Coexist

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 ministry. Pastor Steve is here with me.

Steve, welcome. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Now, you just got back from Los Angeles and tell me what it's like.

You sat in John MacArthur's chair at his desk at Grace 2, and you sat in front of the golden GTY microphone.

Yes, I did. And I saw the whole production studio and everything. It's quite nice. And, you know,

I thought, well, when he steps down and there's an opening, I'm available. Did you tell him now that you're a well -oiled radio host?

I think I said the exact phrase was radio star, but you know. And I think

John probably said video killed the radio star. Today on No Compromise Radio, we're going to talk about the exclusivity of Christ and coexist bumper stickers.

But before we do, two quick announcements. Wretched Radio has a conference here at Bethlehem Bible Church.

It's about discernment. Psalm 119 conference, September 23rd and 24th.

So you want to go to wretchedradio .org and you can sign up there. Is it .com or .org? I think it's .com.

I think it's .edu. It's an educational TV show.

I'm pretty sure. I really think it's, I think it's .com. I bet you it's .com. Yes. Todd Friel, Mr.

Wretched himself, R .W. Pastor Smarty Pants Glenn. That's what they call him, Pastor Smarty Pants, just because he can say propitiation.

Really? Well, what does that make us? I don't know, Mr. Something Else Pants. Mr. Baggy Pants.

Tim, I invented the internet blogging chalice. All right, he did. Trevin Wax. Christian internet blogging.

Yes, that's true. Yes, well, I think he kind of boasts that because, you know,

Al Gore said he made the internet. So Tim Kelly made blogging. Trevin Wax, what does he know for Christian museums?

House of? Trevor Hall, I think. He's a kind of a reggae musician. Okay. And then me,

I'll be here. It's Friday, September 23rd. It's from 1 p .m. that Friday through 8 .30.

Just one after another, after another, messages on discernment. Then Saturday from 9 a .m. to 4 .30

p .m. I have five tickets to give out. Five free tickets, $79 each.

And you just have to get those by writing info at nocompromisedradio .com and say,

I should get a free ticket because. My favorite shows are Tuesday. Where's the golf button?

And then I will decide who gets them. And then I'll let you know by the 21st so you can make plans.

How's that sound? Great, just CC me and you're in. CC me and you're in.

And also you can get the new book, Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus on nocompromisedradio .com

site. 10 bucks, Steve. That's shipping and handling including. $10, that's it? $10, I know. That is a bargain.

We're giving them away. How much money do I make on those? Literally nothing.

Dozens of dollars. I think I told you the story one time, I got a royalty check from some overseas sales and I said, you know what, whatever

I get is going to be wonderful. I'm going to take Kim out on a hot date and all that stuff. It was 12 English pounds, 12 quid.

How much was it after you paid the postage due? Yeah, that's right.

I think I sold five books in all of Europe. All right, this week from Pam Schwartzel, I received in my email a bumper sticker, a picture of a bumper sticker.

Now, Steve, describe the Coexist bumper sticker before we start. Coexist is just really one of those bumper stickers that I love to hate.

You know, the whole idea behind that is there's so many religions and why can't we all just get along, whatever faith we are, or if we're no faith at all, they're all equally valid.

This is a postmodern bunch of nonsense. You know, it's the idea that you can put vegetables and meat and noodles and horse dung in a soup and they're all equally valuable.

Pastor Steve has not been on No Compromise for quite some time and I think he's fairly riled up. I am fairly riled.

I hate that bumper sticker. Every time I look at it, I just, in fact, if I was in a radio car,

I think I'd just pull people over, you know, that said Coexist all the time. I'd just pull them over just because. That would be so great.

A policeman who's told by the sheriff, sergeant or whatever, pull over all the

Coexisters. It's just dumb. It's got the peace sign.

It's got the Jewish Star of David. It's got the yin yang. It's got a variety of things, including a cross.

Some kind of feminists sign on it. But what Pam sent me was a new bumper sticker and I'm not going to carry these, but I think if you type them in, you can pick some up at some cafe press or whatever it's called.

You need it, you want it. Yes, and I'm going to put this, I don't put bumper stickers on my car. There's maybe a little Tour de

France decal back there just because I'm a wannabe, but I'm going to put this one on my car, Steve. It says, Contradict.

Using all the different symbols together, there can be only one truth. It's blue.

It's got the crescent. It's got the cross, some atom sign. Yeah, the nuclear power sign, actually.

The contradict, there can be only one truth. Steve, tell our listeners in light of postmodernism, how can we,

I mean, how does postmodernism serve as a broth for there's lots of different truths out there?

