The Return of the King (Part 1)

Duplex Gratia and the Lord Jesus as the Faithful High Priest

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. Michael Lee Ebendroth here. NoCoRadio aka Duplex Gratia. What is Duplex Gratia? People know about No Compromise because we don't want to compromise. More importantly, we look to the one who never compromised, the Lord Jesus.

Can you imagine the Father said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, and the Son said I always do what's pleasing to the Father. Duplex Gratia is double grace, Christ for pardon and Christ for power, Christ for justification, Christ for sanctification.

You can email me, Mike, at NoCompromiseRadio .com. My wife's out of town, so I haven't really said anything out loud. Pastor Steve's here at the church and I said hello, but beyond that I haven't said anything, so now I can't really talk.

It's hard to do radio when you can't talk. I don't listen to many of my shows, but I listen to the show about the crazy note that I got from someone. I can't believe how many times I just laugh at myself and laugh at the jokes and it's like comedy hour or something.

You probably want real important radio and important things to listen to. Bible stuff, exegesis. We do some of that, right? I did go on to talk about James chapter 2. All right, today we are going to look at five practical ways, excuse me, four spiritual laws.

Wait, three things God wants you to know, two ways of living. I should have started with 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. How about one high priest? Let's talk about the high priest. I don't know if the show is still on or not, but I remember there was a show.

I think it was actually on WVNE 760 here locally, the one that I used to be on. It was like a late night show or maybe a Saturday. Maybe the show's title was this, but he kept saying all the time, let's talk about Jesus.

He was charismatic and a little out there theologically, but I liked that theme. Let's talk about Jesus. Not a bad theme for a show. The high priest. And by the way, when you understand who Jesus is, you'll want to respond with continued faith.

Praise the Lord Who Is Worthy to Be Praised

If you're a Christian, thanksgiving, right? It's Hebrews chapter 13. After all these chapters about Jesus through him, then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.

And of course, the more you learn about the Lord, the more opportunities you have to praise him. I was reading one of the Psalms this morning, Psalm I think 116-ish, rescuing from death. And I thought about prostate cancer, COVID pneumonia, leukemia, other things.

Plus all the times he's rescued me from death, I probably didn't even know, right? Close calls and possible head-on collisions, etc. It's amazing that the Lord is great and is worthy to be praised. I'm thinking these days that most of the time, not all the time, I mean, in our circles, I think men do a good job from the pulpit, but there's this watered down Jesus.

There's a Jesus that is, let's see, let's use some alliteration since it's a Baptist show, right? Enabler, he's encourager, kind of like an encouraging boyfriend. There's nothing wrong with encourager.

I'm just talking about he's too much like a boyfriend. He's effeminate. There's nothing wrong with femininity in women. What is going on in social media with all this masculinity stuff and Christian nationalism?

It's crazy. I try to stay out of some of those things. I'm usually one that sticks my chin into every argument and hopefully I'm getting older. And well, sorry, that sounds stupid, doesn't it? I am getting older and hopefully I'm getting wiser.

And some things interest me and some things don't. So I'm not going to jump into things I'm not really interested in. I guess I need to know generally. So if someone from the congregation asked me a question, I can give an answer, but that's the kind of stuff it's like, okay, crazy.

And then the latest is, you know, Twitter is really a mean place and reform people should turn it down a notch. Okay. Probably the first one's true. Probably the second one's true. But people that say that, if I can impugn motives, which I can't, my guess is, my opinion is they're saying these things because they don't want anybody to push back on what they've said.

They get to say it, but they don't get to have any kind of pushback. And I have to say to myself, when I put my chin out there, I better be ready to take it back. Right? Receive and take. Anyway, when it comes to Jesus, the high priest, he, the one who is the faithful high priest, Hebrews talks about, the one who made propitiation for the sins of the people, the one who is without sin and doesn't have to, then therefore does not have to offer sacrifice for his own sins because he is sinless and he himself is the perfect sacrifice.

And he has been raised from the dead. Where can I learn more about this Jesus? That's the point of Hebrews is here's who Jesus is. Now, other books talk about Jesus as well, right? 65 other books. And today on No Compromise Radio, we're going to talk about one of those books.

