Preaching Christ

Welcome to No Content Radio. My name is Mike Gabendroth in the studio with Steve Cooley. Hi. No Compromise Radio here. We, Steve, are on a couple radio stations, one in Alaska, one in Wyoming, and I want to know why we're not in any big cities.

I mean we're out there in the tundra. I mean next we'll expand to like Montana or something.

I don't know. I'm kind of surprised. I would think that driving in Los Angeles, people should be like, you know, I could really go for some no content radio right now.

Steve, I guess our listeners are going to have to give a little bit more because it's only 600 ,000 a year to be on daily on KKLA 99 .5 for a half hour. That's it? That's it. That's nothing.

That's a nothing burger. Well, let me just do the math because we really need three hours a day in Los Angeles.

Yeah. Well, all it takes is one big giver. Yeah. You know, in the old days I'd say, no Compromise Radio. Don't give to us. Just tell your millionaire friends to give to us. Millionaire?

Let's go for the billionaire. What about that dude from Nebraska, Omaha? Pat Abendroth? No, no, no.

Oh, Buffett. Yeah. Warren Buffett. Why doesn't he ever write the show? I think Pat still has the keys to Buffett's house when we used to go over there and help the Buffetts out. And you know what?

If Warren Buffett wants to underwrite our show, I think when we get on the air in Los Angeles, we should just call the show like Walking in L .A. or something. Nobody walks. We're just some nobodies walking in L .A.

I do remember that song. I also remember I Love L .A.

Except I'm not Randy Newman. I kind of thought he's pretty sharp. Right? The Toy Story, Blonde, I Love L .A. He's a very clever songwriter. Can't sing a lick. But that's interesting. He's so good with lyrics that what he says kind of overrides his homiletic.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's kind of like Bob Dylan. I mean, come on. Name all the songs where Bob Dylan sounds like he has a good voice and I'll just go two. Knockin' on Heaven's Door and Lay, Lay, Lay. Everything else is like, come on, dude.

You can't sing. Well, come on. The Saved album? Wasn't he a Christian for a while? Oh, yeah. Well, that's a different album. Slow, slow train coming. Come on.

The Acts of the Holy Spirit and the Sequel to Luke

Steve, I was looking at the book of Acts. A-C-T-S. Not A-X. That's correct. And do you think it's kind of like the Acts of the Holy Spirit? Would that be a good way to phrase it maybe? It's certainly a way, yes.

What are we supposed to say? Acts of the Apostles or something like that?

But I mean, really, you're looking at the whole, the entry or the starting point is basically the Holy Spirit and it's just kind of a continuing amazement at the work of the Holy Spirit.

Yes. So, it's the sequel to the book of Luke, right? And Luke writes Luke and Acts, and he wrote more of the New Testament than anybody else. Did you know that? Yes, I did. Okay. Yeah, because….

I'm teaching Luke, you're teaching Acts. Yeah, because I read those things too, you know.

And at the end of Acts, it says, "...when they had appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging and in greater numbers. From morning till evening, Paul expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from the prophets.

Some were convinced, others disbelieved.". See, today I want to talk a little bit about the importance of talking about the Lord Jesus from Moses, from the prophets, and from Acts, and from Luke, and from the rest of the books of the Bible.

It seems like a wise thing for pastors to do.

Would you rather be known for someone that talks about Jesus a lot or too much or not enough? If you had to pick one of the sides of that.

I would like people to say, I mean, if they're going to complain, you know, here's a Google review I'd like to read. You know, the problem with those guys, they talk so much about Jesus and the gospel.

I just couldn't take it anymore. See, don't we all love the story about the man who's older, he's frail and feeble, and he walks up to the pulpit with his notes in the Bible to preach on the Lord's Day, and he sees the little note that's carved into the pulpit, we would see Christ.

Don't we love to talk about that? Yeah. But then in practical application sometimes, maybe someone's in Ezra or Esther or someplace else, and it's like, where's Jesus in the sermon? Job. Job. Psalms. Uh-huh.

So, I think just in general, wouldn't we say to start off, it's good to talk about Jesus if you're a pastor or a Bible teacher, or you lead your family in worship.

Christ in the Old Testament and Progressive Revelation

Well, I mean, we like to call ourselves Christians, right? We're Christian pastors. You know, let's just put it another way, a little no-co style, if you will. If a rabbi, an imam, a bishop from a local Mormon church, somebody from the Watchtower Society wanders in on a Sunday, and they hear the message, and they greet you at the door, and they say, well, that was very helpful, Pastor.