Well, postmodernism, you know, basically the idea that there really is no truth. And when you step into that kind of world and that really, that vacuum, and you say, well, if there's no truth, then all truths are equally valuable because they have no value, right?

And so when you discount everything, well, then why not coexist? Why can't we all just get along?

Because it doesn't really, there's nothing worth fighting for. There are no arguments even worth having. Let's just all get along.

And that's the kind of, I'll just say it, that's the sort of liberal mentality that we see all around us.

Steve, I think there should be a new study Bible out, the coexist study Bible. Well, it would be, you know, the notes would be so vacuous, like, you know, something on the bottom, have you hugged someone of another faith today?

Yes, there'd be some application down below. I wonder what would be in the maps area. I don't know, but I can imagine, you know, in the pictures, even, you know, the coexist study

Bible would have pictures of all the holy shrines around the world of all faith, because they're all wonderful.

Now, Steve, how about this? Why don't the Palestinians have coexist bumper stickers when it comes to the nation of Israel?

Because they want to exterminate them. They want them either driven out or dead. Yeah, yeah. But not in that order.

Yeah, but I'm sure that most of the people who have the coexist bumper stickers on the car would be big supporters of the

Palestinians without thinking about the ramifications of that. You know what? We need to make a no compromise bumper sticker to just slap on top of any coexist bumper stickers we see.

Some kind of guerrilla graffiti. It just changes it to contradict.

And you know, ultimately, here's the problem with coexist. And I would say it is the same problem as with any kind of socialist way out there, liberal, dare

I say, communist sort of mentality, which is it just ignores depravity.

There is this problem in the world that is called the human heart that is sinful from the womb.

It is separated from God. It hates God and it hates the truth. So this idea of coexist is on a superficial level.

It's nonsense. And when you dig even deeper, it's worse because it says, I hate God and I hate his truth.

Steve, I only have one comment for you. Kind of honorary today. Here's the comment. Judge not lest you be judged. Oh, thank you.

I'm believer's favorite verse. In fact, they could put that on the bottom of their coexist bumper sticker. Yeah, as kind of a subtitle.

Yeah. All right, here's an article called Coexist You First. And it's written by,

Steve, can you read that with your glasses there? Kurt Schlichter? Yeah, Kurt Schlichter, I believe. Okay.

Didn't he play quarterback for Ohio State before he got gambling? No, that was Art Schlichter. Okay. This is his little brother,

Kurt. And here is what Kurt said. Funny thing though, I don't remember seeing any coexist bumper stickers, much less love or tolerance when

I was deployed to the Middle East. And I sure don't remember any in the ethnically cleansed villages of Southeast Kosovo.

But I wasn't really looking then since I was pretty busy actually doing something about hate and intolerance instead of just striking concern poses.

It is the ultimate symbol to me of our decadence. You know, the people have the freedom and really the ignorance to put that on their bumper sticker because it ignores the fact that there are people out there who just hate and they're always going to hate.

And it doesn't matter how many coexist bumper stickers you slap on your car. They're still going to hate you. Is that what

Steven Furtick was talking about when he has that hey haters video? Hey haters. Or let's talk about -

I'm here in New York City. Don't you wish you were? Matthew chapter 11.

I wonder what Jesus would say about, not bumper stickers, but this idea of coexist.

At that time, Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things, by the way, this is

Matthew 11, 27. All things have been handed over to me by my father and no one knows the son except the father and no one knows the father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him.

And I think people that love the next verse should include the three verses before it, like I just included them.

Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Sounds pretty exclusive to me.

Very exclusive. I mean, this is Jesus being exclusive as he often was. And you know, this idea, again, this idea of coexisting is really just a superficial, and like you said, or like Jesus said, actually, you know, it's this kind of intellectual, all knowing, we're smarter than you, we're wiser than you.

And what it really is is the foolishness of man on display. This idea that, you know, hey, all we need to do is just tolerate.

If we can just tolerate, then life on the planet will be wonderful. How do we know God unless Jesus reveals him?

He's the one that chooses to reveal himself and then reveal the father. That sounds kind of exclusive, that Jesus has somehow rights to reveal the father.

That's what he's saying in Matthew 11 there. Well, that's what John says in John 1. I mean, he is the word.

I mean, there are a variety of words that could be used to describe the second person of the

Trinity, and yet it is the logos, the word, God's communication to man ultimately in human form.

D .A. Carson said this regarding Matthew 11, 27. A claim like that brooks no middle ground.

Either Jesus was the exclusive revealer of God or he was a nut. Well, that's it, isn't it?

If the former, we must bow to him, acknowledge his lordship, receive his word of revelation, delight in his truth, and in the knowledge of God only he can provide.

