Think (Part 2)

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, a ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm your host today. I think this is probably going to be played in April or something like that.

Who knows? We'd love to see you at Bethlehem Bible Church here in central Massachusetts. People are driving a long way these days to get up here from Providence, from Taunton, from New Hampshire, driving an hour to get here.

We'd love to have you if you'd like to have some verse -by -verse preaching that is Christ -centered.

We have service times at 830, and then we have second service at 11 o 'clock, so we'd love to see you here,

Bethlehem Bible Church. Maybe you want to call it Bethlehem Bible Church since I'm the pastor.

Who knows? By the way, you can still order my book from the

Amazon link on our website, The Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus, but I don't have any more author cheapies to pass along the discount to you, and so thanks for buying those things.

I think I'm number nine billion now on account sales for Amazon for bestsellers. So nine billion.

See? I don't have very far to go. I'm working—I just finished the third book.

I've written book three. I've got a book project with a couple other men that we're halfway through, so that's book four.

Working on something else that's top secret, number five, and beginning to write book six.

I have book seven topic, and chapters kind of laid out and data, figuring that out, seven, and I think that's about it for this year.

And a big no -compromise announcement for a pseudo kind of show with other guest

Christians. I could make that announcement some other time. All right, what are we going to do today?

I have no idea, but oh, I know what I want to do. Let me turn around and get this. I'm in the studios here in beautiful downtown

West Boylston, Burbank, and I've been sick now for 30 days with a bronchial infection, bronchial something or other, and I just feel horrible.

And I've been on Zithromax, and I've been on amoxicillin,

I've had steroids, I've taken the albuterol nebulizer, and I'm still not really feeling that well.

I almost said good. And so someone in our congregation—I mean, I was really bad for a few

Sundays, and so I think this is like coming up on the fifth Sunday I'll have been sick. And so someone came to me, and they gave me a plush throw.

It's called the Royal Plush Raschel—it looks like Rachel, but it's

Raschel, R -A -S -C -H -E -L—throw. And this is 100 % polyester made in China.

But the thing about it is it's incredibly soft, warm, and durable, and it's got a picture of Mary on the front.

And Mary—it looks like she's giving out something if I put my glasses on here. She has a rose.

Either that's rose or that's manna. And there's somebody below her holding a robe, and I don't know who that is.

I guess that's Joseph submitting to Mary. Mother Mary comes to me and whispers words of wisdom, let it be.

And then there's some young child down there. I guess maybe that's Jesus holding up her robe, too.

And so there's a cactus to the side. They gave me this as a healing blanket.

And so I guess it doesn't have any instructions, but I've been trying to, you know, think if I rub it on my bronchial area a couple times a day and some kind of novena,

I'd be fine. It hasn't worked. So maybe I did the wrong thing.

It said, machine wash cold separately using delicate cycle and mild detergent. Do not iron.

And so maybe when I ironed Mary, maybe that's what spoiled it.

So thank you, listeners. I even got a now royal plush healing blanket. So there you have it.

No Compromise Radio Ministry. If you have a suggestion for a show, I'd love to hear it. I've got some shows that are directly related to some of the listeners.

Some of our listeners want to know the difference between hell, Gehenna, and Hades. Will you do a show on bad hymns?

Will you do a show about, I don't know, James MacDonald, Stephen Furtick, Code Orange, Family Integrated?

I don't know. Will you do topics like that? I guess I will. So today on No Compromise Radio, part two on thinking.

Remember last week we talked about thinking. Actually, I was just moving this microphone thing here.

It doesn't really make a great sound. Maybe we should think about that. Romans chapter 12 makes it very clear that out of the gates, when it comes to salvation, we begin to think before we even do.

We have Romans 1 to 11, and Romans 1 to 11 describes how we have no righteousness.

We have Adam's righteousness, which isn't righteous at all. Since we have no righteousness, we need

God's righteousness revealed. God's wrath is revealed, and now we need His righteousness.

And so we have a very wonderful, very devotional, very extraordinary set of chapters, 1 to 11 in Romans, that basically talk about who

God is. Wrapped up with praise in chapter 11, verses 33 to 36, and then what do you do?

When you meet a brand new Christian, what do you tell him or her to do? Maybe you say, serve.

I think serving's good. It's just not the first thing we talk about. If you say, submit to the government, that's good.

That's Romans 13, but that's not the first thing we do. Chapter 12 would be service. Love. Love is good.

Love is huge. But that's not quite in chapter 12, 1 to 8.