And that is the book of Luke, the gospel of Jesus, according to Luke. This book that starts off with Luke investigating and going back to the beginning, looking at things carefully, putting things in an orderly sequence and off we're running to learn about Jesus.

Sin, Holiness, and the Need for Cleansing

Now, what I want to talk a little bit about today is I want to, I don't want to, I want to talk about just the general malaise we have when it comes to the doctrine of martiology. I know you know that we sin.

I sin. We know that God is holy. And the question really is, do we think rightly about sin? And if we do great, if we don't, are we thinking rightly about the holiness of God? I was reading Leviticus today and I thought to myself, self, Mike, one of the reasons why I, Mike, don't really think rightly about holiness is I don't really think rightly about sin.

And when you read the book of Leviticus, which I encourage you to do, you're going to say to yourself, there's a lot of issues here. We have to kind of work through what about all these offerings? But even more than that, more than, I have an internet connection here.

I don't know. More than that, what in the world is going on with all this clean, unclean stuff? Everywhere you look, clean, unclean, clean, unclean, clean, unclean. And you've got Israel in the wilderness, right?

God has rescued them out of Egypt and God has shown his powerful hand and how he's a redeemer. And here's the tabernacle and Exodus built. And how do you live in the presence of God? Well, you have to recognize that you're sinful, sin offerings and guilty, and there's consecration offerings and there's peace offerings and all these things because sin is bad.

I also want you to know that when it comes to clean, unclean, I think there's a lot we can learn. My son Luke and I were talking last night and he said, dad, there's a Horatius Bonar quote about this clean, unclean issue that I think is really helpful.

And I said, oh, send it to me. Here's what Horatius Bonar said. An Oriental Jew, sensible and intelligent, walks out in the fields. He walks along close by the side of the high road and what should he see but a string of camels going along?

Ah, he says to himself, those are unclean animals. Sin, you see, is brought at once before his mind's eye. He turns away from the road and walks down one of his own fields. And as he goes along, a hare starts across his path.

Rabbit. Ah, he says, an unclean animal again. There's sin in my path. He gets into a more retired place. He walks on the mountains. Surely he shall be alone there. But he sees a coney burrowing in the rocks.

Ah, he says, unclean, there's sin there. He lifts up his eyes to heaven. He sees the osprey, the bald eagle, flying along through the air and says, ah, there's an emblem of sin there. A dragonfly just flitted by him.

There's sin there. There are insects among the flowers. Now every creeping thing and every insect except the locust was unclean to the Jew. Everywhere he would come in contact with some creature that would render him ceremonially unclean.

And it were impossible for him, unless he were brutish, to remain ever, excuse me, remain even for 10 minutes abroad without being reminded that this world, however beautiful it is, still has sin in it.

Now, of course, we're not under that law now, right? But there's something interesting about how God teaches Israel in this pedagogical way, this schoolmaster way, this teacher's way to make sure that Israel understands clean, unclean, clean, unclean, clean, unclean.

And you think I need to be cleansed from the defilement of sin. Sin makes me dirty. Sin makes me needing a cleansing from the blood of the Lamb. Sin needs to be forgiven because it leads to death. Sin is like leprosy and it cuts you off from God and his people in terms of fellowship.

And so, dear Compromise Radio listeners, since sadly that's what we all are, compromisers, I hate it that I am. Dear No Compromise Radio listeners, my exhortation to you is to read the book of Leviticus and just think through that and say to yourself, oh, how can I walk through the world just with that paradigm in mind, thinking about God's holiness and sin?

And that will, of course, flood into your mind the need for the great high priest. How can we walk fixing our eyes on Jesus? Well, one of the ways we walk is to just think through that paradigm of holiness and sin, holiness and sin, holiness and sin.

John the Baptist as the Forerunner of the Messiah

Well, that leads us to John the Baptist. In redemptive history, God sent John the Baptist as a forerunner, as an advanced man for his son, the Lord Jesus, not John's son, but the Father's son. And of course, in eternity, the Father and the Son with the Spirit present have a pact, have an agreement, have a covenant for the Son to be sent by the Father because the Father loves sinners.

The Son loves sinners. Obviously, the Holy Spirit does. One God, three persons, one will. And the Son's going to rescue his bride. And one of the things that happens when there's a king coming to town, there's an advanced person, and he goes and gets people ready.

