Nate Pickowicz on Reviving New England (Part 1)

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.

Small Talk, Music, and Nate Pickowicz's Background

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and occasionally, even three weeks ago, I met a lady here at Bethlehem Bible Church, and I said, �How did you find out about the church

She said, true story, �I was just driving by the church, saw the cars, and thought I would come in. Anyway, she�s been back ever since. And today, there was somebody, they just drove past the church.

They stopped by, �Tell me a little bit about the church, and what are your emphases theologically And I thought, �You know what? I�m so impressed with the young man. Let�s just have him on the radio.

Nate Pickowitz, welcome to No Compromise Radio. It�s good to be here. How are you? Okay, that wasn�t true. No, you�re telling tall tales now. You have to be truthful. That wasn�t true. Nate and I are friends.

This is his third episode of No Compromise Radio. Wow. Yeah, that�s right.

That�s right. I was so nervous the first one. You didn�t even have your Bible. No. No, no. The first one I did, because the first one I called in from my parents� house, because they have a landline, and their dogs were barking in the back.

I called in. The audio was atrocious. And then the last time, I just stopped by because I got lost.

Yeah, I think you�re on your way to recording some rap record or something like that. Now, the one CD that you did record. Oh, we�re going to talk about this? Yeah, yeah. Was that a rock CD? Yeah. Tell me the style or genre of kind of.

So, what you�re talking about is, before I came back to Christ, I was trying to make a living as a musician. I fancied myself as a Billy Joel type. Oh, seriously? That�s, I play piano and sing, and yeah.

So, in 2001, I did cut a record, but please do not Google it. Do not buy it. Don�t try to� just leave it alone.

Nate, that�s just like the law in people. It has that effect that they�re all Googling now.

Yeah, yeah. So, thank you for bringing that up.

And did you write your own stuff, or were they all covers?

No, I wrote my own stuff. I still do if I sit down to play, but I don�t know why.

Well, we just had lunch, and you told me about that. And I actually like rock and roll music. I mean, it�s got to have the right kind of lyrics and stuff, but that�s a kind of� to say the word �genre� like D .A. Carson says it, �Jean.

Jean. Jean. I feel like he�s saying Jean-Luc Picard or something like that.

Only when he�s quoting from Isaiah, right? That�s right. How does he say it?

Isaiah. Something like that. Don�t start any controversy here at the show, although that�s more English than British Canadian. Yeah, yeah. Nate, tell our listeners, if they haven�t listened to you before on NoCoRadio, the church that you pastor up in New Hampshire is called?

Yeah, Harvest Bible Church.

It�s in� ready for this? Write this down. Gilmonton Ironworks, New Hampshire. That�s where I pastor.

I�ll make mention of this a little bit later. I learned something about your town in your new book. Oh, very good. Very good. It�s kind of got some interesting things going on. It has very interesting.

New England's Troubled Reputation and a Pastor's Twitter Handle

Okay, let�s talk about it now.

What is your town known for? It�s known at this point for two things. Gilmonton was the birthplace of America�s first serial killer and it is also the hometown birthplace of Grace Metallius who wrote� of course, I�m blanking on it right now.

What�s the name of it? Peyton Place. There we go. That is Gilmonton. That�s the town I grew up in. Well, it�s actually written about surrounding towns, but� so we�re famous for basically murder, and debauchery, and incest, and drunkenness, and that�s what we�re famous for.

Well, at least the Boston Strangler is not from that town. Where is he from?

I think he�s from Milwaukee actually.

It�s a misnomer. And if people want to follow you on Twitter, what�s your Twitter handle?

Yeah, at NatePickowitz and N-A-T-E-P-I-C-K-O-W-I-C-Z. Polish background? Maybe. I don�t actually know. They came over in the boat 100 years ago when we don�t really know where they�re all from, but I read one thing that actually they believe that my name is a derivative of a family that came into somewhere in the European region from� they think we�re Jewish actually.

They were Jewish refugees after all that mess.

So yeah, maybe. With my last name, many Jewish Germans had two different words put together to form a last name. So Goldstein. Right. Goldfarb. Goldfarb. Something like that. And so Aben wrote the same thing.