That's 9 and following. How about we can use our liberties now in Christ, 14 and 15?

Yeah, well, that's good to do, but that's not first. What should the first thing a person does in response to our great salvation?

Now, maybe you're saying baptism. That would be good, but that's not where I'm going here.

I'm talking about your mind, and it says in Romans 12, 1, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

What does it say in verse 12? Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober thinking or judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

And so we live out our faith by first thinking.

Now, that's a difficult thing for people these days to sit and think. As I watch children, as I watch myself, as I watch people in airports and campuses, nobody has time to think anymore.

I watch people, their heads are down when they walk, not because this is communistic

East Germany 40 years ago, not because people are shy, but because they're looking at their phones and they're texting and their data plans and all these other things.

What a major pet peeve. If I lived in New York City, I'd probably be bugged, because how do you walk around people that have their heads down, engaged in their

Androids and their iPhones? Very, very difficult. No time to think. I love music,

I love my iPhone, but there has to be time in the Christian life that you think, that you go back in your mind and say,

I'm going to rehearse Romans 1 to 11. I'm going to rehearse that I had no righteousness, that Christ freely gave me his righteousness.

I'm justified by the work of the triune God, and I stand before him with a righteousness that's not of my own, forensically declared, imputed to my account, an alien righteousness,

Christ's righteousness. Christ's not an alien, but just different than what I have. To sit and think what that means, sovereign grace, free grace, distinguishing grace, how this grace grants peace, access to God, how this grace sanctifies, how this grace is secure, how this grace sovereignly applies itself to people and nations and Jacob and Esau, individuals.

How does that all apply? And you sit and think about that long enough, you will be motivated to serve, and you will be regularly motivated to serve.

And Paul says to the church at Rome, I want you to think. I'm appealing to you to think, to look back at the mercies of God.

What's he mean by mercies of God? He means to think back through Romans 1 through 11, to think about what

God has done, to close your eyes and just imagine, to rehearse in your mind's eye all those things that God has done.

And you can just take mercies and summarize with one word,

Romans chapter 1 verses 1 all the way through 11 .36.

One word to summarize the book of Romans 1 through 11 is mercies, all those mercies upon sinners who don't deserve it.

He's not talking about what we've done back then, he's talking about what God has done.

And so we see in Romans chapter 12, there's a logical form of worship, a spiritual form of worship.

And he wants you to think logically. So if I ask you the question, 1, 3, 5, 7, blank, fill in the blank, you should say 9.

If I said 5, 10, 15, 20, fill in the blank, you should say 25.

There's a logical progression of twos and then of fives, odd numbers, things that go in the fives.

If I said to you, you're a great sinner, God's salvation is great, what would be the fill in the blank?

Serve. Sin, salvation, serve. Or if I used Heidelberg Catechism, this is a wonderful one to think through.

Guilt, I was guilty in Adam, he was my federal head, I consequently sinned, guilt,

I'm guilty before God, I deserve hell. Grace, unmerited, demerited favor from God, sovereign grace.

He gave me grace even when I was guilty, even though I was guilty. In spite of my guilt, God is a great sinner.

Guilt, gratitude. What would be the logical fill in? Fill in the blank, what would you fill it in with?

1, 3, 5, 7, 9, sin, salvation, service, guilt, grace, and Heidelberg Catechism would say gratitude.

So there is a logical thinking with Paul. He wants Christians to think.

He says, I'm urging you, I'm appealing to you, therefore, with the great therefores in Romans, Romans 5, 1, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. Romans chapter 8, verse 1, it's a great therefore, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Princeton Seminary, when it was good, had a professor and his name was, he was a president actually as well,

John McKay. This is not the USC football coach. Commitment, McKay said, without reflection is fanaticism in action, but reflection without commitment is the paralysis of all action.

So Paul gives us exposition in chapters 1 through 11 in Romans, and then exhortation in 12 through 16.

Speaking of Heidelberg Catechism on No Compromise Radio, how many things are necessary for you to know that you in this comfort may live and die happily?

So you need to teach somebody how to live and die happily. That's pretty amazing. You could summarize it in three things.

How do you teach someone to die well? How do you teach someone to live well? You've got kids and you say, well, how do you manage the world?

How do you navigate the world? What's the map for a life of shalom, whole living peace?

How many things do you need to know? Three, said the Heidelberg Catechism. Here's the first one.

How great my sins and miseries are. See, that's guilt. How great my sins and miseries are.

