The Privilege Of Evangelism (Part 2)

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Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendroff.

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Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures verse by verse with No Compromise.

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You were made to have relationships and we are God's offspring and we come from God and God has relationships in his own self called the

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Trinity. And so it shouldn't strike us as odd that God wants a relationship with us, that we were made by God to enjoy him and have fellowship with him and commune with him and to talk to him and have him talk to us.

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If we like this, we're his offspring. If children act a certain way, what does that tell us about the father, our mother?

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And so Paul just uses these secular philosophers to point them to God so that you realize everything that you have points to you, oh

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God, as creator. By the way, that first quote there, Epimenides, in him we live and move and have our being, that's just the end of the quote.

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Let me give you the whole quote, just I think you'll find it interesting. Here's the whole quote from Epimenides, the

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Cretan. Cretans always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies, but thou art not, thou livest and abidest forever for in thee we live and move and have our being.

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That's right from Titus. Being then God's offspring, verse 27,

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Paul is an excellent preacher. He goes for the jugular, so what? Being then

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God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

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False ideas about God, that's idolatry. God is king, you can't make

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God. And then Paul gives the last description of God.

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God is king, God has been seen as creator, and now God is seen as judge.

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Verse 30 and 31. God is your judge. If you're here not as a

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Christian today, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God.

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God is going to judge you, and your only hope is going to be God judges you. Know that God judges

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Christ in your place. You have to come to reckon with the idea that God is sovereign king, and that means he's your judge.

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Verse 30, the times of ignorance God overlooked. All that idolatry, making idol after idol after idol after idol, and God's still being patient.

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Think about your own life. For 29 years, my heart was an idol making factory. God was patient.

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He still was just, he still was a judge. But here, the times of ignorance God overlooked, specifically here,

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Paul says, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. Yes, there's a time

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God holds back. There's a time that God delays his judgment. There's a time he's forbearing. But one day, there's that day, and then you stand before God.

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And in light of Christ coming to earth, those times are over, he says to the

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Greeks, because he has fixed a day, verse 31, on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all.

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How do we know it's all true? By raising him from the dead. Now Paul reverts back to what he was just saying earlier.

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You're ignorantly worshiping God. You are ignorantly doing things now, and God was very patient.

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But now the response to God as judge, creator, sovereign is repentance. We live in a society today where let's not talk about repentance, because repentance means

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I don't just do wrong things, I'm wrong. I think about God wrongly,

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I think about myself wrongly, and I am wrong. What we have today is a therapeutic model, a blame model, a disease theory model.

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I have a disease, I can't control myself. I have this, I can't control myself. I have that,

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I can't control myself. There's a judge waiting for you on that day, and your response is not, well, you know what,

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I just can't help myself, I need therapy. No, you need to repent.

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Repentance, not blame shifting, not the disease model. Judgment is coming.

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That's the best thing you could do is if you're not a Christian is to say, God, I am the problem, help me.

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I don't have problems, I am the problem. I don't have a problem with illicit sex,

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I am the problem. Psalm 9 says he will judge the world in righteousness. He will execute judgment for the peoples with equity.

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Psalm 96, the Lord is coming. He is coming to judge the earth.

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He will judge the world in righteousness. Psalm 98, the Lord is coming to judge the earth.

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He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity. God must judge sin, run, flee.

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Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point has become guilty of all. Confess it, run.

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Curse it is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them.

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Repent, think differently. Therefore, you are to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

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God, please, I need to change my thinking. And instead of thinking,

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I just need therapy and blames and diseases and everything else, there's not a God.

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I need to think rightly and to think my only hope is in the substitute Christ Jesus. Why is

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Paul hammering on sin so much? Because who needs a savior when you don't think you're a sinner? That's why friends never walk up to someone and they're unbelievers.

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They say, yeah, how are you? My name's Mike, what do you guys do? We've been living together for ten years, blah, blah, blah.

