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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 right here, present and accounted for and in good order. Well, for those of you that asked me, where is Pastor Steve? I think it was a while ago I had to run a rerun and I forgot to run a rerun on Tuesday that it contained Pastor Steve and boy, the electronic media never let me forget that.
You know, I watched the news that night.
I saw the rioting in the streets. It was ugly. People, people, please, I must beg you, don't go to violence. You know, that would be my request.
Too bad we didn't, if this was, you know, people sent in more money, Steve, we could afford some nifty video guys and we could put together a whole deal, some Todd Friel deal, and it would be, Pastor Steve was not there on Tuesday and then the world was rioting.
Yeah, there's fighting in the Filipino parliament and all kinds of, you know, stuff and just craziness,.
Craziness all around the world. Did you just say Filipino parliament? Yes.
I was just looking for an esoteric reference point.
Okay, that was esoteric. All right, today on No Compromise Radio, we're doing part two of the installment, Dazed and Confused.
Dazed and Confused. Thank you, Robert Plant. Was that the actual lyric? Yeah, it is. Really? Yeah. Dazed and Confused? I will confess though, this is straight from me, my heart, to the NoCo audience. I've never listened to that entire song.
I am so not a Led Zeppelin fan. I mean, never, never was. See, they just are not my, they're not my thing. I've called them the most overrated band in history and I think it's true, you know. What about Stairway to Heaven?
I'm like, what about Stairway to Heaven? Dream On was a better song, so there you have it.
Okay, well, for me when I was growing up, it was always the Stones versus Zeppelin and I guess I wasn't cool enough for Zeppelin, so I just was the Rolling Stones guy. All right, Steve, let's talk about some songs.
Worship songs, contemporary songs. Is it as easy as saying to yourself, if it's a hymn, it's good, if it's contemporary, it's bad, or if you're younger, if it's a contemporary song, it's good, if it's a hymn, it's bad?
I wish it was that easy. I mean, you know, here's the truth, though. You know, what was Mighty Fortress is Our God, wasn't that like some written to the tune of some bar song or whatever, you know? So it's always the case that whatever generation you're in, there's always somebody sitting there going, well, in my day, we would never would have sung anything like that, that's of Satan, you know?
So I mean, there's always that kind of thing and there are some folks who say, you know, if it isn't from the Psalms, it's sinful. You know, you have all kinds of thinking like that. So it's not always that easy and to me, the main thing is, what do the lyrics say?
Well, Steve, I don't know if you remember this. I think we talked about it years ago. James Boyce, when he was alive, had a writer and who is still alive, Paul Jones, and in the book, T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns, Paul Jones has, this is Gordon quoting, Paul Jones has conclusively demonstrated that Luther never employed bar songs as melodies for his hymns, though he did employ what is called bar form, or as we call that in New England, baphum.
Baphum. Baphum. Sounds like barfum. Baphum. Bar form and A-A-B structure as a musical device, which may have contributed to the present misunderstanding of the matter.
Isn't that interesting? So he wasn't hanging out in bars and writing hymns.
He was hanging out in bars, writing hymns, but he wasn't writing hymns from the music you heard in the bar. Oh, outstanding. Maybe he was in Bahaba. How about, what's the big Handel's Messiah? What's that called?
Handel's Messiah? I did hear, though, that. Although I don't think it's Handel. What's your Handel, Big Ten Four Big Buddy? Who wrote that song back in the 74? C .W. McCoy. C .W. McCoy.
You got C .W. McCoy. McCoy was the hustle.
You're right. McCoy, I think the Lakers drafted him and got him later when he couldn't quite shoot those fallaway jump shots.
C .W. McCoy, what was the name of the song, though? What was the name of the song? Quick, quick, quick. Convoy. Convoy.
I knew that. Yeah, you didn't. But I'm so glad. See, Steve, you see the flesh in Steve. You see the sin principle. When I correct him on a pop song, he has to try to get me back. It was brutal. It was brutal.
It was like London Calling. Bob McAdoo. That's what I was thinking about. Bob, yeah, that great pop star, Bob McAdoo.
Yeah, but I think some basketball stars wrote some songs, though, didn't they? Maybe Shaq did some hip hop or something. Larry Bird stole the ball. All right. All right, let's talk about worship in general, and then we'll look at some of these songs.
