouraged by these passages. Isaiah 40 verse two, that her iniquity is pardoned. Jeremiah 31, or I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.

Ezekiel 36 verses 25 to 27. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, uncleanness, uncleannesses. And from all your idols, I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.

And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Forgiveness of sins, not a new concept.

Daniel 9 24, 70 weeks are to create about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and profit and to anoint a most holy place.

And then last Old Testament verse, although we could find more, Zechariah 13, on that day, there shall be a fountain open for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.

That is wonderful news. That is glorious news. That is news that is worth repeating that the Messiah is going to forgive sins. There was an anticipation in the Old Testament. It was brewing, it was a crockpot like thing.

It was a pressure cooker. It was a cauldron. By the way, when I was a kid, my mother had pressure cookers cooking cheap meat on the stove. The same stove she cooked brains, cow brains, and made me eat a cow brain sandwich with mustard.

That same stove. She told me that it was a dangerous thing, this pressure cooker. And I pretty much imagined it, maybe this is true, that it was like a hand grenade sitting on the stove. And so I did not play with that pressure cooker.

Jesus was born to save sinners. And the Old Testament looked forward to that. It anticipated that. And it did it in such a way that people would know, people would understand, they could have a hope. And don't you need forgiveness if you're listening today?

Are you the kind of person that doesn't really need forgiveness because you're pretty good? Well, let's think about it this way. And this is the way that Donald Gray Barnhouse, the preacher at 10th Presbyterian, before James Montgomery Boyce, before Philip Ryken, and before whoever the new guy is, forgot his name.

What did Barnhouse say? He said, there are certain people in this world, and maybe you fall into this category in your mind, that you have about 20 righteousness. Maybe you're kind of a crook. Maybe you're listening in jail.

Actually, we have people who are in the local jail listening to No Compromise Radio. And you think you pretty much are bad, but you've got about 20 righteousness, Barnhouse would say. Then there are other people who, just regular Joes, average Janes, ordinary citizens, who think they have about 50 righteousness.

Then there are others who really strive to be moral, ethical, religious, and you think you have about 80 righteousness. Well, the problem is to get into God's perfect heaven, to dwell in His perfect presence, you need to be perfect, and you need 100 righteousness.

You have to be 100 righteous. So if you say, well, Lord, I'm 20 righteous, I just need 80 more, then I'll be fine. That's wrong thinking. If you are the average citizen and you think, well, I've got 50, I need 50 more, then that's not going to do, that's not the way God operates.

See, here's the main reason. Number one, it slams Christ's life and work, but something different. You don't have any righteousness. If you're an unbeliever today and you're listening, and if you're listening today as a believer, when you were an unbeliever, you have no righteousness.

So Jesus comes to die, not just for our sins, but for our good works, because we don't have any good works. We think they're good work, but they're not done with the right motive. They're not done to please and glorify Christ Jesus in His name and in His honor, through His power, through His Spirit.

And so without faith in Him, it's impossible to please God. So unless you have faith in Christ Jesus, nothing pleases God. Everything's done through the wrong lens. It's done inappropriately. It's done wrongly.

If it's not done for the risen Savior and because of Him, then it's done wrongly. So you think you have righteousness, but really you have none. And even your good deeds, all your righteousnesses, as Isaiah 53 talks about, are filthy rags.

You think about rags, what do rags do? Well, if I think of filthy rags, I know the text talks about menstrual rags, but I also think about people who live in rags and they're foul. I've had homeless people over to my home before and they smelled like homeless people.

They don't have enough clothes to really cover themselves. And so our best works, it's not our sins, and Isaiah 64, but our best that we have, a foul order before God and not adequate to cover us, as was Johnson would say.

So we are in a heap of trouble. Our righteousnesses, the best we have are filthy rags. So we have zero righteousness and we need 100 righteousness. You say, well, compared to other people, I'm good.

Compared to others, I'm not too bad. Compared to others, I do seem righteous. Yes, but we're comparing ourselves. We must compare ourselves. You must compare yourself to God's requirements because he is A, your creator, and B, if you want to go to his heaven, then you need not pay attention to your own human standards of righteousness, but to God's.