So some people think my name is Jewish and maybe it is. What does that mean? Do you know? Aben wrote? If you said good morning, it would be guten morgen. If you said good afternoon slash evening, it would be guten abend.

And wrote R-O-T at the end is red. So when the sun is setting and it looks kind of red, there�s a red hue.

That�s my name. Isn�t there like a sailing thing where there�s a red sky in the morning, sailors take warning? So bear with me. So when we�re navigating the theological sea and it starts to get rough, beware of the abendrof.

I�m feeling it. That�s excellent. Nate, tell us.

That was probably Heno-rific. I�m sorry. Oh, you know. Heno-vision. Nate, tell our listeners a little bit about your style of preaching. We talked about this before, but this is like every show has to be a show within a show, its own show.

And so I want to talk about the book you�re preaching through right now.

Expository Preaching and the Gospel of John

Yeah. Actually, we just finished up the Gospel of John. At our church, we�re committed to expository preaching and teaching, which means that we are starting with the biblical text and working our way to derive everything from that versus me trying to think up clever ideas of pithy things to say to people.

I have nothing to say. So we just go right from the text and that�s how all of our curriculum is done and that�s what we believe that Christians are supposed to be doing is hearing what God has to say.

So we�re committed to expository preaching and teaching. So we just finished the Gospel of John and in two weeks, I�m starting into 1 John. So we�re going to be tackling 1, 2, and 3 John and then so on and so forth.

So yeah, I mean, the first church was devoted to the apostles� teaching and so we want to follow suit and devote ourselves to the apostles� teaching, which is the New Testament, which is the Word of God.

Nate, sometimes since expository preaching is so fluid in its definition, there�s so many different definitions, do you think we�ve defaulted almost to we have to go verse by verse to do expository teaching?

In other words, I like that style. I think it seems to make the most sense. But I would argue that expository teaching, as you just made allusion to, is essentially of finding authorial intent and then explaining that.

I think that�s taking a higher priority than, oh, the guy goes verse by verse.

Pete. Sure, yeah. I think that�s what people are, when you hear the term, I think that�s where people go and that�s certainly a style of it, but I mean, yeah, I agree, it�s authorial intent. Does the origin of what you�re about to say come from the mind and the mouth of God or is it coming from your own preconceptions or your own understanding?

So, you know, when you get up and you preach, whose words are you preaching? Are you preaching the Word of God or are you preaching your own thoughts? So, yeah, I mean, you�re starting with the biblical text and you�re working out.

So, I mean, you can preach topical sermons from the biblical text and still be exegetical and expository even, but for my money, I like to work through the biblical text verse by verse because I think it just, it alleviates hobby horses, it gives people something they probably hadn�t considered before, there�s topics I probably wouldn�t touch on my own had I just done it on my own brain, but it just, it�s an attempt to be faithful to what God has written.

Aaron Nate, I agree with that, I concur, and if I were to pick topics without looking at the Bible, I mean, when would I ever say, �Oh, by the way, we�ve got an encouraging topic today, Mark chapter 10, divorce, remarriage.

This way we teach the whole mind of God. We can easily, I think we can more easily ascertain the authorial intent if we do go verse by verse. For instance, John chapter 3 with Nicodemus, there was a man who comes at night to see Jesus, and it follows chapter 2 where God knew what was in the heart of a man, and then chapter 3, now there was a man, and God knows his heart.

And so, I think verse by verse is the way to go nine times out of ten, but if I were to ask you the question, was Jesus an expository preacher, what comes to your mind when I say something like that?

Jesus as an Expository Preacher

Mark Bailey I think about at the end of Luke when he�s talking with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and he brings them through a several hours of explaining to them all the places in scripture that refer to him, which is basically the entire Old Testament.

So, he went through systematically from what we can gather and explain to them, I mean, he was a teacher. He taught the word of God, he knew the word better than anybody because he�s the one who said it.