Worship has an object, and are we the object? When we go to worship our triune God, to what degree do we play a part? And, of course, we have to sing. We have to use our minds and our hearts and souls to sing to God, but do we sing to other people?
How does this all work just generically? I know Ephesians, we're singing to one another, but give me the scoop, Steve, about singing to God.
Yeah, the object of our worship should be the God who saved us, right? I mean, isn't that why we gather together? I mean, we obviously gather together to exercise our spiritual gifts, to hear the preaching, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but ultimately we are gathered together to worship our risen Savior, to praise Him for what He's done on our behalf, to be equipped for the work of ministry, but we're there to worship Christ, and He ought to be the focus of our singing.
He ought to be the focus of everything.
Steve, something else has happened as well. I totally agree with you that Jesus Christ should be the object of our worship, and I think of Revelation 5 and worthy is the Lamb who was slain, and when you get a picture of heaven in the book of Revelation, it is Christocentric, and so the people are bit part players, as it were.
They're just the ones giving the worship. They're not the cause of worship. They're not the object of worship, but don't you think because of some of the German influence and pietism and romanticism, Steve, that we've de-emphasized corporate we, and we've emphasized I.
Corporate me. Yeah, nice. Corporate we into corporate me. I am the end all, and so, of course, as a corporate body, we all sing to the Lord, but not only is God no longer the object of worship, it seems like people are, but secondly, it seems like it's all about me, myself, and I versus the church together worshiping, so we've got double problems.
Yeah, we've got the wrong trinity right at the focus of our worship. It's me, myself, and I instead of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. I 100 agree. I mean, when we think about things, I mean, this isn't really wandering.
When we think about the things that are so centered in the church, so central to the church right now, I mean, we get requests to pay a fee every year to show movie clips in church, and we're just like, we don't show movie clips.
We're not gonna pay the fee because we don't show movie clips. Well, everybody shows movie clips. That's what everyone does.
You know, if you want an illustration, who better than Clint Eastwood? I don't. Steve, I'm preaching on head coverings coming up pretty soon in 1 Corinthians 11, 2 to 16, and I was just going to play that Cleopatra toga thing where he puts the toga on his head before he goes worships a pagan god.
Nice. And we're gonna now do something illegally because I haven't paid the fee.
Well, I mean, it's so dopey. Like, people can't, you can't rouse them with the word of God. You've got to use a clip from Braveheart. You know, you've, I mean, what is going on with, you know, people can't understand, you know, sacrifice or sacrificial giving or whatever unless you show them a clip from Masada.
I mean, what? Ooh, well, the other day I,.
And maybe you'll chasten me, Steve, for actually even doing this, but I was watching a James McDonald sermon. Let me chasten you for doing that. Okay, thank you.
And he carried out a little lamb. Yeah, I saw that. What is going on?
Now, you know what? Council time for Awana, some banquet for kids, some Sunday school, there's all, I mean, I would be the guy, and you know me, I'd be the guy who actually last year for Awana banquet, I brought in our dog and had her do a bunch of tricks and use that as a segue into preaching the gospel.
So there's nothing wrong with the dog deal.
Is there the lamb thing? If you did it on Sunday morning, I'd say I would be disturbed.
Remember that guy at Grace Church? He was the up and coming next preacher. This was back in early nineties, and he would fill in for MacArthur. And then the one day he put his sunglasses on to see things through the right lens.
And before you know it, he was off at Willow Creek and stuff. Something, you knew something bad was gonna happen. If you need more of a prop, than a wooden desk called a pulpit, pulpit and a Bible and a microphone so all the people can hear you, then you've got a problem.
Could not agree more. The drama of redemption is dramatic enough. Steve, let's just force this into an outline. One, worship should be focused on our triune God, highlighted by Christ, life and death, resurrection.
Secondly, it should be a corporate worship. It should never be, well, I don't like that song. Well, maybe we like it, but you don't like it because you're not thinking properly. It's corporate worship.
We are all singing. Thirdly, let's get rid of this bifurcation between head and heart. You know, that one really struck my heart, but it didn't really strike my head. What's going on with all this head heart stuff?
I talked to Dr. Zemeck about the false bifurcation between a head and a heart. And he said, he quoted right away from the gospel. He said, Mary pondered those things in her heart. How do we ponder things in our heart?