Well, with the discussion of Leviticus in mind, since we're sinners, we need to recognize that it's necessary for the king to come to grant forgiveness. The king is coming, and if we're enemies, that's going to be bad.

If the king is coming and there's a way to be friends with the king, or if we're already enemies and we can somehow be befriended by the king, we're going to be in good shape. There's no need for a savior unless you know you're a sinner.

And here, Jesus is going to come on the scene. We don't know hardly anything about his life up to 30 years old, except the one time we see him in the temple, and he's about his Father, capital F's, business and his pleasure.

Luke 3, all of a sudden, we move from that scene, and John the Baptist shows up, and the Messiah is going to arrive soon. So, what do people do? So, what we're going to do to make it very practical, because we like practical application, the same thing in terms of responses.

I just heard the phone ring and that messed me up. The responses for the first coming are great responses for the second coming as well, and you're going to see that. Whereas, we watch what happens with John the Baptist, the advanced man, saying Jesus is going to show up, the Messiah is arriving soon.

What do we do? It's the same thing for us. While the context of Luke 3 is the first coming, the same principles are there for the second coming, because if the king shows up, then the king shows up, and whenever the king shows up, what kind of heart should we have?

The exact same principles apply to the second coming as they do the first. In other words, we need to get ready, because the Messiah is arriving soon. Luke is going to want you to see prophecies fulfilled.

He's going to want you to be prepared, if you're an unbeliever, to meet the king and the need for forgiveness, and he, Luke, wants, if you're a Christian, to increase your certainty as you watch this plan of redemption unfold.

The Messiah is arriving soon, so what? We always ask preachers or Bible teachers, or if you're a mom teaching your children the Bible, or a dad leading a Bible study at home, whatever it might be, Sunday school teachers, here's a truth, so what?

Sometimes the so what is we have to do something, and sometimes the so what is we have to think something. So, lots of times we're looking for only actions, but many times it's an attitude, thinking the right way, which, by the way, will lead to doing the right things.

The Messiah is going to show up soon. What do we do? Well, what they need to do is what we need to do as we anticipate the second coming like they anticipated the first coming 2 ,000 years ago. The Messiah is arriving soon, so rejoice.

So, rejoice. In particular, rejoice that sinful leadership, both political and religious, can't stop the sovereign plan of God. Now, that's good news, and we'll see what happens here in Luke, and you'll easily infer, okay, that's a good principle that I can extract from the text of the Bible.

Luke 3 verse 1, in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip, tetrarch of the region of Aeturia, and Trachonitis, and Lysanias, tetrarch of Albelene.

During the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. And right off the bat, you are probably thinking, Luke formally sets the table in his typical historical way, like a good investigative reporter, physician would do, who wants to set things out in an orderly sequence from the beginning so that you might have certainty.

This is kind of like a historian writing this. All these officials and where they're from and where they rule, tetrarch, you know, split into four. Sometimes it wasn't a true tetrarch, four ruler. There might be the land split in seven or eight, but they still kept the title.

Here are all these people. So, now we realize redemptive history is unfolding in real time and real space, in a real place. So, we know where this works, and not only where it's working out, not only should we be thinking about history, which is true.

If you're a good New Testament scholar, you'll be a historian, J. Gresham Machen said. But I also want you to think the context here of depravity. Jesus is going to show up, and both politically and religiously, the leaders are scoundrels.

The leaders are scallywags. The leaders are what one writer said, it's a rogue's gallery of the biggest villains of their age. Right here before our very eyes in Scripture are the people that are going to kill John the Baptist.

They're going to kill Jesus. And the setting for the Messiah to arrive is in this kind of culture. And the advanced man, John the Baptist, is going to show up in this type of climate. How wicked the world is when the good news incarnate shows up.

These people, these rulers, these Roman rulers, they're not pro-Judaism, pro-Torah. These people are pagans. And it's been a long time since there's been a prophet for the masses. Oh, we've seen some things in Luke chapter 1 about angels proclaiming things, but a human prophet, has it been 100, 200, 300, 400 years since there's been a prophet?