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You know what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. What does that tell the people who are in a state of sin?

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That tells them that God just loves you right where you are. Now God has a general love for people, doesn't he?

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He gives them food and sun and enjoyment. But you need to preach to them sin, law, who

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God is in light of that and his holiness, so they realize. Society might say living together is appropriate, but God judges unrighteous behavior, whether that's drunkenness or immorality or greed or covetousness or anything else.

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No savior is needed from sin unless there's a need to deal with sin. And if God is the judge, you need to have sin dealt with.

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Jonathan Edwards said, it has often appeared to me that if God should mark iniquity against me,

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I should appear the very worst of all mankind. Of all that have been since the beginning of the world, that I should be by far in the lowest place in hell.

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Now we are so wrapped up in therapeutic narcissism that we hear someone like that and we go,

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Paul, I think you're too hard on yourself. I think you've got a bad self image, Paul, John.

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Sin is true, sin is ugly, sin defames God, and so we have to be honest.

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God knows all about our sins, so why do we have to try to run? If you know you're a sinner and God is going to judge you, then what do you need?

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You need forgiveness. We have good news for you, there's forgiveness to be found. But if you think you're already good, you don't need a doctor, you don't need a physician.

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R .C. Sproul said, sin is cosmic treason. Addicts need recovery, sinners need forgiveness.

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God is so holy, the unsinning seraphim angels blush and cover their faces.

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Job said, I abhor myself. Isaiah said, woe is me for I am undone.

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Habakkuk said, your eyes are too pure to approve evil. So what's your response?

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It's either flee to Christ through faith or it's, well, maybe God will just forget. Maybe I'll just try to be good.

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Maybe I'll do more good than bad. Do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience?

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Not knowing that the kindness of God lead you to repentance, but because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds.

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The wages of sin is death. Now, the way

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Paul is evangelizing, friends, is the exact way you should evangelize. And you say, well, that's not gonna earn me too many brownie points.

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That's not gonna get me too many friends. This is gonna be a long Thanksgiving dinner. You have to talk about sin.

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Because if men and women are rich in sin, then little nicotine patches of forgiveness aren't going to do it.

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You need a God who's rich in mercy, don't you? If you're rich in sin, you need a God who's rich in mercy.

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Ephesians chapter two, but God being what? Rich in mercy. Now, okay,

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Christmas makes sense. Matthew 1, she will bear a son and you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their low self -esteem.

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He will save them from their addictions. He will save them from their sins.

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That's good news. Luke 1, to give his people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.

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Don't you need your sins forgiven? Don't you need your sins, as it were, placed on the scapegoat and then pushed out in the wilderness, ran far away?

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No longer having to pay for your sins as far as the east is from the west, behind your back in the deepest sea.

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It's good news when you realize, I mean, think about it. This is how you should preach to unbelievers.

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That God is so holy and just, as your creator, judge, sovereign king, that you deserve hell.

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You've earned hell, you've merited hell, you are a son of hell. You'd fit perfectly at home in hell, you're going to die and go to hell.

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And by the way, there's not anything you can do about rescue. You are dead in sins and you can't even rescue yourself.

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You're hopeless. You can't do anything. You are going straight to hell and there's nothing you can do about it.

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Now, what kind of message is that? Well, that's a message that honors God and admits the fall and then tells them, by the way, there's a savior who's done it all.

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Luke 19, for the son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. We've been learning from Pastor Steve.

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Whoever believes will in him have eternal life. Even so, the son of man must be lifted up.

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For God loved the world in this manner, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

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Jesus is a friend of sinners who realize that they have sinned and they can't do anything about it.

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At the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth and that every tongue should confess

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Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. See, here's the thing.

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These people back in Greece, they really knew judgment was needed. Because they put up all these altars and they gave all the sacrifice and they wanted the sacrifice to be sacrificed so they wouldn't have to be sacrificed.

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They realize it's built into your fabric, justice. I was just reading the other day in the news, they're letting people out of prison now because we don't have the room anymore.

