Sovereign Spirit

No Compromise Radio

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth and we are back for the Wednesday show live, well, recorded, but you can watch on YouTube or then you can pick it up on Spotify or podcasts of your choosing.

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Before I start the show today, I want to remind you or tell you that my new book, King, K -I -N -G is out, subtitled

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How the Sovereignty of God Changes Everything. Back in 2011,

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I think, I wrote a book called The Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus. I know, a long title. And I took some things out of that book, made them a little more reformed, a little more law gospel, a little less

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Lordshipy and five chapters, small, 105 pages or so.

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It's called King, How the Sovereignty of God Changes Everything. Talks about prayer, talks about worship, reading the

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Bible, how sovereignty, knowing God as a king can help you in your everyday Christian life.

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So you can pick that up on Amazon. I can pick that up wherever quality books are sold.

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No, you can only pick it up at Amazon. I went to Rome for a conference.

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Now, I typically go to the Shepherds Conference and see a lot of friends there. I don't usually go to too many sessions, but I thought, this year

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I'll mix it up a little bit. So I typed in conferences, Trinity, Nicaea.

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Remember the Nicene Creed, 318. Wait a second,

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I'm messing it up. 325, 381, and it is the 1700.

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If you don't do shows for a while, this gets harder and harder. It's the 1700 year anniversary, 1700 year anniversary.

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And so I went to Rome for a conference on the Nicene Creed. And it was held by Catholics, Greeks, Greek Orthodox, some liberal

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Protestants. The Archbishop of England was there.

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There was a Cardinal there and all that stuff. So all that to say, they were talking about the Trinity and it was quite interesting.

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I was the odd duck out. I'm sure I was the only Calvinist. I'm sure I'm the only evangelical. I'm sure I was the only Baptist. Probably the only

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Christian. And it was wild. Well, four months ago when

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I registered, they said, this is the schedule, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And hear the speakers and everything else, probably 30 speakers and pick and choose.

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And it said Saturday, cultural event. I said to Kim, it's our anniversary weekend.

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And she said, let's go to Sicily instead because we're already in Rome. Sicily, cheap flight, 49 bucks, off we go.

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So we booked those cheap flights to Sicily. I know, I'll get to the Bible here in a second. Indulge me,

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I haven't recorded for a month. And I get to the conference and Wednesday, I open up my conference bulletin schedule.

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I had shorts on, it was hot. And everybody else has got robes, gowns and cowls and hats.

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And here I am. And they probably didn't wanna let me in. And I open up to Saturday and it said, cultural event, private meeting with the

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Pope. This is gonna be the best no -co thing ever.

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I'm gonna get a picture with the Pope, the new Pope from Chicago. And I thought, but I'm flying to Sicily, it's my anniversary.

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So all that to say, my wife, she's a kind lady. And she said, well, let's just rearrange it, fly a little bit later that day and it's okay.

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And so I looked, it was like 250 euros to change the flight cause I was on the cheap airline.

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And finally I just said, it's my anniversary. What am I gonna do if I meet the Pope? I mean, what would I say? You get like one second for the picture and you have to move on, right?

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Swiss guard. And what do you say? Luther was right. Do you say repent?

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You know, and the Swiss guard comes and runs you through. I don't know, what am I gonna do? So anyway,

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I declined the Pope invitation and went to Sicily. It was a great time,

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Cefalu, I don't know how to pronounce it. Really cool beach and everything else. But it got me thinking, if I had 20 minutes with the

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Pope, what would I say? I mean, if I only had one second for the quick picture, do you say repent?

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Luther was right. Sola fide. What do you say?

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Quit worshiping Mary. But if I had 20 minutes, 25 minutes with the

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Pope, what would I say? And the answer is John chapter three. Of course, men in some of these religious institutions, liberal

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Protestants or Roman Catholics, they're not dumb. Their IQs are probably higher than mine.

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This is not an issue of intellect or IQ or anything else. But simple

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Bible truths. And so when I think of the most religious man on earth,

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I tend to think about Christian realm, Christian, and I think of the

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Pope. And so if Jesus met the most religious person in the world, what would he say?

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And the answer is found in John chapter three. So today on No Compromise Radio, if I had the extended conversation with the

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Pope, I would talk about the passage in John chapter three, which is very, very famous.

