Preach The Gospel To Yourself (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. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I am recently back from Kansas.

You can do Kansas. I almost said Texas, but I had to fly from Manchester, New Hampshire, to Denver, Colorado, to Amarillo, Texas, and then drive about two hours and three hours north.

A great group of people there at Bethel Friends Church, Eric and Caleb and the rest of the folks.

Very exciting to be there for No Compromise Conference, and I know a lot more about Kansas than I thought

I did before, than I did before, than I thought I did before, too. So, anyway, thanks very much for the hospitality there at Bethel.

It's exciting to see what the Lord is doing through his preached word, and it was a blast to be there. Hopefully, they were blessed through the preaching of the ministry, but I was blessed by going.

So, if you'd like to have a No Compromise Radio Conference at your church, I'm booked.

I'm booked. The number to call is BR549. Oh, brother.

All right. One of the things I talked about at Bethel Church was preaching the gospel to yourself every day, and so that's the question that I want to pose this morning for me, this afternoon for you.

Is the gospel for new Christians? Is it for Christians as they evangelize, and then that's it?

Or should you preach the gospel to yourself every day? Well, someone might say, well, if I preach the gospel to myself every day, then does that mean

I can lose my salvation? No, it doesn't have anything to do with that, but there is a ill -perceived miscommunication that the gospel is only for unbelievers, and that once you become a believer, once God saves you by His grace alone, through faith alone, that you can move on.

I was just 30 miles north of Guymon, Oklahoma, and I met a guy on the plane, and he was filming some

Dust Bowl video, because that was the heart of the Dust Bowl, I don't know, in 1918, 1930.

I don't know when it was. We had a Dust Bowl, though. It wasn't a football bowl game, but the real

Dust Bowl. And I don't know what

I was going to say. Guymon, Dust Bowl, preaching the gospel to yourself every day, common misconception, deeper theological issues,

I don't know. But once you're saved, you don't go into deeper things. There's nothing deeper than the gospel.

That's as deep as you can get. That is as amazing as you can get. And so today on No Compromise Radio, if I can remember who

I am, I'd like to talk to you about preaching the gospel to yourself every day, even if you aren't a

Christian. What do

I mean, even if you aren't a Christian? Well, let's start off with unbelievers first, then we'll move to believers. The reason why you should preach the gospel to yourself every day if you're not a

Christian is because you need to be reminded every day that Jesus Christ, the

God -man, he's the one who cloaked himself with human flesh in the likeness of sinful man, even though he didn't sin, in the likeness of, that is to say, he became fully man so he could be our representative.

And then he died on the cross for our sins, according to the scriptures, Paul says, and that he died and he was buried and he raised from the dead.

He raised himself from the dead, rose again from the dead according to the scriptures the third day.

And so you need a substitute, just like when I talk to my little daughter and she knows she's a sinner and thoughtward indeed, she doesn't love

God with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength, she covets in her heart, she is selfish, she is greedy, she's not worshiping

God like she should. She needs a substitute, and so do you. So if you're an unbeliever, you should be thinking about the gospel every day.

There's enough to see in creation, that is, natural revelation, the sun and the moon and the stars, to watch the wind, to see a child be born, to just enjoy the simple pleasures of life, to realize that you're going to answer this

Creator one day, and Creator God is also a just judge

God, and so you're going to need the Savior. So if you're an unbeliever, you need the gospel every day as well, so that you can be saved through the preaching of the powerful gospel.

But if you're a believer, you need the gospel every day too. I still don't know why I was talking about Guymon, Texas.

Guymon, Texas. Amarillo. You bet. That's interesting.

That's different. Hey, I was super happy.

I was from Nebraska, so I could order a Diet Pop and everybody would know what I was talking about. It worked out great. Seriously, I had a great time, great group of people there, allegedly.

Billy Graham's grandson, Tulian Chivijan, I know it's pronounced

Chivijan, right, because that's on his website, how to pronounce the name, in his book,

Surprised by Grace, once God rescues sinners, his plan isn't to steer them beyond the gospel, but to move them more deeply into it.