Thank you. Or they say, I really enjoyed that. And, you know, then you want to say, what part was it? Was it the part where I really, you know, hammered on the gospel? Or, you know, was it because I had my exegetical ducks all in a row, and I explained the text, the way they understand the text.

And we both agree that God's law is wonderful.

Well, we did a couple word studies, too. Yeah. And this word is only used one time in all the Old Testament. It's a hapax legomenon.

Can you have hapax legomenos in the Old Testament, though?

Well, you know, with my new diet, I'm not allowed to have legomenons. It's kind of like under the legumes and seeds and all that stuff. Kind of high in carbs? Paul, I think, did say in chapter one of Colossians, verse 28, Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we might present everyone mature in Christ.

For this I toil, struggling with all his energy, that he powerfully works within me. I mean, Paul is struggling. There's toil, energy, all given by God for the proclamation of Christ Jesus.

Well, you know what that means, though? That means he was really struggling and working to figure out what parts of the Old Testament to skip over so that he wouldn't be embarrassed by not talking about Christ.

Well, I think it took Paul like three years to teach through all the Old Testament at Ephesus, if I'm thinking properly. And so I thought it'd be kind of easy because all I needed to do was go to Genesis 3, Psalm 22, Psalm 2, Psalm 110.

The servant songs in Isaiah, and then he's done. It was over. Just, you know, just kind of brush the dust off of his hand and move on.

So, Steve, some people say to be faithful to the text would mean that we're not going to look at later revelation and somehow interpret earlier revelation. We just have to stay where we are. If, in fact, with Esther, though, there's nothing about God even, how faithful is a pastor if he doesn't mention God in Esther, let alone the second person of the Godhead, the Eternal Son?

Again, you know, if we were meeting, and I assume we are, as a Christian church, and we come in and we preach Esther and we don't hear about Christ, I don't know. You know, are we, what are we doing on Sunday morning?

We're here to worship the triune God, but we can't really squeeze all of his trinity into, you know, one message. So, just going to have to move on.

Steve, you're preaching through the book of Acts, and talk to us a little bit about, well, you've got Peter, then you've got Paul. And of course, the New Testament isn't written in total yet. Who knows what's written, if anything?

And they're both preaching Christ over and over and over. Every time Paul talks about the Damascus Road experience and Peter's getting up preaching, it's all Old Testament proclamation of Christ. Why can't we follow their lead?

Well, I mean, that's what they would have had to do, right? I mean, they wouldn't have, they wouldn't go, open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter, because they wouldn't have those books. They would only have the Old Testament.

So, yeah. And, you know, I think the flip side is some people will then accuse you of, you know, maybe trying to squeeze the Jesus into every text of the Old Testament.

And what I say to them is, while I do dumb things, first of all, prove it in my sermons. Second of all, I don't need to jam him in places that he doesn't belong, because I can use other options to talk about Jesus.

For instance, I could say the S. Lewis Johnson approach. Everything in this passage reminds me of the Lord Jesus. And I'm thankful in light of the sin that I see in Jacob's life, the sin that I then see in my own life, to have a God who would even call himself the God of Jacob and that triune God.

And then off I go into talking about the Father sending the Son, etc., etc. It doesn't have to be in the text, or the other illustration I use, Steve, is a dog returns to its own vomit in the Proverbs.

Is Jesus in that text? No. But can't I say I'm so thankful for the Lord Jesus that if it wasn't for his grace and the Father sending him to rescue me, I too, to this very day at 62 years old, would be running back to my own vomit of sin.

Did I put him in the text? No. Was he in the text? No. Can I preach him from the text or in my sermon? Yes.

Well, is there, you know, and here's where maybe things hinge a little bit. What's the necessary implication of the text? Perfect.

Right. So, when you're a dad teaching Bible, you know, to the children at the worship time at the dinner table, you're a mom teaching your little ones some Proverbs, it's all couched in who's giving us the law.

What's our relationship to the law giver? Who's Jesus? What has he done? Any thoughts, quotes from people, ideas that people talk about that would run contrary to this idea?

Well, I mean, there, you know, what would you say about the idea, you know, that there are several books, more than a dozen books in the Old Testament that are not quoted in the New Testament? Old Testament books not quoted in the New Testament.