Your problem is not a disease. Your problem is not your spouse. Your problem is not your kids.

Your problem is not the world. Your problem is not an addiction. Your problem is not a syndrome.

Your problem is not an allergy, some kind of AA goofy thing. Your problem is sin and it's your own sin, sin and then the consequent miseries.

Everyone on this earth, everyone who's ever been born short of Christ Jesus, except Christ Jesus has a sin problem.

How do you live in a way that you may live and die happily?

One, how great my sins and miseries are. Two, how I am delivered from all my sins and miseries.

Just think of that. Because of Christ Jesus, because of his great atoning sacrifice, he is both our representative to live in our place and our substitute to die in our place.

God confirms that and vindicates his great life and death by resurrecting him from the dead. Jesus resurrects himself from the dead, proving that sin and death and hell cannot contain him.

The grave is vanquished of its power and the spirit of God attending to Christ as well and raising him from the dead.

After all, we have served only one God. And because of all that work, that is a great deliverance.

Our sins are bad, our miseries are great, yet we have a grace that's greater than all our sins.

And that grace is grace personified Christ Jesus. How I am delivered from all my sins and miseries.

How many things do you need to know that you may live and die happily? One, great sinner. Guilt. Two, greater

Savior. Grace. Three, how I am to be thankful to God for such deliverance.

Gratitude. There you have it. How do you live and die well? Guilt, grace, gratitude.

That's your paradigm. To think. But see, each one of these requires abstract thinking.

That's why if you read your Old Testament, you're going to be helped. How am I going to be helped, you say, Pastor Avendroth?

Well, you're going to be helped with concrete thinking to understand abstract thoughts about God.

For instance, what about atonement, propitiation?

What about satisfaction? What about representation? What about substitution and all these kind of ideas where we go, hmm, forensic declaration, imputation.

How do you teach a kid some of these things? Well, here's how you teach a kid. Passover. You go to Exodus and you go,

I'm going to teach the Passover. I'm going to teach Leviticus 16, Exodus 12, Passover, Leviticus 16,

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. And we're going to understand that—I'll go back to Genesis chapter 3—wage of sin is death.

You know, you sin, you die. And there's a substitute. God kills the animals in place of Adam and Eve and then cloaks them with the skins.

We have the Passover, lamb is slain, and then the blood put above the doorpost, and so the angel passes, you know, the angel passes over, the death angel passes over.

It's guarded by God. Day of Atonement, and the goat, and then the scapegoat, etc. Understanding some of these issues from the

Old Testament perspective really, really helps before we just jump into abstract propitiation.

Or even if you thought about propitiating the wrath of a false god, it still gives you an idea, an inkling into the picture of what happens with a holy, righteous, real god and his propitiation.

I'm not saying they're exactly equivalent, but it gives you an idea from concrete to abstract. So I want you to think.

One man said, Doctrine is never taught in the Bible simply that it may be known.

It is taught in order that it may be translated into practice. Jesus said in John 13, If you know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.

So No Compromise Radio, we want you to be thinking. That's what I'm after. And people write all the time,

Oh, it's refreshing that you're so blunt. It's refreshing that you call it like it is.

I don't really know any other way to do it. I try to teach a radio show or do a radio show the way I'd like to listen to a radio show.

Someone that loves the Lord Christ Jesus and his word and wants other people to know about him so that they can worship him and serve him more and appreciate him more.

I'm not a woman. I love women. I'm married to one. I love my mom. I love my grandparents, both grandmas.

I have three daughters. There are ladies in my life, and I love ladies. I just don't love men who act like ladies.

I don't love men who act like women. I don't like women who act like men. And so I just talk like I would to another man, to another lady.

If you saw my face, you'd probably see a smile at times. You'd probably see other facial expressions. And this is just the truth.

How do you put it in some kind of sugar -coated deal? I don't really know how to do that. If you want a more well -rounded style, a more pleasing style, then probably

Chuck Swindoll's your guy. I love listening to Chuck. He's an excellent speaker. I disagree with him on some finer theological points, but I appreciate how he talks to people.

Maybe when I'm older, wiser—I'm almost 52 now—I'll have a gentler style.

And then when I get super old and lose all my defense mechanisms, I'll go back to kind of crappy

Mike. But it has nothing to do with being mean. I'm not trying to be mean. If I tell you that the Catholic Church teaches a doctrine that's not found in the

Bible, and if you believe it, you're not going to go to heaven, that has nothing to do with mean. And it is so unthinking to then say, he's a hater.