So, I mean, everything he did was scriptural and explaining and expositing. I mean, he at one point in the beginning of John, I�m just going to look at it and make sure I don�t misquote it, but in John 1, no man has seen God at any time, the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him, he has exposited the Father.

So, Jesus himself, his ministry is an expository ministry, the word of God says it is. So, yeah.

Talking to Nate Pikowitz today on No Compromise Radio. Nate, I was thinking about the Gospel of Luke and in front of me, I don�t know if you�ve ever seen this, Tyndale�s New Testament. I have not. Translated by William Tyndale.

I left the CBD sales sticker on there, $5 .95. There you go.

To remind you of better times, right?

When Christian Discount Book was more Christian than Discounter Book, a modern spelling edition of the 1534 translation with an introduction by David Daniel and he had an excellent biography on Tyndale.

I remember MacArthur talking about that. So, anyway, Luke chapter 4, it says, I don�t have the verse here because it�s not versified in this Tyndale translation, and he came to Nazareth, talking about Jesus, where he was nursed and as his custom was, went into the synagogue on the Sabbath days and stood up for to read.

That�s how it�s translated, stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet, look it, there it is, there�s the D .A. Carson version, Esaias, E-S-I-A-S. And when he had opened the book, by the way, that word opened there, it�s almost when you would crack someone�s sternum to do heart surgery, it�s to expose there, it�s like expository sternum cracking preaching.

Pete. Oh my, that�s a book title right there. That�s your book, Sternum Cracking Preaching. No co-media, 10 ,000 copies.

I used to sell a laser that after they cut the sternum open for open heart surgery, that in the old days they would put something called bone wax on there, but sometimes there was an infection. So we had a laser that would coagulate the oozing bone from the sternum being cut.

And by the way, to cut a sternum, there�s a special type of saw. When it hits soft tissue, it doesn�t really cut. But when it hits dense bone, it cuts. And so that�s expository sternum cracking preaching.

I might be the first person in NOCA history to pass out and throw up on you.

Oh my goodness. Well, just before the show, I tried to put one of these monster powdered drink things inside a polar seltzer and it was Mount Vesuvius. Yeah, it was.

I was actually afraid for you because you were kind of hacking there and trying to get that thing down. I�ve got it ready here. It was an exhausting lunch. So we�re in Luke 4. I found the verse. It�s 4 .17.

He�s about to explain to them. Okay.

Go ahead. Yeah. And here the Tyndale translation says, �He found the place where it was written, �The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. This is Isaiah 61, servant song, �because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

For he has sent me and to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captive and sight to the blind and freely to set at liberty them that are bruised and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

Now here�s the fascinating thing. And he closed the book, gave it again to the minister and sat down. It�s time to preach. And all the eyes that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. Now here�s the wonderful part, Nate.

And he began to say to them, �We only get the first part of the sermon. He talked for a long time, but the only thing that�s recorded is this right here. This is the scripture, �This day fulfilled in your ears.

And all bear witness to him and wondered at the gracious words which were seeded out of his mouth and said, �Is this not Joseph�s son So Jesus begins to preach. We don�t have his whole sermon, but I would argue that Jesus is an expository preacher focused on authorial intent here, Isaiah 61, and the fulfillment is Jesus himself.

Nathaniel I heard one thing. It was said by a pastor, I won�t name him, but he was talking about preaching styles and teaching styles. And he said, �Well, Jesus just taught in parables. You know, here�s some guy with some seed and made it sound like that was the only thing he ever did.

And it�s like, no, all the time he was referencing back, �Have you not read And he would quote the verse, �Have you not read, thus says the Lord. I mean, he was constantly going back to the scriptures, basically chapter and verse, you know, mining and even parsing verb tenses to make his point.

I mean, he was precision personified. I mean, I don�t, there�s no other way to see that, you know? Nate, excellent point.

The liberals come along and say, �Jesus is our model for preaching and of course that�s true. But what they try to do then is, �Oh, he tells stories, and it�s metanarrative only, and he identifies with the people.

And they forget when he wins the argument with the verb tense where God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And here in this particular passage, of course he taught in parables, but he taught other ways.