So you don't move beyond the gospel, you're never to get over the gospel.

You don't go deeper than the gospel, you don't go higher than the gospel, you don't go around the gospel.

Jerry Bridges said, excuse me, the gospel is not only the most important message in all our history, it is the only essential message in all of history.

And therefore, in his book, Disciple of Grace, he said, preach the gospel to yourself every day.

My old Hebrew professor at Master's Seminary, he was, I think, a new pastor at the time, and you might have his little book on the gospel,

Milton Vincent said, over the course of time, preaching the gospel to myself every day has made more of a difference in my life than any other discipline

I have ever practiced. I find myself sinning less, but just as importantly, I find myself recovering my footing more quickly after sinning, due to the immediate comfort found in the gospel.

I've also found that when I am absorbed in the gospel, everything else I'm supposed to be toward God and others seems to flow out of me more naturally and passionately.

Doing right is not always easy, but it is never more easy than when one is breathing deeply the atmosphere of the gospel.

So when Paul said, I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, this was not the first chronological thing that Paul taught the church of Corinth when he was there, described in Acts 18.

He was there 18 months, and so this wasn't day one. Now he might have taught it day one, but the point of the passage in 1

Corinthians 15 verse three is of first importance. Everything in the Bible is important, but there are some things that are more important.

There is a hierarchical structure to importance, to use a D .A. Carson term.

So why preach the gospel to yourself every day? Let me give you several reasons today, and we'll see how far we get.

Don't forget you can write us at info at nocompromisedradio .com. Next week Carl Truman, James White, and Phil Johnson fly in for the

NoCo video, No Compromise ever. We're going to be talking about compromises and evangelicalism, and then what to do about it.

We'll put it together, and we will make a one and a half to two hour film about that that we'll put online.

And for a mere $49 .99, you can click on it.

I don't know what we're going to do about that. I think we'll just say in No Compromise style, you know,

I'd like to watch or donate here or donate any amount. Maybe that's better. Don't you think? Donate any amount.

Maybe that'll be the way to go. It's kind of the anti -elephant room. So if the elephant room charges,

I don't know what they charge, let's just say for the sake of argument $50, then we want to have ours for free.

If those guys wore skinny jeans, then I'm going to wear flares. So it's just kind of the anti, it's the anti -elephant room.

Preaching the gospel to yourself every day. Why? Number one, only the gospel provides lasting motivation for the

Christian. Only the gospel provides lasting motivation for the Christian. Now many people, when they want to motivate themselves, they try a variety of different things, and we have no devos, no breakfast, right?

No devotionals, no devotions in the morning, then that means no breakfast, you can't eat until you have a devotion.

If you want to do that, that's fine as a motivation, but I think I can study the

Bible better on a full stomach. My typical breakfast isn't that good anyway, so once you get to be my age, and it's oatmeal, a couple crushed walnuts, some stevia, and some frozen blueberries.

That's it. That's it. This is a funny story in Kansas, I got up in the morning, Eric and Lisa, Pastor Eric and his wife

Lisa were already at the church getting ready, I wanted to have some oatmeal for my cholesterol, etc.,

and I had an instant pack, poured some water in, it was a kind that didn't have any sugar or anything, so I put some stevia on top, tap water was poured in, like I said.

They don't have microwaves in Kansas. So I had to go preach, and I thought, well,

I have oatmeal usually every morning, and I guess I just eat it, so I stood at the window in Eugenton, Kansas, and ate that crunchy oatmeal.

It was a lot of good roughage, I have to say, it was very good. Then to come to find out, there was a microwave in the house,

I just had to open the cupboard above the oven, but I didn't want to snoop around.

I went to the pastor's office to snoop around for money in his drawer, but I couldn't find any, so I figured I better not snoop around in the kitchen, that would be bad manners for the guest preacher, wouldn't it?