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So you can commit these heinous crimes and then go out free and even unbelievers go, something's not right with that because deep down, because you're an image bearer of God, you realize,

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I want justice. What do you think of a God, a judge rather, a human judge who just says, yeah, raped, murdered, pillaged, all this kind of stuff and free, go.

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You say that person needs justice. The Athenians knew it, the

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Epicureans knew it, the Stoics knew it, and if you're an unbeliever here today, you know it too.

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You like justice. Now the good news is,

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Acts 1730 says, the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

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You're alive. You're not in hell right now. Repent. You realize

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I've thought wrongly about God. God grant me right thinking about you. To turn from this way of thinking to that way of thinking.

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Of saying, you know what, God really isn't that holy. Turn from that. God's really not gonna judge me. You turn from that.

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I can kind of get to heaven on my own through baptism and confirmation and all these other things. And to turn from that, faith in Christ Jesus says this.

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I contribute nothing, but I'm trusting with my entire life what God said about what his son did at Calvary.

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I'm gonna take God's word for it. If you meet me sometime and you've never met me and I say to you a few things and you just say,

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I don't believe you, knowing who you are, I couldn't trust you. I can never honor what you said at face value.

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That would be an insult. I've had greater insults. But when you don't repent and believe, here's what you say.

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God, I'm not taking you at your word. I don't care what you say, God, because what comes out of your mouth,

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I'm gonna twist it somehow. Not taking a person at his word, shameful.

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Not taking God at his word is continued evidence that you're sinful. Run to the cross. You think, well, there's more gods than one.

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More ways to heaven than one. Repent. There is salvation in no one else, Acts 412.

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Maybe I can just kind of be good to get to heaven. Repent. He saved us not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy, by washing regeneration and renewing by the

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Holy Spirit. Take a look at verse 31 again, please. I just want you to notice a few things about that.

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I don't want to go too quickly. One, he's going to judge the world, that means you too.

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The living and the dead, the rich and the poor, the famous and not so famous. He's going to judge.

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Secondly, do you notice? He's going to judge the world in righteousness or with righteousness.

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Every secret will be revealed. Every skeleton from the closet will be exposed. No miscarriage of justice, no hung juries.

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And lastly, take a look at that verse. Do you notice it's a fixed day? It's already on the calendar.

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It's not going to be scheduled. It has been scheduled. It's a fixed day. There's a fixed day of righteous judgment through a man,

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Christ Jesus. How do you know that's obvious? Because Jesus was raised from the dead to confirm everything that God said.

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The first Adam sins, the last Adam judges. And by faith, he can be your savior as well.

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Time is limited. Judgment is imminent. You need a substitute. Just saying that to my family last night.

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What's the most important word about Jesus? Substitute. You need a substitute to have a

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God die on your behalf. That is love. To have a

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God die in your place. You deserve death. He didn't. He dies for you anyway. That is merciful.

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First Peter says, for Christ also died once for all, the just for the unjust.

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You need a substitute. First Peter 2, he himself bore our sins.

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You need a substitute. Galatians 3, he became a curse for us. You need a substitute.

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On that judgment day, either you are going to be judged or Jesus. Second Corinthians 5, he became sin on our behalf.

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You need a substitute. Hebrews 9, to bear the sins of many.

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You need a substitute. Well, when you preach like that, what happens? Surely no one believes.

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That's too hard. Let's water things down so at least some people can believe. At least we can feel good about ourselves because we've got a few tick marks in the front of our

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Bible. Not too long ago, a president of the

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United States in his Easter message said, Let us recognize that in Jesus's resurrection, we see both the promise and proof of love's capacity to triumph over the forces of misunderstanding, fear, and hatred.

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What would Paul say in Areopagus? Paul would say, here's the Easter message. God raised

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Jesus from the dead to prove that you're going to be judged. Flee to the

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Savior. Run by faith to the Savior. God by nature is a Savior.

