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. 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 ?�

And sometimes they might say, �Oh, the radio show or the internet.� We looked at some things.

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 Pikowicz, welcome to No Compromise Radio.

Mike Abendroth It�s good to be here. How are you? Nate Pikowicz Okay, that wasn�t true. Mike Abendroth Now, you�re telling tall tales now. You have to be truthful.

Nate Pikowicz I know. That wasn�t true. Nate and I are friends. This is his third episode of No Compromise Radio. Mike Abendroth Wow, yeah, that�s right.

That�s right. I was so nervous the first one. Nate Pikowicz You didn�t even have your Bible. Mike Abendroth 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.

Nate Pikowicz Yeah, I think you�re on your way to recording some rap or something like that. Now, the one

CD that you did record� Mike Abendroth Oh, we�re going to talk about this? Nate Pikowicz Yeah, yeah. Was that a rock CD? Tell me the style or genre of kind of�

Mike Abendroth 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. Nate Pikowicz Oh, seriously? Mike Abendroth I play piano and singing, and yeah.

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

So, thank you for bringing that up. Nate Pikowicz And did you write your own stuff, or were they all covers?

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

Nate Pikowicz 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 Dean Carson says it, �Jean.�

Mike Abendroth Jean. Nate Pikowicz Jean. Mike Abendroth I feel like he�s saying Jean -Luc Picard or something like that. Nate Pikowicz Yeah, yeah.

Only when he�s quoting from Isaiah, right? Nate Pikowicz Uh -huh, that�s right. Mike Abendroth How does he say it? Isaiah? Nate Pikowicz Something like that.

Don�t start any controversy here on the show, although that�s more English than British Canadian.

Nate Pikowicz Yeah, yeah. Mike Abendroth Nate, tell our listeners, if they haven�t listened to you before on NOCO Radio, the church that you pastor up in New Hampshire is called?

Nate Pikowicz Yeah, Harvest Bible Church. It�s in� Ready for this? Write this down. Gilmonton Iron Works, New Hampshire.

That�s where I pastor. Mike Abendroth I�ll make mention of this a little bit later. I learned something about your town in your new book.

Nate Pikowicz Oh, very good. Very good. Mike Abendroth Yeah, it�s kind of got some interesting things going on. Nate Pikowicz It has very interesting� Mike Abendroth Okay, let�s talk about it now.

What is your town known for? Nate Pikowicz 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. So, we�re famous for basically murder and debauchery and incest and drunkenness and that�s what we�re famous for.

Mike Abendroth Well, at least the Boston Strangler is not from that town. Where�s he from? Nate Pikowicz I think he�s from Milwaukee actually.

It�s a misnomer. Mike Abendroth And if people want to follow you on Twitter, what�s your Twitter handle? Nate Pikowicz Yeah, at Nate Pikowicz and N -A -T -E -P -I -C -K -O -W -I -C -Z.

Mike Abendroth Polish background? Nate Pikowicz Maybe. I don�t actually know. They came over in the boat 100 years ago and 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, something like that. And so Aben wrote the same thing.

So, some people think my name is Jewish and maybe it is. Mike Abendroth What does that mean? Do you know? Nate Pikowicz 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.

Matthew Feeney 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 abendroth.

Matthew Feeney I�m feeling it. That�s excellent. Nate, tell us. Nate Pikowicz That was probably Heno -rific.

I�m sorry. Matthew Feeney 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.

Nate Pikowicz Sure. Matthew Feeney And so, I want to talk about the book you�re preaching through right now. Nate Pikowicz 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. Matthew Feeney 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 finding authorial intent and then explaining that.

I think that�s taking a higher priority than, oh, the guy goes verse -by -verse. Petey Whitten 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 Ross Powell 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 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 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?

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 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. Petey� Amen. 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.

Nate I have not. Petey� Translated by William Tyndale. I left the CBD sale sticker on there, $5 .95. Nate There you go.

To remind you of better times, right? Petey� 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, it�s like expository sternum cracking preaching.

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

10 ,000 copies right there. Jared� 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 of 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.

Petey� I might be the first person in NOCA history to pass out and throw up on your� oh my goodness.

Just before the show, I tried to put one of these monster powder drink things inside a polar seltzer and it was

Mount Vesuvius. Jared� Yeah, it was. I was actually afraid for you because you were kind of hacking there and trying to get that thing down.

Petey� I�ve got it ready here. It was an exhausting lunch. Jared� So we�re in Luke 4. I found the verse.

It�s 4 .17. He�s about to explain to them. Go ahead, yep. Petey� Okay. 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 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 chapter 61, and the fulfillment is Jesus himself. Nate I heard one thing.

It was said by a pastor. I won�t name him, but was talking about how, 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, 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.

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.

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. What are you going to preach now that John has done? Pete� Well, I�m in 1

John, starting 1 John. 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.

Peter, 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? Nate, I�m going to save that for when

I�m about 75 years old and I know what I�m talking about. 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. Oh, I love that. I love that. Yeah, so I could not find 1

John. Well, it�s in there. Yeah, I know. Let�s see.

Oh, there�s the prologue upon the epistles of St. James and Judas. Goodness. 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. Yeah, right. 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. It�s right before 2 and 3

John. Right there. 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, 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 ?�

Right? 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. Yeah, and I think, you know, it�s interesting that you thought of it that way of weeding, because it certainly does.

It does weed out, you know, 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 your calling and election is 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.

And 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.� Trevor Burrus 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 usward, 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 saying, Nate? Nate Smith Propitiation.

Trevor Burrus Okay, so we�ve got wrath assuaged, right, by � 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.� Nate Smith Interesting. I�ve heard atoning sacrifice before.

Trevor Burrus 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?

Nate Smith Oh, goodness. Don�t get me started. Trevor Burrus 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.

Nate Smith My head would have erupted like the geyser that was your drink earlier, your energy drink. Trevor Burrus 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?

Nate Smith It�s harvestbiblegilminton .org. Trevor Burrus Okay. And so, if they just typed in �

Nate Smith Yeah, Harvest Bible Church, Gilminton, or if they put my name in, they�ll stumble across. So, there�s a little tab that has sermons and it�s got everything there.

Trevor Burrus Why don�t I just think of pixie sticks? Nate Smith I don�t know. Trevor Burrus I don�t know. Nate Smith You should put those in your drink, too, because you�ll get quite a �

Trevor Burrus That�s what it looked 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. And 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.

And 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 congregations should purchase you and your wife tickets so you can go with NOCO Radio.

Nate Smith I�ll let you talk to my church about that. Trevor Burrus 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? And I love your kindred spirit in ministry.

Nate Smith 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.