So, number one, only the gospel provides lasting motivation. It's hard if you are a

Christian for 60 years to stay motivated, that is a fact, and everyone has their ebbing and their flowing, and you think of that sine wave form, and hopefully the troughs get smaller and the apexes kind of, it becomes more of like California's real estate, more of a straight line going up over time, progressive sanctification.

But what do you do day in and day out? And so I would like to say to you that if you preach the gospel to yourself, remind yourself of your sin, and Jesus Christ a greater

Savior than all your sin, and what God did and what free grace really means, and what salvation costs

God himself, I think that is motivating. Full and free forgiveness should motivate you today, and tomorrow you have full and free forgiveness based on justification by faith alone, and that should be motivating as well.

If we're going to be unmotivated because of people in ministry, or ourselves, or spouses, or things don't go right, or only motivated when things do go right, health, this is a fallen world, and so there are going to be problems when it comes to interpersonal relationships, communication, at the job.

Sometimes you get fired, sometimes you get hired, right? Sometimes you get a bonus, and sometimes you get a pay deduction. If you're going to base your motivation on things like that, it just doesn't last.

But the gospel never changes. We have the eternal good news, an eternity past the pact between the

Trinity, some call the covenant of redemption. We have the Father and the

Son agreeing to go rescue a people, and having Jesus go die for that people, and redeem the people, and hand those people back to the

Father by the work of the Spirit of God. And so listen to what Spurgeon said, maybe one of my favorite all -time

Spurgeon quotes. When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin.

But when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could ever have rebelled against one who loved me so and sought my good.

So let's think about that in terms of Christians thinking about God's grace today.

When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin. But when I found God so kind in the gospel, saving me, so good, so overflowing with compassion,

I smote upon my breast to think that I could ever have been unmotivated because of the one who loved me so and sought my good.

This is good motivation for the Christian to remember how free and full forgiveness is and will be.

Remember all your sins, past, present, and future, Colossians 2, taken care of. And then say to yourself, what it cost the

Son. This is the Son who would hear the words like this from the Father, this is my beloved

Son in who I am what, well pleased. And then to be on the cross and for those three hours when the dark judgment of God was happening,

God the Son says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

This is exciting. This is a drama that is very motivational. Dorothy Sayers, who died in 1957, she said, the

Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man. And the dogma is the drama.

This is the dogma we find so dull, this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and the hero.

If this is dull, then what in heaven's name is worthy to be called exciting? The people who hanged

Christ never to do them justice, accused him of being a bore. On the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe.

It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium.

We have very efficiently paired P -A -R -E -D, the claws of the

Lion of Judah, certifying him meek and mild and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.

Now we may call that doctrine exhilarating or we may call it devastating. We may call it revelation or we may call it rubbish.

But if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all,

Dorothy Sayers. This is an exciting thing that God has done for us and the gospel is necessary for us for many reasons.

Let me give you more insight to this first reason of motivation. When you realize the gospel and you're motivated to respond, you're not motivated to do things to get yourself more lovable.

That's, I think I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but they're all so interrelated. Listen to B .B. Warfield. There's nothing in us or done by us at any stage of our earthly development because of which we are acceptable to God.

We must always be accepted for Christ's sake or we cannot ever be accepted at all.

This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed.

It will continue to be our trust as long as we live. We need, our need of Christ does not cease with our believing, nor does the nature of our revelation to him or to God through him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be.

It is always on his blood and righteousness alone that we can rest. To me, that's motivating.

Let me tell you a scripture that is found in Galatians chapter 2 verse 20, very popular, but I want you to listen to it as I read it.

And Paul is speaking in the present tense about something past tense, so here's what's going to happen.

Paul is going to say, this is why I live based on something that was done for me in the past.

The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Now in the context of justification by faith alone in Galatians chapter 2,

Paul says, present tense, the life I now live. So he's not talking about when

God loved him and gave himself for him in the context of sanctification, but he's talking about the gospel and how

God justifies the ungodly and how God declares righteous the unrighteous and how

God declares the righteous one, Christ, he declares him unrighteous because Christ is bearing our sins because his perfect atoning work,

Christ receives by imputation our sins. So for Paul, it wasn't just something that happened in the past.