That just means you don't want to hear. I want to engage with you. Still, I think to this day, 700 shows and maybe 20 shows on Roman Catholicism, nobody said to me, you know,

I want to call and talk to you and send you an email because we're concerned about your soul. This is the truth.

You don't understand what it means to go to heaven. We want you to go to heaven. Nobody does that, because it's just so much easier not to think.

And so, if you call me a Catholic basher, then I call you a hater, your

Protestant hater, because you won't tell me the truth. You won't say, you know what, I better put some time into this and talk to Mike about his soul, because if he believes what he believes when he dies, he's not going to heaven.

Now, see, on the flip side, I want you to know the truth, and I think 1 Corinthians chapter 13, it says, love speaks in truth, speaking the truth in love.

And so, I do love you enough to tell you the truth. Now, maybe you think love is ooey -gooey, compassionate, kind of speaking in the right kind of tone.

I guess it can include that. But I want you to know the truth, and maybe my bedside manner isn't up your alley, but if you are in the hospital and you've got cancer, and the doctor says you're going to die in two days, and how do we tell them?

I want to be the one to tell. And if they say, we're not going to tell the patient, we're not going to tell the kid he's going to die, I'm spoiling the party, and I'm going to tell, because that is real love.

Prepare your soul to die. Consider your soul. I have friends who have died, and then you get older, and you think, you know what, people start dying at my age, you know, of pneumonia, and what do

I have, 52 years old, and I'm about ready to, you know, my mom became a widow at 50, my dad died at 55,

I don't have tons of time left if I'm just going to do some averages. I mean, I could have 40 years, the

Lord could come back today, I could choke on, you know, Pete's coffee today, I have no idea. But I'm telling you,

I think it's love for me to put together a crew, for me to get the equipment, for me to ask some people in the church if they'd like to support the ministry, and to sit down and to tell you the truth and put it out there.

This is not my main job. Do I love it? Am I encouraged? Do I think it's an important ministry?

Those answers could all be debated. I mean, most days I love it. But just saying, all right, let's go back to the studio and tape it,

I'm doing it, A, for the glory of God. I want Christ Jesus to be glorified. And B, I want to tell people the truth.

I think we live in a Catholic society, here in New England especially, and we live in a place that if people really believe what the

Catholic Church teaches, they're not going to heaven. Sadly, most people who get mad don't even know what the

Catholic Church teaches, and they only use the Catholic Church for Mass once in a while, for burial, and for baptism, and besides that, they could care less.

So I don't know why they're so upset about the Roman Catholic Church, and standing up for them, because I know more about what the

Catholic Church teaches than they do, and they just use the Catholic Church for a balm to get through life and death and the big points.

I'm telling you, love does what? Love tells people the truth, and here's what love does today.

Think. Think to yourself, in light of God's great salvation, what do

I do? In light of God's greatness, how do I respond?

And if you think the only thing you need to do is, I'll just have a baptism, and I'll have the priest give me last rites, and everything is set, you need to think.

Protestant or Catholic alike, you need to think through it. Once saved, always saved. You need to think.

No wonder the Old Testament prophets ring the bell of, consider your ways.

Think. Ponder. Sit down and work through the issues. In light of what

God has done, what should I do? And if you really know how great your sin is, and how great

God's salvation is, you'll want to serve God the rest of your life. You'll want to serve Him. I don't mean you have to be a pastor or a missionary or a pastor's wife, but you as a butcher or a baker or a plumber or an engineer should say,

I'm going to serve God. I exist to glorify the triune God. That's why my marriage exists.

That's why my work exists. That's why I exist. I have a ministry to do. So now

I say to you, with logical spiritual worship, you need to present your bodies a living sacrifice.

It might be easy to be a martyr, because it just takes a minute of hurt to die. It might be harder to give your whole body and your whole life, devote your entire life to serve

God. That's what you need to do. And if you're not willing to do it, go back to Romans chapter 1. Go back to guilt.

Go back to sin. And once you start thinking about what God has done and saving you despite your sin, in spite of your sin, you think,

I'll serve you. So today on No Compromise Radio, we've talked about thinking. How do you think?

We need to talk more about thinking next week's show on thinking. But for the time being, how do you feel about the show today?

Ah! No, what do you think about it? And thinking will lead to right feeling. I want you to feel, but I want your feelings to be educated and informed by thinking.

Think. 888 -835 -3400.

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