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Now, most everyone knows John 3 .16, but I'm not sure they know the exact context. The Bible says in John chapter three, there was a man of the

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Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. And so here's this leader, here's this man.

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And of course we know the Pharisees. If you could describe them with one word, I'd probably describe them, maybe

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I could say religious, or I would probably say something like fastidious in their religion.

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They were not the liberals. They were the conservatives. They were the fundamentalist as it were. And we know a little bit about the

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Pharisees from the New Testament. The interesting thing is in chapter two, the last verse, it says, and because he did not need anyone to testify concerning man, that is

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Jesus didn't need anyone to testify for he himself, Jesus knew what was in a man.

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Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus. So Jesus knows what's in the heart of everyone.

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And he knew what was in the heart of Nicodemus. And we have this religious man meeting

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Jesus. Now it says in verse two, this man came to Jesus by night and said to him,

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Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

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So for whatever reason, he shows up at night.

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He comes by night. I had a friend and when he taught this to the youth group, he taught 20 years ago, this is

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Nick at night. I thought, okay, not bad. When he taught Ephesians two, one to 10, the first three verses that talk about our depravity, he said, this is natural born killers.

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I think that was, who knows who was it? Mario, who was in that show 20 years ago, 30 years ago?

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Woody Harrelson, Bruce Willis, somebody like that. Okay, good.

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Well, you're here for some reason, at least contributing. I feel like Joe Rogan, he's got those guys, he asks questions and they quick type it into AI and then they already, that's right.

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And so he shows up at night and he asked Jesus this question, makes the statement.

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Jesus answered and said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?

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Jesus answers in verse five, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

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And so it's very, very interesting. I misspoke a little bit earlier, Nicodemus didn't ask him a question, he made a statement, but Jesus answered him, he responded to him and he said, you must be born again.

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One of the things that we often forget about is the damning nature of self -righteousness.

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So let's just break that down a little bit. If I say righteous, I wonder what you think about.

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The root word of righteous, of course, is right. And so God wants us to obey his law and to do the right thing.

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And Adam was to obey God by doing certain things and not doing other things. And so that's righteous living, doing the right thing.

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And so Jesus, of course, always did the right thing and he earned or merited righteousness for us.

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When we receive righteousness in the realm of justification by faith alone, that righteousness is credited, imputed, reckoned to our account, banking language.

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And his righteousness is given to us freely by grace alone through faith.

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And our sins are credited, imputed, reckoned to Jesus's account.

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And that's the double imputation. And so this is forensic judicial language and it is imputation.

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Of course, Rome teaches infusion, but that's another story. I know we're talking about Rome some today and the

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Pope, but this language of righteousness is important. So what happens when we don't have righteousness?

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Most of us think in the unrighteous category and that's certainly true.

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There's lots of unrighteousness. Romans chapter one, you just go down the list of Gentile unrighteousness and it's crazy.

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Doing not right things, but wrong things. And we call it unrighteous acts, ungodly acts, sinful acts, acts of trespass, acts of commission, acts of omission, isn't really in that category, but they're just unrighteous things, ungodly things.

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Most of the time when people think of sin, they think of ungodly. They think of heroin, they think of sex sins, they think of all these other things.

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And certainly unrighteousness is sinful. But what we don't think about and what's apropos for our message today is self -righteousness, thinking that you're good.

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Now both damn, but it seems to me from the human level at least, that self -righteousness damns more than unrighteousness.

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If you ask a street person, they ask somebody in jail, you ask an unrighteous person to answer honestly, are you a good person?

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And we start fleshing that out in terms of heart and motives and thoughts and actions and everything else.

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Unrighteous people, a lot of times, most of the time, think that they aren't righteous, that they're not doing the right thing because obviously they're doing the wrong things, it's an unrighteous act.

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But moral people, holy people, religious people, whatever denomination, they think they're good because they don't murder, they pay their taxes.

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By the way, do you want unrighteous or self -righteous people living next door to you? If you had to choose,

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I would pick self -righteous people because they're gonna at least not throw trash in my yard and other things, right?