And then he has ordained preaching as Jesus, through his apostles via the Holy Spirit, preach the word, right? In season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience, and the word is.

Doctrine. Pete. Not to mention, too, that if the apostles had in the very first generation removed from spending time with Jesus, if they had gone and done something completely different, they would be in disobedience.

Everything we see modeled in them, they model after Christ, and so the Apostle Paul, I mean, teaching the whole counsel of God, he would be disobedient if he was going against the way he learned from Christ.

So even the, I know it�s kind of probably a weaker argument, but even what we see from the apostles is the exact same thing.

Preaching the Whole Counsel of God in New England

Jared Nate, what would we do if we said, you know, we�re not going to go verse by verse, but we�re here in New England, you�re in New Hampshire, I�m in Massachusetts, and we are required to teach all of the Bible.

We�re required, if we live long enough, to teach 66 books. Well, I guess we could jump all around, but it seems to me to be easier, and this is how you read books anyway, isn�t it? Let�s start in John, go verse by verse, I happen to be in Hebrews, let�s go verse by verse, and we�re done.

Then let�s pray, �Lord, what should I then teach your people It�ll be one of the other 65 books, and then start preaching that, and if I live long enough, we�ll finish everything. If I don�t, that�s fine.

Jared What are you going to preach now that John has done?

Pete Well, I�m in 1 John, starting 1 John. Jared Okay. Pete So, we�re going to go and apply everything we�ve learned, because the important thing, and I told our church this, and I think this is essential, is that we have to make sure that our Christology is accurate.

We have to know whom we worship. I mean, the most pivotal question Jesus asked his disciples is, who do you say that I am? So, if we�re going to go and try to answer that question, we can�t go and do things if we don�t understand who our Lord is, who our God is.

And so, the theme of John is belief and obedience to him and obeying his command and so on and so forth. So, now we�re going to go take everything we�ve learned about Christ and we�re going to go see it applied.

And as you know, John is writing his letters into an extremely pagan culture that is wrestling with, you know, things like early stages of Gnosticism and Docetism and all these �isms that are waging war on the church.

And he�s about to go and give light in the darkness and say, this is how you live as a Christian. This is how you know that you�re of Christ. And so, I think that�s what our culture needs as well. This church needs to know, how do you live as a Christian in an otherwise pagan culture?

Pete� Nate, that�s a good approach. You do John, the Gospel of, then you do 1 John, you could do 2 John, 3 John, then you should do Revelation.

How�s it all going to end? I�m going to save that for when I�m about 75 years old and I know what I�m talking about.

Pete� I was flipping through the Bible here and in the Tyndale translation, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, then it�s 1, 2, 3 John, then it�s Hebrews. I was messed up a little bit. I was trying to find 1 John. I could not find it because we�ve got here the prologue to the epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews.

He thought I guess Paul wrote it as well. I love that. Yeah, so I could not find 1 John. Matter of fact. Pete. Well, it�s in there. Pete. Yeah. I know. Let�s see. Oh, there�s the prologue upon the epistles of St. James and Judas.

There�s one reason why we call it Jude now because it�s hard to even name your dog. You might name your dog Hitler. You might name your cat Jezebel, rightfully so, but you don�t name anybody Judas. So we better change Judas� name to Jude so people will actually read the book.

One thing I�ve noticed in� see, I still cannot find 1 John. That is so funny.

Matt. It�s right before 2 and 3. John, right there.

Pete� Well, I�m sure you�ll do this as a scholar and a Bible pastor and a Bible teacher and a pastor. When I used to think of 1 John, I only thought of it as kind of we�re going to weed out people who aren�t Christians and we�ll do that with 1 John.

Yet the book is written ultimately I mean, the book does that, but ultimately we�ve got to remember it�s a book to encourage people. Look at you have the propitiation for your sins, Jesus the righteous one, 1 John 2, 1 and 2.

And when God changes your status, of course, your life will follow. You will be sanctified. And here we have these tests of saving faith that need to be focused on who Jesus is. In other words, there�s more to assurance than saying, �Does my life match up or not

Assurance starts with the nature and character of God and his promises found in Christ Jesus. Then we�ll get to our lifestyle later. So that�ll be fun to bring out in that book.