Therefore, how can you wedge Jesus in if the apostles didn't? Oh, well, that's interesting.

I learn something new every day. One of the things I would say is these days, there's especially a renewal in scholastic and in academic circles about not just how the Bible is quoted in the New Testament, the Old Testament quoted in the New, but how the Old Testament itself quotes the Old Testament.

And furthermore, not direct quotations, but allusions or echoes or resemblances or something like that. You look at the book of Revelation, and it's basically this is what the Old Testament teaches about the soon return of Christ.

But it hardly ever quotes anything from the Old Testament because it's all allusions. It's all these people understood the Bible so well, it just kind of comes out of them without chapter and verse. So, if somebody said to me with a question again, ask me the question again one more time so I can be precise.

What would we say to somebody who says, you know, there are more than a dozen books of the Old Testament that are not quoted in the New Testament? So, you know, in other words, how can you then teach the Bible when the apostles and their close associates didn't?

It seems like to me that's a bad argument because, well, when the apostles did quote the Old Testament, here's how they did it. And here's their model. And there's newer revelation, progressive revelation, a fulfillment of revelation.

And if it's not quoted, well, that doesn't make me change. So, what's my other option? Well, now I have to, when I'm preaching these books of the Bible that's not quoted in the New Testament, I have to read like a Jew.

And there's no fulfillment. There's no resurrection. There's no Jesus who's coming back. Is that what they want me to do?

I don't really know what they want you to do.

To me, it's like, well, that's, you know what I want to say? That's a dumb argument. What about the books that aren't quoted in the New Testament? Well, okay. Did Jesus say, by the way, those books aren't in the canon and they don't speak of me?

Did Paul say those books are not in the canon? They don't speak about the Lord Jesus? What about the Emmaus Road? No, no, everything is good to go except those 15 books that aren't explicitly quoted with quotation marks around them from the Septuagint.

I just think it's a bad argument. What would you say to somebody who says, well, why would you even, you know, teach from the Old Testament, especially places where it's not clear that Jesus is being referred to?

When you can just go to the New Testament and preach, you know, what's clearly Christian. So, you know, do you maybe spend too much time trying to wedge? Yeah, or even extract Jesus from the Old Testament when he's so plain and evident in the New?

Good question. I would say that for most of the ministry that the Lord has given me, I've taught from the New Testament. I have taught from the Old Testament. I've taught through Genesis, Exodus, Esther, Daniel.

I think it took me 70 weeks, Steve, to teach through Daniel. Wow. How biblical. I had to stretch that last one into two parts. Was there a missing week? Well, I didn't want to end on the 69th week. That would be bad form.

Very bad. And so, what do I do about teaching the Old Testament and wedging in? I don't have to wedge in. The Old Testament is a Christian book, and it's inspired by God, and it's profitable for teaching, and it's profitable for reproof, and I am to preach the word.

And when Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, verse 2, preach the word, what does that entail? Does it preach the word of good news? Does it preach just these words, authorial intent? What does he mean there?

I think it's a little more expansive than we might know. So, I think if people want to argue with me, what about preaching Jesus from the Old Testament and wedging him in? My flipside argument would be I want to teach the Old Testament, but I'm not going to read him out of the text.

You don't want me to read him into the text, but I'm not going to read him out of the text, because when I see the word Lord, that's a triune Lord. When I see the word God, Elohim, that's a triune Elohim.

When I see the word Adonai, that's a triune Adonai. So, how could I, from the very get-go, knowing what I know later revelation, we're talking about the Father, the Son, and the Spirit when I say the word God.

I have had a very interesting teaching, just the early stages of Acts. But every time where the apostles, Peter is where I am, but when they make it clear that Jesus Christ is God, the people who come to faith don't start asking questions about the Trinity.

It's like somehow, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the pieces of the puzzle just snap into place for believers. So, they go, oh, so Jesus is God, but he's the Son of God. He's the second person of the Trinity, the Father's God, and the Holy Spirit of whom we heard so much about in the Old Testament, but we didn't really understand.

Well, wait a minute, is this a different God or is this just a power of God? Who is the Holy Spirit? And now, it all just kind of comes into focus and they understand this. And I just think, you know, the Old Testament saints, when they get, when they're taught, there aren't, you know, the questions all just kind of evaporate.

They get it.

I don't know what kind of puzzle it would be. It's not Tetris, but everything just kind of goes perfectly into the outline, right? You had the outline in the Old Testament, the shadow, and then it just fits and they go, oh, that's the obvious fulfillment of what's been talked about.