Jesus loved me on Calvary. Jesus died for me. He died for my sins.

He was raised from the dead. That truth, that verity influenced what he was all about while Paul was alive.

The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. I live by faith in this

God who was the gospel incarnate, if I could put it that way.

Christ's death being greater than Paul's sins, sufficient to cover every one of Paul's sins, very, very motivating.

Now here's what happens, and I think I've talked about this on other shows before. If God, in fact, according to the

Scriptures, declares you righteous based on the work of another, in answer to the question, just how good do you have to be to get into heaven?

And God's answer in Matthew 5 .48 is perfect. Yet God provides you his

Son's perfection as representative, and then God the Son dies on your behalf as your substitute.

God the Father confirms that, justifies the Son by raising him from the dead, declares that substitution effective.

When Jesus said, it is finished, he accomplished redemption on the cross. When God the

Father raised him, I believe that you could think about it this way, God the Father said amen to it is finished, raising

Jesus from the dead. So if that happens, that means no sin that you could ever commit in the future is going to cause you to lose your salvation.

It's done, it's final, because that future sin has also been paid for. So does that motivate you to not sin, or does free grace motivate you to sin?

Rasputin was an advisor, a theological advisor to the

Romanov family in Russia, late 1800s, early 1900s.

And he thought, well here's the deal, because of free, sovereign grace, the more you sin, the more

God forgives, and God gets glory when he forgives, and so we might as well give

God a lot of glory, so let's sin a lot. Now Rasputin understood wrongly,

I have to admit, but he got an inkling of just how gracious grace was.

There was a wrong effect of grace, but grace should make us be motivated not to sin.

After all that the triune God has done for us, the motivation should be clear. Don't sin.

The motivation, the response to free grace should not be, oh let's go sin.

See, that's what the Roman Catholics try to do to us with justification by faith alone. This alien righteousness, this forensic righteousness, this righteousness that is earned by Christ Jesus, credited to our account, will somehow get us to sin.

That's going to make us want to sin, because we can, and there's no deal afterwards. And so with infused righteousness, here we have justification by infusion, and then as time goes, you know, you get some grace at baptism infused, and then you get some at the mass, and you get some at your last rites, and everything else in between, and you've got to earn things as you go along.

You've got to do things as you go along. But the scriptures clearly teach that the motivation for holy living is remembering the gospel.

That is Romans chapter 6. God justifies, pronounces sinners righteous by the work of another, and Satan, the world, nor can you change that.

That doctrine should not lead to morally loose living. That doctrine should not lead to sin.

Hey, I like to sin, God likes to forgive, that's fun, let's live this up. No. Romans 6 .1.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might abound? And that really is the test, to find out if somebody's preaching free grace, that people, although wrongly, misinterpret it.

That's what I've quoted you before with Martin Lloyd -Jones, there's no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the

New Testament gospel of salvation than this. That some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone, it does not matter at all what you do.

You can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace.

That's the wrong response. Paul says you shouldn't do that at all. And by the way, this free grace gospel of Paul that he calls my gospel in Romans, that is the gospel of grace, the gospel of Christ Jesus, the gospel, the good news, what

God did, if it's, you know, if you have to do something to keep it, then this charge in Romans, chapter 6, 1, would never be levied against Paul.

It'd never be leveled, levy, levy, levered, it would never be leveled against Paul.

It'd say, you know what, you want to be a Christian, you want to go to heaven, you got to stop sinning, you got to start doing good works versus what we just taught.

So my name is Mike Abendroth, time's going fast, we're going to have to do part two next time. What is the gospel and how does it motivate?

Why don't you preach the gospel to yourself today and remember Christ's vicarious death, His perfect life,

His literal resurrection. 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 6. 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.

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