Therefore, when you say, I give to the poor, I give money to the church, I attend the meetings of the church, I'm a member of the church, I was baptized at the church, I was confirmed at the church, I was consecrated at the church, I was irrigated at the church, I was all these other things.

You basically need to say, self, I need to stop talking about that because I'm trying to make those things count for righteousness when they're really counting against. I have no righteousness. There is in me no good thing.

My heart is deceitful, desperately wicked, and I need a savior. You need to be delivered from hell, sin, because otherwise you are doomed. So today in No Compromise Radio Ministry, we're talking about sin and forgiveness and the substitute.

And right now we're hammering away that we have fallen short with sins of commission and omission, things that we have done with our hands and committed them with brazen face and brazen heart, but we've also not done things that we should have done.

Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. You may say, I have not committed adultery. And I would say, well, maybe not with your body, but certainly with your mind, according to Jesus's standards in the Sermon on the Mount.

But also there are things that you should be doing, loving God full throttle, but you're not. Loving your neighbor full bore, but you're not. It was quite a while ago. Harry Emerson Fosdick was the liberal, quote unquote, preacher in America.

And he wasn't necessarily in the same style of Schuller, but he was liberal like Schuller. And so he was the famous liberal as Schuller is the famous liberal or was. So now Harry Emerson Fosdick is the famous liberal.

I don't know who the famous liberal is today. If you had to ask me the famous liberals, I would say Rob Bell and Rick Warren. Those men are the famous liberals. So today on No Compromise Radio, we're talking about sin.

And if your view of God is wrong, your view of sin is going to be wrong. And so Harry Emerson Fosdick, I think he knew that. Let me have a cup of coffee because I think I just might yawn. Suppressed the yawn, suppressed it.

The False Idea of an Evolving God

A Guide to Understanding the Bible is a book he wrote. And here's what he was trying to say. He was trying to say that God in the Bible evolved and he got better. By the way, that's what evolution is supposed to do, evolve into better.

I think a better case is made for de-evolution, devo. Ever listened to Devo? When I was a kid, I listened to Devo. Are we not men? We are Devo. And I actually liked Devo. I think it must've been 1976 or seven.

That new album came out, Are We Not Men? And I went to go see Devo in Omaha, Nebraska. I remember that concert because I got to the venue and forgot my tickets at home and had to drive back. Then we got down to the venue and we were still pretty close to the front, so much so that when the lead singer had that yellow suit on and threw it into the congregation, I was gonna say, any group of people that was in congregation, he threw it into the clump of people and I was in the center of the clump.

And I grabbed that thing, that yellow suit, and everybody wanted me to cut a little piece off, some sacramental meal or something. And I said, no. So I jammed it up underneath my shirt because people were going wild for Mark Mothersbaugh's Devo outfit.

I think years ago I threw it away because I never used it. We have that little rule at the house. You know, if you don't use anything in five to 10 years and it's not my stuff, you can throw it away. You should throw it away.

De-evolution. Well, Fosdick thought that God was evolving into something better. Noah's God, of course, destroys the earth. By the way, isn't that interesting that people who are even pagans love to get Noah's arcs, Noah's arc-themed child crib?

What are those things called? Not murals. What are those things that hang over the crib? What do they call those? Cooley, where are you? Somebody's got to know the name of those things. Little mobiles.

Mobiles. I'm going mobile. So, he's a bloodthirsty God. He kills people. Abraham's God, same deal. Delighting in sacrifices. Kill your son. God of Moses, volcano, fire, thunder, lightning. Well, about the time David comes along, 50 -50.

I mean, you know, there was some good stuff there, but David's God had these imprecatory psalms sung to him, wanting him to cast judgment down on people. Well, at least by the time of the prophets, things were getting a little bit better.

And Harry Emerson Fosdick said these words. These are my words because these would be fighting words. These are bad words. God was really making improvement. See, just even there. By the time of the prophets, God was making improvement.