Christ in Hebrews, theophanies, and the shadows of the Old Testament

Steve, I think what did it for me to put the lid on Christ-centered preaching in terms of to do it is when I was going through Hebrews and Hebrews chapter 1, quoting all those Old Testament verses, speaking about the deity of Jesus.

Certainly, Psalm 110, they'd say is messianic. Psalm 2 is messianic. But then the writer, Paul or whomever it is, has all these quotes, Psalm 102 and Psalm 45, places that aren't messianic in our minds.

He says, you know what? Here's the deity of Jesus. Right. And so, when I look at Hebrews 1, I think, how does this Jewish person proclaiming Christ Jesus the priest, what does he think of the Old Testament?

And he says, here's a little sampling. Jesus is truly divine and I'll just sample the Old Testament in places we normally wouldn't go to. So, that kind of sealed the deal for me.

Well, let me ask you another question along the same line. If you think about Old Testament and you're going to teach Jesus at the Old Testament, are there things in the Old Testament that kind of help the listener understand Jesus better than things in the New Testament?

Or again, should we just focus on the New Testament almost to the exclusion of the Old Testament? Or are there really valuable truths about Jesus in the Old Testament that we need to bring forth to our hearers?

It's almost like, well, let's look at only the New Testament to learn about Jesus. Because if we looked at the Old Testament, maybe we're going to make some links that are improper so we better keep our distance so we stay on the safe side.

But to your point and question, then what do we do with the Servant Songs and Isaiah 42? That, of course, Jesus quotes as we have it recorded in Luke 4. What do we do with some of these passages about the character of God and the nature of God?

And what do we do about Theophanies? Yay, yes, and amen. What about Christophanies? Where we think, okay, what's going on when Jesus, the Eternal Son, pre-incarnate, shows up in Abraham's tent? What can we learn about Him?

What can we learn about, well, last time I checked, God is a spirit. He doesn't have a body. And so, who's walking in the garden when Adam and Eve fell? Spirit's walking? Father's walking? We have the pre-incarnate Eternal Son walking in the garden.

Because any kind of body or flesh or corporeal substance is not going to be the Father or the Spirit. It's going to be the pre-incarnate Son. And so, why would I say no to all that in the Old Testament?

I'm not a functional Christotelic Marcionite.

Well, and you know, some of what you just said, I mean, we would be robbing our people of really the wonder of, you know, the shadows are fascinating that are given to us in the Old Testament. And so, you know, it's almost like for us, you know, is the prequel a waste of time?

Right? The answer is no, because we see a lot of clues. I mean, what, I think what happens a lot of times when we teach the Old Testament, we just find ourselves thinking again and again and again. How could the Israelites be so dumb?

And then we go, yeah, well, we're pretty dumb too, right?

Well, Steve, a big picture, what's the Lord teaching us in the Old Testament? Well, many things. Here's one. Priests pray and priests offer sacrifices. Wages of sin is death, sacrifice, either you die or a sacrifice.

And so, we have Leviticus, for instance, and other books of the Bible to teach us about priests and all pointing to and leading up to and the concept of forgiveness. And wouldn't it be nice not to have to do this every day, every year, every Yom Kippur, every Passover, slay the animals, slay the animals, blood everywhere, thighs everywhere.

And all of a sudden we come to the ultimate priest and he himself is a sacrifice and he himself prays. And now when I read the Old Testament about sacrifices, Passover, Yom Kippur, don't I, in fact, think about Jesus, the final and ultimate sacrifice that everything was pointing to?

Well, I should sure hope so. I mean, you're not going to be thinking about, oh, good old Nadab and Abihu.

No, I only think of them like if it wasn't for Jesus, I'd be burnt to a crisp too. Yes, yes. Therefore, even with the types and shadows and the things pointing to, Colossians chapter 2 talks about the outlines or the shadows.

The shadows speak of Christ. And I think it was B .B. Warfield who said, when you look at the Old Testament, it's like there's furniture in a room, but the lights are really low. You can barely see the couch.

You can barely see the chair. And then when you go to the New Testament, the light turns on. Nothing new, Steve, was put in that room. No new chairs, no new furniture. It's just we see with brilliance, oh, I understand now the fulfillment found in the New Testament.

