The State of Theology (Part 1)

The Program’s Purpose and the Apostle Paul’s Warning Against Compromise

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.

Banter About Steve Martin, Chuck Woolery, and Leonard Nimoy

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. Thankfully, Pastor Steve is back on Tuesday. What do I do without you on Tuesdays? Just ramble?

What do you do on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? Just ramble.

I�m sorry, Steve Martin, I�m a rambling guy just popped into my mind. I�m a rambling guy.

He was funny. He was. When he first came out. Yeah. Well, you know, what�s funny is that�s not when he first came out, but he was around for a long time before he made it, you know, big.

What did he do in those old, pretty big days?

Well, I just saw him, you ever seen the one of him on the dating game? His hair is not even gray. Seriously? Yes. Yeah. You should look it up on YouTube. It�s kind of funny.

Little known fact. My wife worked behind the scenes on Love Connection for years. Okay. Chuck Woolery. I�ll be back in two and two.

Two and two. So yeah, Steve, well, like, you know, he�s like in his, what is he like 80 or something like that? Steve Martin or Chuck Woolery? No, Steve Martin. I went, Jen and I went and saw a play that he wrote one time and I�m like, you know, and I just thought, hmm, yeah, I probably should have known not to come to this play.

So yeah, funny, but not very godly. Yeah.

I once saw Leonard Nimoy in a solo play performance on stage and he was Van Gogh, like Van Gogh�s brother or something. And I just liked Spock, right? So then I liked Leonard Nimoy. And so I went and saw him do this one man play, Van Gogh.

It's weird though, because you're thinking that he doesn't have any emotions and stuff like that. And then Van Gogh was emotional. How does that all work?

I don't know. It would be hard for me to see a Leonard Nimoy emote. I'd be like, wrong.

That is not correct. I thought you were going to say Leonard Nimoy emoji. Pastor Steve, we could talk about all kinds of things, the Doug Wilson stuff, federal vision stuff, eternal functional subordination stuff, all that.

The Four Lifeway Criteria for Identifying an Evangelical

But today we're going to do something else. We're going to look at the state of theology. Now I think it's the 51st state, don't you? I believe it is. How are we going to annex this without causing a lot of uprising?

Well, I think if the populace is in favor of joining the union, okay, enough of that.

Probably every other podcast has gone over this, but they don't do things like we do. So we're going to own To their credit. To their benefit. The stateoftheology .com. This is the study that Ligonier slash Lifeway just put out a week or two ago, and we're going to talk about it today on No Compromise Radio.

All right then. So Steve, they polled a lot of people from 2016, 2018, 2020, and now we're going to talk about 2022, about a variety of evangelical concepts of the Bible. Do the people agree or disagree?

But I think in this first show especially, let's talk about what it means to be a Christian per Lifeway as they poll the people. In other words, who are they polling, Baptists, Presbyterians, or people in the OPC church?

They're polling people that believed a few core doctrines per Lifeway, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to me. I mean, I have a little bit of a difficulty just with the way they do things because they'll have some questions where they ask or where they report the responses for adults, American adults, and then they have other ones where they do the evangelicals, and it's not always obvious to me which are which.

I mean, maybe they have a better way of doing it. But anyway, let's just talk about the four ways that Lifeway identifies who is an evangelical. And to me, and maybe to you, and maybe to you, the listening audience, there might be a difference between an evangelical, as Lifeway defines it, and a Christian.

As the Bible defines it. I mean, that would almost be a good question if you're at home listening today and you think, all right, I need to survey Christians. How do you find out who the Christian is?

Right. So, I mean, these are the four things, the four factors that they identify or are required to be an evangelical. Number one, the Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.

Okay, let's talk about that. The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe. Of course, we here at the show would believe in the Bible's inerrancy and infallibility, right? Yes. I found it interesting, Steve, that a Chicago inerrancy statement, I think in 1971, they used inerrancy, even though infallibility is a more firm word for the Bible's authority.

It cannot fail, therefore it doesn't have any errors. But instead of saying infallible, they used inerrant because the little weasel word of the liberals they were talking about, the Bible has errors.

So, Chicago statement basically said we are inerrants, inerrantists, because then that would get rid of all the liberals. I believe that the Bible is the highest authority for what I believe. So, the scripture, it's the final authority.

Are there other authorities in the world?

Oh, there are plenty of authorities, but you know, I mean, is this a, I think this is a fine statement, right? I mean, we would not disagree with this. The Bible is the, I mean, what is higher than the Bible?

The final authority. Yes. Sola Scriptura. One for one. Okay. Good. Number two, it is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.

Well, you know me, I'm glad it doesn't say. Make them surrender. All, desire all, treasure all, right?

Well, I mean, you can't be an evangelical without evangelizing, right? Well, I mean, some people can, I guess, but the whole, you know, the root of the word, what do evangelicals like to do? They like to bring forth the evangel, they like to bring, you know, tell people the good news, right?

I mean, that's why we're here.

And I'm not going to debate, Steve, the issue of encouraging non-Christians to trust. Some might say, okay, Paul says beg, are we proclaim, are we insist, are we command? I'm not offended by that. I don't care.

No, no. And I'm also glad it says trust, right? That's what we talk about. That's fide, trusting, receiving, resting. I'm glad for that. And I'm also glad for both Jesus' humanity, Christ deity, right?

He's the Messiah to come, Jesus Christ, both of those, I'm happy for that. Most people wouldn't maybe think that way, but I do trust Jesus Christ as their Savior. What do you, are you looking at a different?

Well, I'm just looking because it doesn't say that, his deity and humanity.

No, no. I'm just saying Jesus Christ, when I read that, Jesus is his human name. Yes. Christ is his divine title of Christ the Messiah. So when I read Jesus Christ, I think humanity and deity. Well, yes, you think that.

I'm just, I'm just wondering. I think you're. Oh, they think it's probably his first name's Jesus. Yes.

I think you're giving way too much credit here, right? I mean, we're defining what it means to be a Christian. And I'm just like, okay, I think it's fine there, but I just, I don't think that statement goes very far.

Do you, do you want them to say something like to trust Jesus, the eternal son or the God man or described in the Bible?

I think number three kind of gets to the root of it. All right, let's do that. Jesus Christ's death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.

Okay. So we've got his death on the cross. We believe that's true. Other sacrifices, right? We're all in the old Testament pointing to this final sacrifice, right? We like that. Yes. Of blood of bulls and goats can't forgive sin, right?

At least we've got the penalty part there. Penalty substitution is not just Jesus as an example, or he's victorious over the cosmic forces. So at least we have a little substitutionary atonement there, but I know where you're going because we talked beforehand and I like that, but I'm good cop.

Yeah. Okay. You be good cop. But what's missing? If we ask the question to the listeners today, is there anything missing regarding Jesus Christ's death on the cross as the only sacrifice?

Are we going to wait for the listeners to respond?

Call in now. 1 -800-YOU'RE-BLOCKED. Okay, go ahead. Because I think what you're going to say is important.

Well, when it says Jesus' death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin, totally true. But there are a couple of things missing there. One is why? Because he's the spotless lamb, right?

I mean, nowhere is his sinlessness mentioned in here. Nowhere is the fact that he is God mentioned here, that he's eternally divine, not mentioned here. And, you know, why is that important? Well, because then his death has infinite value.

And only then does his death have infinite value.

Steve, I wonder if Lifeway stresses Christ law-keeping very much, right? Lots of times people don't want to use the word merit, where Jesus merits righteousness for us as he obeys the law. I don't know enough about Lifeway to know if they like that or care for that, or maybe they don't really think the act of obedience is that important.

Well, I mean, they don't have to think that. I mean, the Bible declares it, but they don't have to think that. I mean, they can be wrong.

I do think it's indicative, though, of evangelicalism where they're stressing, or we're stressing the death of Christ, but we're forgetting about the person of Christ and then what he has done, right?

That we're separating Christ and his benefits. We get union with Christ, justification, forgiveness, adoption, sins paid for. But who's the one who's doing all that? And it should point back to, well, this is my Lord and my Savior.

So maybe we could expand that a little bit. Yeah, or a lot.

Yeah. Well, I mean, and I'm kind of, you know, especially sensitive to it for a number of reasons. But one is because of my background. As a Mormon, you know, we would look at the cross and it wouldn't mean the same thing that it should mean to an evangelical.

You know, it would refer to his death and we would see it, you know, basically as a horrible thing. And the reason you don't see crosses at Mormon churches is because they understand that he's not on the cross any longer.

But they don't have kind of the victory of Jesus Christ in mind, right? And they don't have the fullness of redemption, you know, his law-keeping for us because we have to be law-keepers.

You're going to talk about law-keeping some way, shape, or form, and if it's not Jesus, the priority of his law-keeping, it's going to be the congregations, right? That's right. We're all for law-keeping, but there's an emphasis.

Steve, maybe this begs a question. When we're thinking about all these words, and you kind of called me on it with the Jesus Christ and how I think about it, and the reason why I do sometimes is because in the context of a suffering last Adam, it'll say Jesus to focus on his humanity.

So you have Hebrews 1, he's divine. Hebrews 2, he's human, right? And so I think that's fair, but it begs the question, do we not have to be very careful that when we use words to then explain them with what the Bible teaches about them?

Because I say Jesus Christ, you're a Mormon, and you say I say yes. Cross. Yeah. Right, all this stuff. So I think it's good when we evangelize to define what we're talking about. Even when it comes to federal vision people, we believe in faith, yeah, but a different kind of faith that includes faithfulness.

Yeah, I mean, to me, this is the first three just don't do it. I mean, they don't go far enough. They don't give me... If I'm thinking about how do I define being an evangelical, I want it to mean Christian, I want it to mean saved person, I want it to mean somebody who understands the gospel, right?

And if I don't tell you that Jesus Christ is fully or truly God and truly man, then have I really given you the gospel? And I don't know that I have.

But what if they say, you know what, Steve, you're kind of being picky because when we realize 1 Corinthians 15, I deliver to you as a first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.

He was buried, he was raised the third day. It's not talking about his act of obedience or anything like that, it's not trying to define it. What do you say?

Do I have to unpack first? Well, I mean, what does it mean according to the scriptures, right? What did he do according to the scriptures?

Uh-huh, there you go, according to the scriptures, that's got import.

And who is he according to the scriptures?

According to the scriptures, do we want to do the fourth one or do we... Yeah, let's do the fourth one. Let's call it a day. This is the shortest no-co ever.

Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God's free gift of eternal salvation. Okay, so we have sola fide there.

Christ alone as Savior. You know, there's a lot of talk about, well, you can't have Jesus as Savior and then make him Lord, he is Lord. Do you think there's any nefariousness going on when they're not having Jesus as Lord there?

A lot of Lordship people say, better have Lord or not. What?

Well, I mean, the only nefariousness, you just make up a word and I can't even say it, that I see there is just, I mean, again, do I think this is the end all be all? No, but I would hope an evangelical would understand something about depravity, you know, because it just makes it sound that this is an Arminian's delight here.

Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God's free gift of eternal salvation. In fact, you know, it could just be a Pelagian's delight. You know, I mean, it's pretty free will-y there.

Maybe they're trying to phrase this in such a way so that they can get Calvinist, Arminian's, semi-Pelagians. Pelagians, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Buddhists. This is a pretty wide net that's cast, right?

So Methodists could certainly believe these things, probably even Mormons, right?

I mean, let me see, is there anything that, well, other than the first one, and they could arguably say that they would believe that the Bible is the highest, it wouldn't be true, but they could maybe mumble through it.

Is it important for me personally? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'd say this is 90 of the way to Mormonism.

The State of Theology Survey and the Question of Who Is Being Polled

All right. Well, but at least to their credit, the Bible's what I believe. We'd like everybody to believe in Jesus. There's no other way to get your sins forgiven. That's right. And you have to have just trust alone in Christ alone, or trust in Christ alone.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So now, knowing that we're talking to those kind of people, they did a survey. So we wanted to spend a little time on this LifeWay research for statements so you know what kind of people give these responses.

Yeah.

Is that it? It's pretty important because when you hear some of the responses, you're just going to go, huh?

So that will kind of explain why they're so off. Yes. Right? Okay. Okay. So the first one, and now Ligonier Ministries kind of gets involved with LifeWay. I think if Ligonier did those four statements, they'd probably be a little different.

They'd tighten it up a little bit. Yeah. But then there probably wouldn't be very many responses.

Well, they'd have a hard time finding evangelicals. They'd only be able to, you know, I mean, and you know this because we go to some of these different conferences and it's amazing. You know, you start touring around these conferences, you start running into the same people or, you know, very similar mindsets.

You don't run into a lot of random, broad evangelicals. I mean, some, but not as many.

Agreed. Okay. The first one is, does God change? They talk about the world, everything changes, Bible affirms that the triune God is omniscient, He knows all things, immutable, meaning that He cannot and does not change, Malachi 3, Isaiah 46.

The Immutability of God and the Comfort of His Unchanging Character

So does God change? If you had to answer the question, listener, does God change? What would you say? Okay.

Steve, any comments? Do you want to tell us the adult findings? Well, obviously He does not change, right? I mean, and again, you know, for Mormons, the answer is yes, because God's just like us only a little further down the road than we are.

But yeah, this is a U .S. adults finding, not evangelicals. Not yet anyway. I think there is an evangelical response.