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You're living next to a Mormon or someone else. And so this man comes and he's the leader of the

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Jews. The text says in the, what do I have today? NAS, I think

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I have today, New American Standard. This is the Bible. I'm New American Standard only, all other

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Bibles are banned, just kidding. I think there's a resurgence of people going to the

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Christian Standard Bible. I think I've seen a lot of people do that. I'm too old, I just stick with the

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NAS, although I've been preaching from the ESV for quite some time. So here's this man who comes, he's self -righteous.

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He's not a liberal, he's a ruler. And if anybody's going to get to heaven by being good, by doing things, it's going to be this very religious man.

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And of course, you know what the Jews would say, hey, we've got Abraham as our father. I mean, we're in, we have box seats, we have load seats.

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Last night I bought some tickets to go to see a concert in September and you click on the seats and then it shows you what view you have.

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And so I clicked on the seats to see what view I had and it was a perfect view. And then I ordered the tickets, $75 each and then it said obstructed view.

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Like what in the world? This man has no obstructed view. He's probably got a name on the box seats right up front.

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He's a big shot. And when you have self -righteousness, you have a false assurance really.

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You think you're safe, but it's not going to last. It's not going to weather judgment day. It's not going to weather the day that you have to be perfect to enter

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God's kingdom, right? That's what Jesus said in Matthew 5, 48. You have to be perfect. I mean, Jesus comes to save sinners.

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And so self -righteousness can really blind when people say, even people who are not the

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Pope, maybe you who are listening, you think, well, I go to church, I'm a member. I take my kids to VBS.

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I go to Awana. I don't do all these other things. I went, I mean, I personally went to missionary, as a missionary to Mexico as a kid,

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Christian camp in Colorado. And somehow you think you're fine.

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It was the Pharisee in Luke 18 that stood by himself and prayed, God, thank you that I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

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Here's what I do. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying,

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God be merciful to me, a sinner. It is the self -righteous person that says, you know what?

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Okay, I sin, but a lot of other people sin a lot more. I might not be righteous, but I'm not as bad as them.

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I'm not as unrighteous as them. I have a little more righteousness than you do.

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This is relative morality. This is a man who says,

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I don't do the gross sins. I'm fine. Luther said,

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I find that I cannot preach self -righteousness down enough. Still men will boast in what they can do and mistake the path to heaven to be a road paved by their own merits and not by a way sprinkled with the blood of the atonement of Jesus Christ.

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And so when it comes to self -righteousness, it seems to be blinding. Now back to the passage.

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Somehow the spirit of God, the sovereign spirit, he's working in Nicodemus. And of course the language of John 6 is, of course the father draws, or he's wondering what's happening on the human side.

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And so he approaches and, you know, you might say it seems like he's seeking Jesus. And you say, well, yeah, what about Romans 3?

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No one seeks God, no one, et cetera, et cetera. Of course on their own, no one seeks God. But as the spirit starts to convict and the spirit starts to bring alongside and the father is drawing and we see all this happening, you think, oh, he's asking the right questions.

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He's going to the right person. And Jesus says, you have to be born again. This is not a matter of do better, try harder.

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You have to think about, okay, what in the world is going on? And you can't even make yourself born again. You can't even do this.

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This is a sovereign act of God. Jesus goes on to say, that which is born of flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

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Do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again. I mean, what do they make in Pittsburgh steel factories?

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Cotton balls? Obviously not, they make steel. And what comes out of flesh is fleshly.

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What comes out of a sinful flesh is sinful. And so how do I get into heaven when I need a new me?

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You have to be born again, not come out of your mother's womb again, but to be spiritually born.

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So to the most religious person in the world, maybe, Jesus says, you need a new you.

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When I first got married, I wasn't a Christian. And probably six months into our marriage,

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Kim and I got in an argument and I never hit her or anything like that.

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I've never done that, thankfully. And, but I got mad and I slammed the dresser and it was an

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Ikea dresser. And the good news about Ikea is most cheap.

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Bad news is takes a long time to put together and it's cheap. And so if you would slam down a regular dresser, it'd probably be fine.

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This thing just shattered. And the look at Kim gave me was a look of,

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I can't believe I married that, you. Where'd that come from? And of course

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I was apologetic and everything else. And to this day, it's like shame. Looking back on that,

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I didn't have an anger problem. Okay, I did, but I was the problem.

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It wasn't like I had an issue, I'm the issue. It wasn't clean up your anger.