The Trinity, the Incarnation, and Christ-Centered Preaching

Well, let me ask you this. You know, in the Old Testament, if you're really trying to take a Christ-centered approach, aren't you in effect going to be demoting the Father and the Holy Spirit in terms of their importance?

You should see Steve's face.

With Gregory, which Gregory I can't remember, and Steve Meister would correct me if he was here. He would know. When we say God, our minds should think of three, right? When we think of the one, we think of the three.

God is one, three persons. When we think of one person, we should think of the three. So when I say Jesus died on a cross, our minds should be filling in the blanks. The Father sent him to do that very thing.

Out of love for people and out of love in the triune Godhead, the Father sent the Son. And the Father and the Son then send the Spirit. And so when I think of the Son, I always think of the sent Son. And if you start reading the Bible and you read John, for instance, you preach through John.

How many times does it say, quoting Jesus, the Father sent me? Right, innumerable. And therefore, you see it in the acts of the apostles and the Holy Spirit. We've said in the past, the Holy Spirit loves to put the spotlight on the Son.

Because when the Son is glorified, he too, the Spirit is glorified, and so too is the Father. You can't glorify one person without glorifying God because the person is God. And therefore, when we say the Holy Ghost-filled Pentecostal churches that don't talk about Jesus aren't as Holy Ghost-filled as we think because Holy Ghost-filled churches point to the Lord Jesus.

And the Lord Jesus on earth pointed to his Father. And so when you think of the one, you think of the three, you think of the three, you think of the one, if somebody says we don't talk about the Father enough and the Spirit enough, I just think that's a pretty dumb argument.

Well, and I wrote this question for Steve Meister and you didn't use it, but it didn't hurt my feelings.

Steve needs to go back to the leadership thing about grudges. Don't hold grudges.

But, you know, when Jesus is going to be out in the wilderness to be tempted by Satan, scripture tells us, Matthew 4 maybe, you know, that the Holy Spirit impels him. But by virtue of inseparable operations, meaning inseparable operations, meaning that anything that one person of the Trinity does, they all do, right?

So, Jesus impelled himself out into the wilderness. You know, you want to talk about kind of that Jesus in his divinity drove the man Jesus out into the wilderness.

I'm trying to think if you just said heresy there.

See, it's hard, isn't it? It's very hard.

Well, with inseparable operations, it's easier if we think about baptism, all three there. We think about the resurrection, but you'll see, you know, for the sake of argument, economic terms with the father is the one who elects, the son dies for the spirit he, you know, makes alive and seals to their day of redemption.

I like it, Steve, that you brought up the temptation account because we should automatically realize this has nothing to do with us. We pray, lead us not into temptation. And here now, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into temptation.

I don't know technically if what you said is true, but I'm getting your point.

But it's, well, because here's the thing about the Trinity. It's hard. It's hard for us to wrap our arms around it and to think, and you know, like you said, the father elects. Jesus said what to his disciples?

You didn't choose me, but I chose you. Okay. Now we could say, well, he only chose because the father chose. Okay. So what? There was a difference of wills. Jesus kind of, no.

Well, once we hit the incarnation, then it gets doubly hard. So, that's why we confess in 1 Timothy 3, great is the mystery of godliness that we confess. There is that mystery there. Steve, for me in my house, and I know it's for you as well.

I don't think there's anything wrong with preaching sermons about Jesus. If you've explained what Ecclesiastes 5 says and means, and then you talk about the fear of the Lord, and aren't you glad you don't have to fear God like a cringing, guilty person would before an absolute judge.

Now, because the Lord Jesus, we fear the father with a son's type of fear, wanting to honor and see our father highly exalted. There's zero wrong with that because I'm not shaving off the contours of Ecclesiastes.

I'm teaching it, and then I'm adding the fact that, oh, I think Jesus was raised. That's kind of a key figure in all this. Is Jesus raised or not? He's definitely raised. So, do we have any fun little facts before we close the show?

Do we, what do we do? Oh, Steve Meister's conference is Bethlehem Bible Church, bbcchurch .org, or you can go to the YouTube site. That'd be good to watch again. It'd be very good to watch. I learned a lot.

Yeah, watch a couple times. Yeah. I think Steve Meister probably knows a thing or two, but now with his, you know, with his associations, now we have the same associations that he does. Are we going to like feel, is he going to feel the backlash for being associated with No Compromise Radio?

He might be.

Man, he could be in a tough spot. He might need some good coffee.

We'll pray for you, Steve, and Steve Meister.