Matt� Yeah, and I think it�s interesting that you thought of it that way of weeding because it certainly does. It does weed out false faith, but I think about it in another way of Christian assurance where you have people who are in the church maybe they�ve been going to church their whole life and all of a sudden, they�re faced with the true gospel, they�re faced with doctrine, and they say, �Boy, how do I know if I�m a Christian

And as soon as they start asking that question, you can say, �Well, let�s, you know, this is an opportunity to make sure, you know, to test and see if your faith is real, if you�re calling elections, sure.

And you can actually have it�s an opportunity to preach the gospel to them and lead them to saving faith if they�re asking that question. If they want to have nothing to do with it, then they have nothing to do with it.

But I get asked that question a lot. How do I know if I�m really a Christian? How can I be sure? So what better way than to bring them through the Word of God and say, �Here�s what God has to say about it.

Propitiation, Love, and Assurance in 1 John

Pete� I love 1 John, and when I think of the chapter 2 with propitiation for our sins, and then also in chapter 4, how does Tyndale translate �propitiation�, or the word that we would get for �covering.

How about this? �Beloved, let us love one another, for love cometh of God. And every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. In this appeared the love of God to us-ward, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son. Now what�s your translation, St. Nate? Pete� Propitiation. Pete� Okay, so we�ve got wrath assuaged, and you think of the old days with gods who would depend on their followers to assuage their wrath.

And now God, of course, assuages His own wrath in the personal work of His Son. Here�s what Tyndale says, �And sent His Son to make agreement for our sins. Pete� Interesting.

I�ve heard atoning sacrifice before.

I want to say NIV says probably atonement, atoning sacrifice. Of course, in theological parlance, you�ve got expiation and propitiation arguments. Now expiation means to just let go of, and of course that�s true.

God forgives us our sins. Propitiation is stressing that since our sins are so vile and ugly, God is a God of love, but He�s also a God of wrath, and so He takes those sins very personally, and then someone must assuage God�s wrath, and so we know Jesus because He loved us.

Isn�t that fascinating? When you think of love, John says, �Think of propitiation. And when you think of propitiation, think of love. I mean, how different is that in today�s day and age of Jesus� calling?

John� Oh, goodness. Don�t get me started. Pete� I knew that. You should have seen his eyes roll. You know what? We need to kind of do the Todd Freo like live video stream because you could have seen the sternum deal, and then you could have just seen the eyes roll, all this nonverbal communication.

John. My head would have erupted like the geyser. That was your drink earlier, your energy drink.

Pete� Now, we only have a minute and a half to go, and then we�ll record the second show. I want our listeners to be reminded that they can pick up Nate�s sermons at what website?

John� It�s HarvestBibleGilmanton .org.

Pete� Okay, and so if they just typed in.

John� Yeah, HarvestBibleChurchGilmanton, or if they put my name in, they�ll stumble across it. There�s a little tab that has sermons, and it�s got everything there. Pete� Why don�t I just think of pixie sticks?

John� I don�t know. I don�t know. Pete� You should put those in your drink, too, because you�ll get quite a. John� That�s what it would look like.

If you want to write us, it�s info at nocompromiseradio .com. If you�d like to have some information about Nate that you can�t find, we�ll find it for you. We�d love to do that. We�re going to talk next show, which will play in one week from today, a little bit about Nate�s new book, New England, as a place where the gospel can crack through the hardest hearts or hardest sternums.

If you�d like to go to Europe with us, you can. We�re going to go May 20th through 30th, No Compromise Radio and Mike Gendron to Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg, Wartburg, some of those places. I bet you you�d like to go.

I think the congregation should purchase you and your wife tickets so you can go with NOCO Radio.

Nate� I�ll let you talk to my church about that.

John. Yeah, give me the elder board�s number and I�ll go ahead and talk to them. Nate, thanks for being on the radio show today. Didn�t the time go by fast? I love your kindred spirit in ministry. Nate.

Amen.

Thank you for having me on. 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.

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