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It was, you need a new you. Mike, you need a new you. Well, how do you do that?

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A factory order, Amazon, Walmart says they carry half a billion products now.

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I need a new you. And so here to this religious man, who we have no idea that he was some adulterer, some fornicator, some cheater or something like that.

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This is a guy who is tithing seeds, counting seeds, counting what he's going to do, how much money he gives, going to the religious things.

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And Jesus says, you need a new you. And don't be amazed by it, you need a new you.

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You need an act of God doing something to you. And so this language of born again, if you think about it, it's something that is received.

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It's passive, we're passive rather in that. So when you were born, did you climb out, look around and say, it's now a good time to come out of my mother's womb?

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No, no, you were squeezed out, I wanna say, you were forced out.

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This is what's happening. And so instead of saying, I bore myself on May 12th, 1960. No, no,

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I was born, it's language that's passive because I didn't do anything, it happened to me.

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It was done to me and for me. And so I was born on that day. That's language of passivity.

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And so here he's talking about that same thing. If you're born of flesh, it's happened to you. And if you're born of spirit, it happens to you.

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This is something from God that he has to do. He has to make you born again. He has to regenerate you, it comes from above.

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The text goes on to say, the wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it is going.

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So is everyone who is born of the spirit. And now Jesus begins to talk in Nicodemus about the sovereign spirit, the one who's in charge.

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And you just see his effects, just like wind. You can't look at the wind, right?

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Peter looked at the wind, well, did he really see the wind? Can you see wind? No, but you can see the effects of wind and the dust and the trees blowing and all that other stuff.

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The only way you know about the sovereign spirit is by seeing what he does because he's sovereign and he does everything the way he wants to.

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And so Jesus meets the most religious man in the world. And he says, whether you have unrighteousness, whether you have self -righteousness, you can't get to heaven on your own.

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I think it was George Whitefield who said something like, if you wanna try to get to heaven by being good, it's like climbing a ladder made of sand that goes up to the moon.

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It's like climbing a ladder of sand. I mean, you can't even get three feet off the ground with something like that.

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Jesus talks to religious people and says, you still need me. I mean, if you could get to heaven by being good, why would

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Jesus come? To clap? To say, keep going? To say, way to go?

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What in the world would happen? But Jesus comes to say, I am the fulfillment of Moses and the prophets.

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I in eternity past was commissioned by the father with the spirit there to attest everything, to come and rescue, called the covenant of redemption, the pactum, the covenant of peace.

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And I'm going to go and rescue the bride. Father, you give me a bride to go rescue,

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I'll go rescue. And so Jesus was born to do that. He was born to rescue, born to die.

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He comes to save sinners and religious people are sinners. I remember my grandmother,

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Erna, and we would have all these conversations about the Bible.

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And I just think to myself how blind she was. I hope

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God opened her eyes before she died, but how blind she was. And she was blinded by religion.

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All I have to do is to go to church once in a while and for her to be baptized and I'm set.

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And so as I sat there in Rome, of course, in my mind, I'm not thinking

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I'm great or I'm better, but I did think I'm right. How do you get to heaven?

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It's by faith alone. Jesus goes on to say that whoever believes, he says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so the son of man must be lifted up so that whoever believes will in him have eternal life.

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It's all about faith and the one who was to come and now came and will come back.

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I sat there and I thought to myself, we're talking about the Nicene Creed and we're talking about a

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God who makes everything the almighty. We're talking about a son who's begotten, who's begotten, not made, very

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God of very God. We're talking about a spirit, the Holy Spirit. When I say,

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I mean, he's a person, but we're talking about the same language, same nomenclature, same words, same creed, but how can they be so far off?

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And I thought of Galatians. I mean, if you look at Galatians, you could make this argument in Galatians chapter one.

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The people that Paul was writing to, they affirmed Jesus as virgin born, as sinless, as suffering, dying on a cross, being raised the third day, ascended into heaven 40 days later.

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Believes in the Trinity. These churches in the Galatia area would affirm sin.

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They would affirm the Old Testament as valid. And why would Paul say, you're damned if you believe something, you're accursed.

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I mean, this is the epistle where Paul is, hey, no, you've got, I'm gonna tell you no.

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If Peter, you dabble into certain things, no. Adding things to the gospel, no, not on my watch.