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He's merciful. Look at the responses. Verse 32. Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some what?

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Mocked. Others said, oh, we'll hear you again about this.

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Maybe when it's a little cooler, when judgment's a little trendier, kind of hip, high judgment kind of thing, then maybe we'll talk to you.

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Some are mocking. Can you imagine? Who do you think you are? That's absurd.

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That's 1 Corinthians chapter 1. It's foolishness. It's moronic. Probably the

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Epicureans said that. The ones that said later were probably the Stoics. And so here comes divine abandonment.

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This is what you don't want to have happen. Because people don't believe, Paul leaves the city.

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God's messenger leaves the city. The judgment of God by removing the spokesperson.

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So Paul, verse 33, went out from their midst. Judgment. As far as we know, no church was organized anytime soon in Athens.

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Leaves, Acts 18, 1, gone. But here's the good news.

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But some men joined him and believed. You mean to tell me you can talk about creator, king, judge, substitution, exclusivity of Christ, mercy of God, and some will actually believe?

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Yes, God will cause them to be born again. And they will, with their own will, freely believe.

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Because God will change their nature through regeneration. And look at this. Some men joined him and believed.

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Maybe a couple prominent people too. We don't know exactly. Among also were Dionysius the

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Areopagite. Maybe one of the judges of that Areopagus.

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And a woman named Damaris. And others joined them. Men and women, both, who recognize the heinousness of their sins and the graciousness of God, fled to him through repentance and faith.

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Psalm chapter 2, verse 12 says, Do homage to the Son, that he might not become angry and you perish in the way.

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For his wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in him.

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Friends, that's your only hope. If you're a Christian today, you preach. The only hope people have is Christ Jesus.

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The only refuge from him is in him. You preach that time is running out.

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You preach that his wrath may soon be kindled. You preach that they're cursed. Because your goal in evangelism isn't how many people get saved, is it?

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Your goal is, I'd like to be faithful, God. I'd like to talk a lot about Christ Jesus. I want to talk about him and not me.

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And if you're an unbeliever, your response to God as creator, judge, sovereign, savior, is to believe.

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God, grant me belief. Most of you know I love bicycling. And so, if ever

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I find a story about bicycling, it really hits home. George Cutting was a man who authored a very well -known track back in the day.

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It was called, Safety, Certainty, and Enjoyment. And he was just a regular Christian person.

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He loved to preach the gospel. And he liked to bicycle through England and preach the gospel.

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Now, I don't do this very often anymore because I think they're all converted, but I might not be sure. I like to drive past Scott and Cindy Ferris' house on my bicycle, and I always give indicatives and imperatives.

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And I always say, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. I like to shout that out. I hope they have dreams about that.

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The pastor's on his bike again. Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand. And then,

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I was so happy to find this story, because I realized I'm not as crazy as you think

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I am. I was very happy. It's early in the morning.

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He's a businessman. He's riding his bicycle. And he just thinks, you know what? I just have good news, and I'm on my bicycle, and it's just time to start preaching.

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Behold, the lamb of God, what takes away the sin of the world. By the way, that's my new bike theme verse.

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That's what I'm saying from now on. Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He said it, and he just went a little bit farther, and he thought,

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I'm just going to have to say it again. Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Six months later, true story.

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He's visiting in that village, and he would just knock on the doors. And he always asked the first question in a direct way.

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He'd knock on the door. They'd open up the door, and he'd say, are you saved? Direct approach, we call that.

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Knocked on the door, woman answered the door. Are you saved? Oh, yes. About six months ago, I was in great distress of soul.

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I pled with God to help me, and even while I was calling upon him, I heard a voice cry out, behold, the lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.

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I was startled. I wondered if I had really heard it right. So I prayed to the

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Lord. Lord, if that is your message, please repeat it again. And I heard it again, and trusted

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Christ, and I am saved. Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

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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 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 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m.

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We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org

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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.