And here in the midst of all these officials and Roman leaders, John the Baptist is going to show up. Not only that, the religious climate, Annas and Caiaphas. Now, you can only have one high priest at a time, but what you have is you have the high priest Caiaphas, who's ruling right now as high priest.

But Annas was the old high priest, and he was essentially retired. And it was kind of like a honorary title, kind of like a life office. I think it was Stein who said, oh, you could say Mr. President to a man who's not president anymore.

You could say President Bush, even though he's no longer president. And you get these two high priests to just tell you what a brutal mess it all was. Caiaphas and Annas. And this is the climate where we have the Lord Jesus' front man, advanced man rather, show up.

And it's the word of God came to John like an Old Testament prophet, he shows up right here. The word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah to Jeremiah. The word of the Lord came to Hosea. The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel.

The word of the Lord came to Micah. The word of the Lord came to Zephaniah. All the language of the Old Testament, this formula, this system of letting you know the reader that God is going to speak through the mouth of his prophets.

The herald is going to introduce the king in the midst of all this. And John, it says in the text, he's in the wilderness, badlands. Where are the badlands here in America? Is it South Dakota? I think I've been to the badlands.

I think I've been to the Black Hills. And I don't think the badlands are in North Dakota. I don't think so. Luke's point, history, reliable, real Messiah in a bad time where people need the truth. You really need a king in times like this.

And of course it goes without saying, but I need to say it. So why did I even say that goes without saying? Why do people do that? I don't know. You want answers. I think I'm entitled. You want answers.

I want to handle the truth. That's how you rescue things. So just in terms of practical application, will the second coming of the Lord Jesus be stopped, inhibited by, frustrated by the world leaders of the day, the political leaders, the religious leaders?

I don't want you to have any despair. I want you to have a lot of hope that no matter how bad everything is, God is sovereign and his son's coming back, just like he said, and we can trust him. It doesn't matter how bad Satan's kingdom is, what he's doing, we can trust the Lord.

The Sovereignty of God and the Return of the King

Why do the nations rage and the people's plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.

He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury saying, as for me, I've set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of the decree.

The Lord said to me, you are my son. Today, I begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations, your heritage and the ends of the earth, your possession. You shall break them with the rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Now, therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned, O rulers of the earth, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be angry and you perish in the way. For his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him. Nothing was going to be doing to stop the first coming of the Lord Jesus, and nothing is going to stop the second coming. And when the son of man comes in glory with all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne and before him will be gathered all the nations and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the king will say to those on the right, come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

You can trust in the sovereignty of God when it's time for him to come and arrive the second time, nothing's going to stop him. And even if you think about the titles of sovereignty, Lord, Most High, King, Only Sovereign, Almighty, you have an image of sovereignty thrown and the times in his hand.

You think of other synonyms of sovereignty, reign and dominion and rule and decree and foreordained and chose established command appointed. Everything is falling into place perfectly. And you can say to yourself, I am in awe of such a great God.

I am comforted to know that this is all God's plan. I can just be humble and say that I will be done and I can rejoice. Hallelujah. Revelation 19, for the Lord, our God, the Almighty reigns. It's good to trust in such a God.

Well, my name is Mike Abenroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. And I wanted to get to the second part of this little section here, but I never made it. Luke chapter three, verses one and two, no matter what the religious climate, no matter what the political climate, when it's time and God's perfect timing to send the son, he's going to come and no one's going to stop him.

Oh, they might think they stopped him with imprisonment and with beatings and with crucifixion. But there we see the triumph of the King as Jesus is raised from the dead. And now he says, the same way you saw me ascend, I'm going to come back.

And so we don't have to worry even about the second coming. Matter of fact, this is the perfect kind of climate for the Lord Jesus to return. I'm glad for that. And as we talked last time on the show, there's nothing wrong with saying the world is so bad.

I have so many trials, Lord, would you come back? Sometimes I think we feel guilty that we want the Lord to come back to rescue us, but isn't that just like the Lord? Please come and rescue us. You're a great King who provides and protects and has pity upon us.

We need a King like you to show up now. Wouldn't that be good for that to happen? And when he does, the Father's great pleasure upon the son as he brings his loved ones home, including you, dear Christian.

My name is Mike Abenroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry.