Does God Really Like Me?

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

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My name is Mike Abendroth, and due to proper hygiene and obeying the letter of the law, we have

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Tuesday guy on the radio today, on this Tuesday.

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Who knows when it's going to be played? Mid -November. April Fools, Pastor Steve is in his home.

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I'm here at the studio. Yeah, you could have said, Pastor Steve, it's in the house, because it's true,

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I'm in my house. Steve, we have these little snacks here at the church, you know, so there's candy from the

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Iwana store, there are a bunch of these, like, small bags of chips and stuff like that, and once in a while,

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I'll have like a half a bag of one of those 180 calorie chip deals. And I've realized how many of those

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I've had, because the last three weeks during all the social distancing stuff, I come into the church because I want to exercise on my stationary bike, there's no cleanup, there's no janitorial service, so I see how many bags are in my trash can.

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I'm kind of ashamed. I bet you just can't have one.

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It's such a weird time right now, because, I mean, it's like, the other day, all I could think about was having a hamburger.

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Why? Because I can't have a hamburger, you know? Mm -hmm. So true.

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You know, when I was in the Army, in basic training, I've never really been a big candy guy. I mean, do

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I like it? Sometimes, you know? But when we started boot camp, they said, you know, you're not allowed, they have vending machines all over the place, not allowed to use any of the vending machines, not allowed to eat candy.

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So we had a guy who was in, I think he was in the CIA, he never really told us. He was just kind of in our barracks off to the side or whatever, and he never had to participate in anything, and obviously, you know, he was older and whatever, it was just kind of curious.

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But I really think he was CIA. So anyway, one day, he says, hey,

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I'm going to the PX, the post exchange, if anybody wants any, you know, like, candy or anything, and I'm like, dude, how about some peanut

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M &M's? So I give him a couple bucks, and he brought, like, a pound bag of peanut M &M's back. And, you know, he had to hide it and everything.

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Well, we were out marching one day, and they did a dorm search, and they brought, everybody had all this candy they brought, it must have been like 100 pounds of candy and just threw it down in front of all of us.

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It was terrible. Well, you know how I like old police stories, sheriff stories, and old army stories.

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So I thank you for that. You're welcome. All right. I have in front of me,

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Steve, something that you'll kind of probably smile if I could see your facial smile.

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You and I had some private email correspondence this morning about some theology that somebody that we know has, and I just opened up the

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Christianity Today 2020 April edition that we talked about last show, which was an hour ago, but will be played a week before we are airing this show.

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And there's a book review at the end. So ChristianityToday .com has book reviews, and I kind of like to look at some of those because probably 80 % of the time they're bad books, but once in a while there's a good book that's out, and I just want to see kind of an overview and what's going on and how they would review a good book, right?

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How do liberal evangelicals review conservative evangelical books?

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Well, there's a book that's called Does God Really Like Me?,

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Discovering the God Who Wants to Be With Us?, Jeff and Sid, S -Y -D,

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Holzclaw, IVP book. And now it says, God really likes you.

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He really likes you. That's the title of the review in Christianity Today. Scripture has a resounding reply to our doubts about His longing to be with us.

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Most of us seem to believe that God tolerates us, but we have a hard time believing He truly is glad to be with us.

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What's your kind of knee -jerk gut reaction when you hear stuff like that? This is just anthropomorphic nonsense.

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That's my knee -jerk reaction. You know, we want to think that God in some way longs for us the way we long for Him.

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You know, that He's needy, like we are needy. He's not. He says, if I was hungry,

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I wouldn't tell you. In other words, He's so far above us that the whole idea of emotions are really too man -centered to be placed on Him.

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His love is not our love. His hate is not our hate. You know, the way He thinks is not the way we think, and when we try to make

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Him think like we think, Him feel the way we feel, we are really bordering on, if not committing blasphemy.

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It's unthinkable to me. Yeah. So Steve, I guess maybe it's emphasis or it's priority or something like that.

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I don't have a problem with working through a doctrine like union with Christ, and you see the book of Ephesians, for instance, or other

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Pauline writings, in Him, in Christ, in Christ Jesus, talking about Christians and how they are united with Christ.

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I don't have any problem with that, and then saying something to the effect that when

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God looks at you, Christian, He doesn't see your imperfections or frailties or sins. Because of the doctrine of the union with Christ and because of Christ's righteousness imputed to your account, when the

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Father sees you, Christian, He doesn't see sin and failure, especially we're thinking judicially, right, and illegally,

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He sees the Lord Jesus. Now I don't have any problem with that, I just don't like to immediately jump to God can't live without you.

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Yeah. It reminds me of when Janet and I were in Israel in 2000 on the seminary trip, and another seminary was on the same trip, kind of, it wasn't, we weren't with them, but we met with them a few times, you know, for worship services, and this one time at the

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Sea of Galilee, they conducted the service, and it turns out when, you know,

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Jesus calmed the Sea of Galilee and, you know, walked across, or He calmed it when the disciples were in a panic, and the message there was that Jesus wants a relationship with you.

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And I was like, really? I mean, just think about that, the disciples in the boat, and they're just like, wow,

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Jesus calmed the Sea of Galilee from that storm, I guess He really wants a relationship with us. That's the message!

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You know, it's just boiling things down again, this reduction of God, this kind of, make

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Him more relatable, make Him more like us. And you're right, Mike, when you say, you know, in Christ, well, that, it doesn't elevate us and it doesn't lower

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God, what it does is remind us that our position is in Christ.

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And that's the important part, it's not, you know, this whole idea that God likes me, Steve, He likes you,

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Mike, that's kind of rubbish, it's an emotional claptrap. The Bible doesn't talk about it in those kind of terms.

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Steve, I think I've noticed in evangelicalism, maybe my old tendency might, you know, give people a lot of law and make sure, you know, they don't get too big for their britches or anything like that.

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On the gospel side of it, there are wonderful, glorious truths about the gospel, and when

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Paul says, who loved me, and the Lord Jesus in Galatians 2, He loved me and gave

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His life for me. And in Revelation 1, present tense even, He loves us. I think maybe what's happening in evangelicalism, that we just don't describe why

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He loves us and for what reason, and somehow the love He has for us, these kind of people seem to me to put that love based on who we are versus who the triune

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God is. Does that seem to make sense? That's right. That's right. It's kind of a, you know,

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I guess we could call it the redefining of, you know, the attributes of God, right?

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His love, again, His love is like our love. You know, how much does

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He love us? He loves us so much. I mean, listen, you would give your life for Kim, right?

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You would sacrifice yourself for Kim. That's not like Jesus giving

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His life for the Church. It's not the same thing. You would defend your wife, that, you know, it's that kind of, because it's the right thing for you to do, and it's how much you emotionally love her and how much you value the responsibility that you have for her.

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But it's a far different matter for the perfect God -man to give

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His life for us. Well, see, you've hit the nail on the proverbial head, because it's Rome. I would love,

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I would die for Kim because I love her and she's lovable and she has attributes that I find, you know, wonderful.

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And I think of Romans 5, 8, you know, God demonstrates His own love towards us that while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us.

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So the love part had to be on the triune God side as the Father loved and sent, the

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Son loved and went, and the Holy Spirit helped propel Jesus into gospel ministry and then would come alongside to empower

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Him for those miracles and then applies that work of Christ to our life now. So I think the focus has to be on the love of God side versus, well, there's something in us that's lovable.

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I think, Steve, you know, if I said to a Christian, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, that's true.

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But I would want to explain it. I'd only throw it out there to be, you know, inflammatory, to get people's attention, and then

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I'd have to reel it in. It is a good intro, right? It is. Because everybody in the congregation would be going like, what happened to Mike while we were off for a couple months, right?

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That's right. And I want to tell Christians, especially weak and struggling Christians who suffer with sin, and not suffer with sin, but commit sins, you know, we come to the

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Lord's table. That's a good reminder. Dear Christian, God does love you. And dear Christian, God's not mad at you.

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He's not angry with you. I know you've fallen short this week, but here's what the Lord Jesus has done.

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Then the focus gets right back onto what Jesus has done, not just, you know, Jesus, you know, for the joy set before Him runs the race in Hebrews 12, and the real joy is not obeying the

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Father and pleasing the Father, but the real joy is your joy. Yikes.

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I know. Isaiah 57 has a great verse. This is almost like one of these ordination verses.

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If someone said, well, is there an Old Testament verse that speaks of the triune nature of God? And I'd say

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Isaiah 48, 16. Well, what about a verse in Isaiah that speaks of God's transcendence that Pastor Steve was talking about earlier?

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That is, He's different and above us. He's alien to us, He's separate. And then

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His eminence, not His soon returned eminence, but His eminence, that is, He's close to us,

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God with us, Emmanuel. And there's a verse in Isaiah that shows both of those. And of course, this is the

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God we worship. But it says in Isaiah 57, verse 15, for thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy,

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I dwell in the high and holy place. And therefore, congregation, listeners out there in the radio land, that's talking about which one?

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Transcendence or eminence? Well, the answer is transcendence, holy, high, eternity, lifted up.

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And then the verse goes on to say, and also with Him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

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So there's the eminence, there's the closeness. And I think by nature, Steve, tell me what you think of this.

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I think I read this by Ritterbus. By nature, God is transcendent. By will,

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He is eminent. Well, I think that's exactly right. He chooses to condescend to us, right?

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He's not obligated in any way, right? But because He is compassionate, because He is a

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Savior by nature, you know, all these truths that are presented to us in Scripture, therefore,

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He condescends to us. That's good. Talking to Pastor Steve today,

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Tuesday Guy on No Compromise Radio. You can pull up all the old episodes, I think 2 ,800 of them, nocompromiseradio .com.

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Don't forget we have a YouTube channel. Steve's done a couple of the recent ones, No Compromise Radio YouTube channel.

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Just type in No Compromise Radio at YouTube and you'll find those. In this book review we're talking about today,

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Does God Really Like Me? Discovering the God Who Wants to Be With Us, Jeff and Sid Holzklaw.

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Steve, you don't have the article in front of you, but it says in the review here, Does God Really Like Me?

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Would Help My Dental Hygienist Understand the Main Theme of Scripture. Okay, so you ready? Here's the main theme of Scripture.

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I mean, I'm not the best writer, but I know not to say that unless it's categorically absolutely true.

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You want to say a theme of Scripture. Here's the definite article, main theme of Scripture, drum roll, that God more than just liking us, longs to dwell with us.

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This is, you know, sadly the theme of too many evangelical songs and books and worship services, right?

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Jesus or God or both, you know, the Father and the Son are just kind of lost without us.

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You know, they would be singing old air supply songs, you know, lost without you.

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Without your love, and you know, kind of thing. I guess that maybe that was bread, but whatever.

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You know, one of those schmaltzy old 70s tunes. And God isn't like that.

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God doesn't need anything. He didn't need anything. He's under no obligation towards us.

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It's so interesting how, again, I think in our effort to better our, you know, broadly evangelical world, effort to better understand

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Him, we've reduced Him into something that He's not. That's so true. This is for you, Steve.

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Since you left, I hardly make it through. There you go. There's David Jameson Bread right there.

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You know, that's funny that bread could have the best of bread. Now, who would ever name their band

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Bread? Well, you know what? What did it mean, slang, in the 70s?

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Oh, I don't know. Money? That's exactly right. Money, money, money, baby. Oh, I didn't know that. Who would ever name their church

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Bethlehem? House of Cash. Well, that's not true lately.

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We've been going to people's homes. My two daughters are in town, and Haley, you know, lives here with us.

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So I have three daughters in town, and my wife, and so we'll go visit somebody from the church, kind of an older folks, one of the older folks, and we'll bring him some soup or something, and we'll keep our distance and all that, and then we'll sing a song.

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We call it COVID caroling, right? We'll sing Immortal, Invisible, or some song, Amazing Grace, and just pray and then leave.

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And then inevitably, Steve, I just say to them, and the main reason we're here is to collect the offering check.

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Well, hey, I used to do that when I was a kid, right? In the Mormon church, we'd go around and collect fast offering collecting.

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Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. From the time you're a deacon, well, it was mostly deacons and then teachers, let's see.

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We helped, but then as a priest, we'd go around to you, but 12 and 13, we'd go knock on, because the first Sunday of every month is fast

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Sunday, and you're supposed to not eat breakfast, not eat lunch, save the money, and give it to the church as a fast offering.

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And so the deacons go around and collect it, and so we'd go knock on people's doors sometimes. You know, if they weren't super active members of the church, you'd go to their front door and you could smell the bacon coming out the windows, and I don't think they're fasting here, boss.

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Hey, Steve, you know what I think I'm going to do? I'm going to combine things, because I have pragmatic tendencies if I'm not careful.

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They're doing a bunch of tests to figure out why some of my blood counts are off, and so I have a colonoscopy that they weren't going to schedule, but decided,

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I guess, now because of, I don't know, better hygiene, they can. So in a week and a half, I have a colonoscopy, and the day before,

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I can't eat, so maybe that would be my fast Sunday. Oh, there you go. And then I could give the money to my daughters to go buy the best of bread.

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Those days, it was kind of like bread, the Carpenters. Who would be another band that would fit into that mold ilk?

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The Carpenters, bread, you mean just schmaltzy love songs? Yeah. Air Supply.

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I mean, there just aren't too many that come to mind. I mean, it's interesting, because I was listening to some 70s radio the other day, and it's amazing how many times,

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I mean, in the early 70s, really, the groups I liked were, they were black vocal groups, like the

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Four Tops, Temptations, yeah, and there was a group called the

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Blue Magic, and there were a bunch of the Spinners, and I'm just like, man, oh man,

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I loved all that music, and then disco came along and blew it all up. Did you ever like ELO?

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Oh, I loved ELO. Are you kidding? The moment, in fact, one of the most, one of the epiphanal moments of my teenage years was when

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I heard I Can't Get It Out of My Head, that's the famous song, and from then on, whenever I heard it,

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I had to turn it up as loud as I could possibly stand it. I loved that song. Did the

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Mormon Church know about that? You know what, they never asked, so, and you know what,

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I had a lot of friends who listened to worse, like Deep Purple, come on. Hey, how about this whole

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Mormon deal of baptizing, you know, proxy baptism, would that be proper social distancing? We can start baptizing people on the livestream, they don't even have to be there, but similar to the

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Mormon doctrine of proxy baptism, I could just keep baptizing you, so instead of being baptized 25 times,

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Steve, I could be baptizing you, like, 50 times. That would be so interesting, right? You know, you can't be here because, you know, of all the restrictions and everything like that, so therefore,

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I'm baptizing Steve. Just like the Mormons? Yeah. Well, you know, like this week,

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I called somebody and said, you know, would you do special music, we'll have a special song on Sunday, and instead of me just reading

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Scripture and preaching, you know, on livestream, you can sing a song. Well, you know, I forgot that you need to have, you know, the special discounted $2 ,400

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CCLI license or whoever they are for livestreaming. Well, now, I think it's free, isn't it, right now?

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Well, Charlie just told me they just sent out a deal saying, hey, this is a good time to do the whole livestreaming thing, so I guess maybe for Easter Sunday, I'll have that, but we can have them sing a

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Getty song. The Gettys aren't my favorite in terms of songwriters, but at least they're, you know, kind enough to say, you don't have to give us any money if you want to livestream one of our songs.

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Well, there is in Christ Alone, which is, you know. Of course, I want Heroes, you know, on Easter Sunday.

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I don't even know what... I'm going to have to find one on YouTube and just play it for a little while. Play it yourself?

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Yeah. Up from the grave, heroes. I've been singing it a lot, you know, a couple of my lungs.

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You know what I put on Speak of Singing? I put it on Facebook yesterday. You didn't see this because it was only on Facebook.

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I dug up, I took a bunch of stuff out of my book of remembrances, Thing Mormon Kids Do, and one of them is from my junior high days,

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I was one of the stars of our production of The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan.

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I didn't know that. What was your part? I was Nanky Poo. I was the wandering minstrel, strolling about.

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I was Nanky Poo. What was the soundtrack? Was it something similar to B .R .E .A .D.?

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No, it was nothing like B .R .E .A .D., thank you very much. And you know what? You were dogging the

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Carpenters earlier. The first album I ever bought was We've Only Just Begun, or Close to You, by the

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Carpenters. Oh, okay. Well, you know what? Three dollars and eighty -eight cents at Thrifty Drugstore.

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I think I bought my first LP for $2 .99. Nebraska. Yeah, in Nebraska.

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And I'm trying to think of what it was. It was a chip box. No, but I can't believe my mom let me buy

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ACDC records and stuff like that, and cranking them in the basement. Yeah, yeah. That is so wrong.

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So, today on No Compromise Radio, we want you to know, Christian, that God, in fact, does love you.

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Right? If He loved you when you were an enemy, He's not going to love you now as a child. Of course, He's going to love you. But this whole sappy, sentimental, emotional, and sometimes,

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Ann Voskamp, erotic, language and longing and communion and dwelling and, you know, much more sensual language than that, that's not the best way to frame it.

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So, if you just use biblical language to frame it and transcendent and eminent stuff, I think you're going to be fine.

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Don't you, Steve? I totally do. And the issue is that Christ died for our sins, rose on the third day, and we ought not to forget those things and focus on this longing, loving garbage.

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Yes. Jesus said in John 17, which you have preached before, so that the world may know that you sent me,

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Jesus prayed to the Father, and love them even as you love me. And so, when you think about the doctrine of union with Christ, and now we're in Christ, the

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Father loves us like He loves the Son, and that is with an everlasting love, to quote

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Jeremiah. So, my name's Mike Ebendroth. I have Steve Cooley on the line, along with Bred, and the

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Carpenters, and John Denver. My dad had eight tracks of all those.

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You just have to listen to them over and over, and he had to listen to all the bad songs to get to the good song. He had a bunch of eight tracks.

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That was so bad. Captain and Tennille, I think, was in the car for a while. My favorite eight track was the

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Eagles Hotel California, because it faded out on one track, one song did, and then it started up on the next one.

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It was terrible. Thanks for being on, Steve. Talk to you soon. No Compromise Radio, with Pastor Mike Ebendroth, is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.