If the latter, the nut part, Almond Joy has - Has nuts. We must dismiss him at once and entertain no more pious nonsense about Jesus being one good man or one revealer among many.

One good teacher, one man with wise insights. He was such a good teacher. But I mean, they don't want him as king.

That sounds like a good plug for a book. That sounds like a good book. I don't know if the guy's a good writer, but the topic's excellent.

Who would write a book like that? The Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus. Who would write that book?

I don't know. It was in another era in another day three years ago. Shameless plug, okay.

So we're talking today on No Compromise Radio about the exclusivity of Christ and how the world through its bumper sticker mentality and everything else from the liberal driven media, et cetera, and the halls of Harvard are pushing tolerance and pushing diversity and pretty much being intolerant of Christianity, wouldn't you say?

Right, and you know, Jesus, I mean, Jesus was consistently intolerant when he said in John 14, six,

I am the way, the truth, and the life. You know, why can't he have been nicer about it?

Why not something like, I am a way, a truth, and a life?

Well, Steve, in my co -exist study Bible, next to John 14, six, there's a smiley face and an

LOL right after that comment. Oh.

Well, think about it. We are sinners and we need a sin bearer. We can't be in God's presence with sin unless we want to feel his fury and his wrath and his holy justice.

And so to be the friend of God, to be in God's presence and receive his good pleasure, we need to have no sin.

Therefore, we need a sin bearer. That's why Jesus, the God man, not the man God, but the

God man, he was God first, cloaked himself with humanity, and came and died as a sin bearer.

And so if there's one more sin bearer, Steve, then fine, we need to co -exist with the two sin bearers.

But there's been only one perfect man who bore the sins of others. He didn't have to bear his own sin.

So find me another sin bearer and maybe these people would have a clue. Now, just for the sake of elucidation, you're not saying sin bear, right?

Sin bearer, right? Yes, sometimes I speak very quickly.

It's a sin bearer. Arr! I have a question though, because it just seems, you know, what you're presenting here seems extremely narrow -minded and exclusive, if I may say.

So my first question is, why would God be so mad at us? I mean, he knew we were gonna sin, right?

So why should he be upset about that? Well, since God has round glasses and gray hair like George Burns in Oh God, he's not really that mad at us.

He's got a crazy love for people like us. Can I just see a show of hands? How many people even know who George Burns is?

Go ahead and raise your hand. That's what I thought, almost nobody. Well, I guess you'll have to Google it.

Some kind of grandpa version of God. And you know, he's nice. And you know, I think you're a grandpa,

Steve. You probably were harder on your daughters and son than you are on your two granddaughters, right?

Way harder. Just ask them, they'll tell you. And so God is kind of like a grandpa and he doesn't really want exact justice or anything like that.

That's the view we have of this amorphous love God today. And so you're right, here's the point.

If you get sin, if you understand it wrongly, then you don't need a sin bearer and then you don't have the exclusivity of Christ.

So it's driven back to depravity again. Without depravity, no sin bearer needed, no exclusivity at all.

So what I was doing is, Steve, looking at 2 Thessalonians. This seems like this is a kind of, kind of God might be mad at sin and he might be mad at those who do not believe that Jesus is the only way.

2 Thessalonians 1. Indeed, God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant to you who are afflicted as well to us.

When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know

God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the

Lord and from the glory of his might. When he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all those who have believed.

So wait, is 2 Thessalonians, is that in the Old Testament? Because that sounds like that mean Old Testament God. Steve, you've got so many concurrent themes here on one show.

I'm working, you know, I'm just working. Jesus is the mediator.

How many mediators are there between man and God? One. One, that's 1 Timothy 2. And so we need somebody to stand in our place.

How about the advocate? What about 1 John 2, verses one and two? The advocate, the defense lawyer, as it were, to stand in our place.

How many of those do we have? One. You should see Steve's face right about now.

You know, it's kind of bugging me because you just keep pushing back to this one way.

Well, if there's one creator, then there's probably one God. But maybe as God was, we once were, or will be.

How does that Mormon thing go? You know it, I don't. As man, let's see, as God is, no, it's as man is,

God once was. As God is, man may become. Wow.

I think, you know what? That's actually a subplot for that new movie that's out, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Oh, let's talk about that for just a second.

You know, I have not seen it, but I heard it was a pretty good show, but I heard it's about the monkeys, you know, are good and men are evil.

But actually that is theologically correct. Steve, that is like John Gershner, R .C. Sproul's mentor.

John Gershner talking about rats and humans and how rats are better than humans because God made rats to act rattishly.