Yeah. So first we're going to talk about U .S. adults. Okay. Right? Just people in Judeo-Christian America, right, and it's 51 believe that God changes, i .e. He learns and adapts to different circumstances.

Why do you think they want that? There's a reason why people want an open theist kind of God.

Well, I think it comforts them to think that He's somewhat like them, you know? So and I mean, if you don't want a God with objective standards, if you want a God who's malleable, you know, who's changeable, who's flexible, and who will accept you as you are, you can't have a God, you know, this God of the Ten Commandments thing, man, I can't do that.

I think also, Steve, if they believe, and they believe this rightly, that God is transcendent, He's above us, He's not like us, I am God, there's no other like me, then how can such a divine being relate to us, or comfort us, or give us any kind of sympathy, or anything like that?

And instead of dealing with the incarnation, and then some of God's eminent attributes of how He's close to us, but specifically the incarnation, they make God change. Instead of Jesus assuming human flesh, and we can understand closeness of God via that, right, He's walking on the earth, then they say, well, you know what?

With His covenants, once He makes a covenant, now He changes, and He becomes closer, and I think that's what they're wanting. They want a transcendent God who's close, and instead of looking at the incarnation, they say, well, we think God changes.

Right.

Yeah, and I mean, I... Changes for the good? I thought He was great. Change for the bad? I thought He was great. You know, I sort of, I wonder if they could, you know, ask American adults this question, how many of them would agree with it, which is, I learned most of what I know about God via Facebook.

Memes, meme. God. Yeah, and I think for most Americans, I think that is true. You know, and what is the God of Facebook like? Well, if you die, the God of Facebook takes you into heaven, and the God of Facebook, you know, is...

Now, that's a good radio show, the God of Facebook.

He can't wait to have you. He's like, he's chomping at the bit.

Chomping at the bit. I almost corrected you, because sometimes Steve is very helpful to me if I say, you know, a certain slogan, what I'm going to tip, I used to say, you're going to tip my hat, and then tip my hand, tip my hat.

So he's chomping at the bit. Yes. Yes, okay. Steve, when we look at those evangelicals who are asked the question, does God change or learn or adapt to different circumstances, only 48 agree. What's striking to me is...

That's not that much difference. It's the exact same. Yeah. So how can evangelicals and how can a non-Christian in our world, America, both agree with the same thing?

Well, I can answer that. All you have to do is go to your typical evangelical church and watch a sermon. And here's the thing, because if you focus on, and we talk about this all the time, if you go to church and all you want to hear is practical ways to improve yourself, self-improvement, then guess what you don't hear?

You don't hear about the nature and character of God, because who cares about that? I mean, it's amazing, right? And we go to worship services and who wants to hear about God during those things, right?

Steve, that is such an insightful and important thing. Why is it important then to hear about the immutability of God, where see, the average person would say, that doesn't make any difference to me. I need to get through the week and how to communicate better and get my wife to like me more, et cetera, et cetera.

But God doesn't change. And you're a Christian. That means He doesn't change His promises. You might change, the world might change, but God never changes. And if He says something, He's going to bring it to pass.

Doesn't that increase in us a respect and admiration and fear and all those other things?

I mean, what an awful thing it would be to think that God could change, because if He could change, then I can't rely on anything, including the fact that I'm saved. You know, if His standard somehow changes from day to day or month to month.

Yeah, yeah. His law changes. Yes. Uh-huh.

I'm smoked. Well, it used to be, you just trust in my son. And now it's trust in my son, plus do a lot of good works. Yeah. How many good works?

How many do I have to do? Tell me, you know, I need some addendum to the scriptures because I don't find those in the Bible and I need to know so that I can do enough.

Steve, aren't we so happy as Christians that if you apply the word immutability to every other attribute, that gives us a rejoicing heart, that His holiness never changes, His love never changes, His grace, His kindness never changes, His goodness never changes.

I don't know if grace is an attribute or not, but He never changes.

Yeah. I mean, there's great comfort in that. You know, the adapting God, the changing God, the kind of cosmic chameleon, we don't want that God.

What are those kind of transformers? That game? Yeah. Are those things that kids play with? Yeah. And they transform into airplanes or whatever? Well, today on No Compromise Radio, Steve and I have been going over the state of theology 2020.

And hey, we got through one question. Excellent. Good job. Good job, guys. Good job. Way to go. I said to Steve today, my back hurts, and he said, well, you're 62, it's supposed to hurt. I said, thanks.

So I'm mutable. So Steve, if you want to write us, it's info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. 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.