How do you improve if you're God?

How do you become more wise, more kind, more loving, more just, more righteous, more wrathful? How do you do that? By the way, why am I always yawning on this show? Probably because I'm tired and at 51 years old, coming up on 52, I'm exhausted.

I am exhausted. Oh, you know, the other day I was thinking this. Remember when Oral Roberts saw the 900 foot Jesus and he had started work on a hospital and God told him allegedly, allegedly, hey, hater.

He told him to build this hospital. He was running out of money. So if he said he didn't get 2 million, 4 million, 6 million, I don't know the number, but I think it had a million at the end that he was going to die.

Well, since we don't ask for money on the show very often, no, I don't think I've ever asked for money. I thought, you know what, maybe this is a way we could get money from people at the end of the year.

Actually, it's December 23rd here. You know, people say matching gifts. If you give something, then you get that matched. You know, Jay Sekulow says that. Or it's the end of the year. And some of the better ministries will say, give first to your local church, but we're kind of hurting and it's the end of the year.

If you want to keep this radio on the show, please send the money. I don't really like any of that because I don't want to appeal to you. Hey, send money or else this radio show is going to be not on the air.

I figure if God wants it on the air, he'll give me the money up front. So what we do is we get the money up front and say, all right, we're going to be on for the next year. And then at the end of the next year, let's see if we can get some more money up front before we sign the next contract.

Doesn't that seem to make sense? Oh, call me crazy. But S. Louis Johnson would be very happy. I thought this is a good way we could try to raise money. Of course, give to your local church. We'll do some matching funds.

But last night in my dream, it wasn't a 900 foot Jesus that I saw, but a 900 foot John MacArthur appeared to me. What big eyes you have. Remember the Land of the Giants? I love that show, Land of the Giants.

You thought I was going to say the Land of the Lost, didn't you? That was after my time, although I watched it sometimes with my brother. I don't mean the new dopey one. I meant the old one. So 900 foot Jesus did not appear to me, but a 900 foot John MacArthur.

And he told me that I should start asking for money. And I give away John MacArthur books if you send money. And you know what? I had to tell that 900 foot John MacArthur no. Well, back to this. Fosdick said God was really making improvement.

He now hated unrighteousness and spoke out against crimes committed by men. And when Jesus came along, well, Jesus gave men a beautiful concept of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. But there was one thing that was faulty in Jesus' theology.

And that is, he was now always talking about, what'd Fosdick say? Always talking about hell. But fortunately, now since Jesus is no longer with us, Fosdick says, see how I had to insert that so you didn't think it was me?

We've reached the place now where we have modern ideas of God that are worthy of the name, oh man. He has no hell for the wicked and man and God are now able to have fellowship with one another because God has become so respectable that he can be worshiped in Highland Park and University Park and Richardson and any other of the places where nice people are supposed to live.

The Gospel of Grace in Christ Jesus

Ow. Well, I have good news. Here's the good news. Even though sin is real, even though you're a sinner, everyone's a sinner, even though God hates the sinner, even though hell is real, God grants forgiveness, sheerly and solely due to his grace in and through the person of Christ Jesus, the crucified, risen substitute of all those who would repent and put their faith in Christ Jesus.

She shall bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. God is forgiving, merciful, gracious, kind to those who lay down their arms and bow the knee to Jesus Christ, the eternal son of God who cloaked himself with humanity.

That is good news. That's the gospel. When there's good news, you say, hallelujah, listen to the good news. The war's over. Baby's been born. This is the kind of news you have to raise your voice and shout and proclaim.

Good news for those who recognize themselves as sinners and know they have no righteousness. Salvation is found in the righteous work of another, Christ Jesus, the Lord. So look to him with faith. Look to him with repentance.

Look to him by not looking to your own goodness, realizing you don't have 80 righteousness. You don't have 50. You don't even have 20. You have zero. And everything you've ever done has counted for nothing.

But everything Christ Jesus did counted for everything. So turn from your own sin and lack of righteousness and turn to the righteous character.

Of the risen savior of Christ Jesus. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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