And God made humans - Like radishes. Rattishly. And God made humans to worship him and bow before the sun, the king, and they will not do it.

They refuse to do it. They will not give thanks to God. They will not honor him as creator or sustainer or savior.

And so rats at least do what they're made to do. And humans reject God and stiff arm him in the face.

And so similarly, monkeys do what they're supposed to do. That's exactly right. And if Jesus Christ is in fact

God's son, Psalm 2 tells us that we should kiss the son or he will hug us anyway and just get over it.

No, it says he'll smite you if you don't kiss the son. If you don't love Christ. I mean, if God, you know, here's the question.

Does God the father love God the son infinitely? And if the answer is yes and you reject

Christ, then how can you expect God to love you and forgive you and just kind of let that go?

Well, God seems kind of peculiar to me, Steve, that he would actually want some blood sacrifice, that he would send his son to be both the priest and the sacrifice.

I mean, God's kind of got some strange ways. I'm not sure if I really like that or not. Well, my answer to you would be

Romans 9. Who are you, old man, who answers back to God? You just think about how particular

God is. Now, here's a good one for you. Jesus Christ, he could not,

I mean, this just shows the sovereignty of God and how wise he is. Jesus was not a Levitical priest.

He could, you cannot, Hebrew says, Jesus was not a priest according to the order of Levi and of Aaron.

He wasn't born in that tribe. He was from the tribe of Judah. Yet here we have

God through the priesthood of Melchizedek. Jesus was able to be a high priest that way.

But, you know, you just, people just don't like the ways of God and God's ways are the best. Here's what this guy says, the

Schlechter again, Schleester. Schleester. Wasn't that a, what was that? The Land of the

Lost, the Sleestacks? Was that a monster back in the Sleestack City? I don't know. I must've skipped that movie.

You didn't grow up watching The Land of the Lost when you were a kid? Nine. Did you grow up watching Banana Splits?

Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. See, yeah. We're the... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Dane Bradley, next. Coexist bumper stickers represent more than just the obnoxious posturing of self -important twits.

Although the obnoxious posturing of self -important twits is a huge component of what they represent. We say that in love.

I hope twit isn't a bad word. It's short for tweets. No, it's short for moron.

Oh, okay. Da da da da da, catchphrase, captures perfectly the kind of dreary pretension you'd expect from people who use the back of their ride to lecture lesser morals.

Yeah, it's like - Mortals. It's like I say, you know, when you drive by the houses, we have some houses out here.

I never saw this in California, but then I lived in a fairly conservative area where people would post in their yard, war is not the answer.

And I always just wanna shout out, it depends on what the question is, doesn't it? You know? It's kind of interesting, isn't it,

Steve, that war is the answer biblically many times. Sometimes God would command the Israelites to go to war against the

Canaanites, for instance. How about the war that God the Father poured out on God the

Son, not because of his own sin, but he was bearing the sin of others. How about Romans, excuse me, Revelation chapter 19, where Jesus comes back for the final war, the war in Armageddon.

I think sometimes things are accomplished through war. Peace is accomplished many times through the scripture through war.

Well, and even humanly speaking, you know, if our government had failed to act after the Japanese bombed

Pearl Harbor, and it wasn't the Germans, by the way, after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, if Roosevelt and Congress had just said, well, you know, war's not the answer, there would have been a revolution.

You can't, I mean, governments exist to protect people. So the idea that war is not the answer, it's false from a human perspective, and it's false also from God's perspective.

Ephesians chapter one says, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.

If you'd like to have forgiveness of your trespasses that you've surely committed against God and other people, you have one hope if you're listening today, and that hope is

Christ Jesus, the only one who can rescue you out of the slave pit of your own sin that you're shackled with and held like a straightjacket would hold a person, you're held by your own sin.

How do you extract yourself? And it's only by looking to the risen Savior who died on the cross, and you look with the eyes and with the mind of faith.

Steve, if he's the only one offering salvation, then we ought to call people to believe in that God alone.

Absolutely, and getting back to contradict, if we look at first Corinthians one, it says there that the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing.

In other words, it contradicts what is logical, what is intellectually prevalent, what so many people would like to believe.

They'd like to believe that they can be good enough on their own. The truth is no one is good enough because good enough is perfect.

You have to be perfect to enter into heaven. We cannot do it. No one can. You cannot.

It is only by the perfection of Jesus Christ imputed to you, in other words, counted to you through faith that you can be good enough to enter into heaven.

And Steve, I'm glad for the exclusivity of Christ Jesus because I wouldn't want to trust in any other

Savior because he's obviously the best Savior who can atone for the sins of his people. There is no other.

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 six. 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.

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