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I mean, Paul is so firm. You just think, whoa, what is going on? And so how can they believe all those right things?

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And Paul still says, accursed. Because dear friend, if you believe in the triune

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God and everything in the Bible, and you think you receive the benefits that Jesus Christ has earned by faith plus circumcision, like the

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Galatians, faith plus baptism, like many people today, some

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Protestants, and of course, Roman Catholics, faith plus doing good, faith plus morality, faith plus righteous deeds, faith plus I don't do unrighteous things, then you're damned, you're accursed.

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That thinking, that theology is accursed because it mixes works that we do with the work of Christ.

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It makes works with faith. It takes law and jams it into grace. And of course, once Romans 11, six pops in your mind, if you add a little bit of works to grace, it's all gone.

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It's all gone. And so faith says, I have nothing. I don't contribute anything.

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Even my righteousness is like filthy rags. Even my unrighteousness is enough to damn me.

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And I need help. I need a new me, right? There's all kinds of language around justification.

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There's language around reconciliation. There's language around redemption. And the language around regeneration is you need a new you.

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You need to be born from above. You need to have God change you. And so what would

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I say to the Pope if I could meet the Pope? I'd probably be kind. I wouldn't kiss his hand.

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Who's, what are all these ring kissers? I wouldn't kiss his feet. I mean, I'd kiss some people's feet in this world, but they would be my kids or my wife, but certainly not

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Mario's. I'm looking at his shoes right now, some kind of Walmart specials or something. Half a billion products you can get from Walmart.

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Did you get those at Walmart? The other day, Mario, I know you didn't. Those are nice. I had a buddy over and I said, oh, you got new shoes.

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Where'd you get them? And he said, Walmart. I said, I couldn't believe that he admitted it.

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It is faith, not faithfulness to get you into heaven.

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And of course we're saved by faith alone and that faith won't be alone. But if I got to talk to the Pope after shaking his hand, saying, you know, nice to meet you or whatever, get the quick picture for NOCO.

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I wish I did have that picture. They'd all think it was AI. You'd think it was AI. I mean, my brother got a picture with Joel Osteen and I would say, hey, you're trying to one -up me, aren't you?

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Now I've got a picture with the Pope. What would you say to the Pope? And I would walk through Galatians 1.

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I'd walk through, John, that it is simple faith. It is not faith plus works.

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It's not a combination of justification and sanctification language. It's not my doing right infused into Jesus' doing right.

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It is simple faith. That's the wonderful thing about faith is you can have a little weak faith. You can have a little faith, a weak faith, but if you have the faith in the object who completely did the work, who perfectly and justly satisfied

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God's wrath, the Father's wrath, died in our place, rose from the dead, kept

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His word, did all the things that He said He would do. You say to yourself, I can believe that.

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If you say, oh, you better five times a year go to Mecca or you better do this, you better do that. Some of these things you can't do.

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And so that's the wonder of Christianity. And the great part, children can believe, old people can believe, thief on the cross can believe.

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Did he do good works? I think so. I think he corrected the other thief. And I think he said nice things about Jesus, but in terms of going to mission, being a missionary, spreading the gospel, doing this, doing that, not a lot of works from the thief, but is he in heaven?

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Of course he is because Jesus said He would be because it's faith and faith alone. And so when you meet people who are enslaved into systems of works or baptism to get to heaven, like many liberal

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Protestants and by almost virtually all Roman Catholics, it's good to talk about faith alone.

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It's good to talk about Jesus and what Jesus said. It's good to talk about what Jesus did and how it's all

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His work. And we just receive it by faith and by faith alone, knowledge, assent and trust. So today on No Compromise Radio, just talked a little bit about the wonder of regeneration, how it's sovereign, how it's 100 % of God, how we don't bear ourselves into the kingdom born again.

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And when you're in heaven, dear friend, it'll all be because of the Lord. You won't say, I did this and I did that.

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And my friend did the other thing, or I did more. I mean, what explains me going to heaven and my friend that I grew up with named

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Scott? Something in me? Is there something in you that makes you think that's why you're gonna go to heaven?

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And of course the answer is no, it's outside of us. He's outside of us. The Lord Jesus sent by the

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Father and the Father and the Son send the Spirit. So my name's Mike Avendroth, No Compromise Radio.