Because that's our spiritual control center. You know, people have so confused the idea of being a church with having an emotional experience. You know, somehow we're either supposed to go through the ringer or be lifted to the heights of, you know, peace and freedom.
I don't even get it. What ought to be happening, what we ought to be focused on on Sunday mornings is we ought to be focused on worshiping the King. That's why we're there. And, you know, other things, I'm pretty confident you can go to a variety of churches where they just would not read, they would not engage in public reading of scripture.
Oh, sure, you know, he might read a couple of verses during his service or during a sermon, but there isn't going to be an extended public reading of scripture. There isn't going to be an extended kind of high priestly prayer.
There isn't going to be that sort of worship because that is worship. And, you know, certainly money is not going to be seen as worship. The giving is not going to be seen as worship, and that's all worship.
Steve, let's let our listening audience into some inside secrets here, some almost maybe Gnostic secrets. Behind the curtain? Yes, behind the curtain. Okay. We recently had to go to two services with the emphasis on had to go.
We had to go because people were parking up on the street of another, you know, up the block, and people were driving into the parking lot, couldn't find a spot, and then they were spinning donuts and flying out of the car parking lot.
And so we needed to go to two services. And so we did the planning, and I think our deacons did an excellent job in helping us get all the double duties planned. And so we had a service that would be around an hour and 45 minutes without communion Sunday, and we had to pare it down to an hour and 15 minutes.
By the way, we meet at 11 o 'clock is our second service, which is contemporary guitar, acid rock. And then we have 8 .30 service for our, you know, acapella hymns, psalms.
That's right. Nothing that's not in the Old Testament specifically listed. You know, we use lyres and stuff like that.
And timbrels, whatever those are. So 8 .30 service and 11 o 'clock service, same service. So here's the question. Here's what we want to talk about just for a moment, because it relates to hymns and songs and music.
What do you think we cut back? That is to say, when Steve talked about reading the Bible as part of worship, you know, we've got to go for an hour and 45 minutes down to an hour and 15 minutes. What do we get rid of?
Oh, you've got to cut the sermon. So cut the sermon and cut the The reading. The reading. Who wants to have one of these long readings and a long pastoral prayer? But did we cut that? No. So we didn't cut that.
We did cut some of the handshaking time at the beginning. I guess you have to shake hands at the end. Yep. Probably fewer colds at BBC now. Woo-hoo! We did cut passing the common cup and wiping it during flu season.
Folks, we did not do that. We never had the common cup. He's making it up. I've actually been to a couple places overseas and they had the common cup. And the people that are doing what Steve's almost trying to do right now is cover up his cough on the radio.
That person's all coughing and then hands you the cup and you've got the little hanky thing and you're just like, hmm, is there a part of this chalice that does not have spit on it yet? And then do I drink it?
By the way, that was one of the reasons why the Roman Catholics, the big shots, said no cup for the lay people. And so take, eat, this is my body. Take, drink, this is my blood. They said, you know what, you don't have to do that.
We have a new doctrine called concomitants and then what, comma, comma, comma, chameleon. Kamikaze. Uh-huh. And then if you eat the bread, you actually get the juice and the blood slash, it is the blood, but it doesn't look like blood, doesn't taste like blood, but it's been turned into blood.
And they said, well, here's one of the reasons. One of the reasons is A, you might spill it. Mm-hmm. Because if it is Jesus's blood, it's hard to get off that floor. And if you spill it, then, by the way, Aquinas answered and asked the question, if a mouse starts to nibble on the bread after it's been consecrated, is the mouse eating the body of Jesus?
And Aquinas said yes. So all that to say,.
Which is why I don't like to quote Aquinas because Aquinas was crackers.
What's R .C. Sproul thinking? But back to this, we're going to cut things like greeting time. We cut a hymn. We cut a contemporary song. Yes, we did. We didn't cut scripture reading.
Nope. We didn't cut the sermon. We cut the announcements. We cut the announcements. We cut everything out that the Bible doesn't demand that we do. And then we took a couple songs out because we just didn't have the time.
Not because we don't like it, but because we didn't have the time.
I mean, sometimes I would preach 58 minutes or something, or Steve would preach an hour and 58 minutes. So if we're getting down to it. Those were really good. You should look them up on the archives.
Yeah, you know what? When Steve preaches like that, I just play at double speed. And then it seemed like a regular sermon. I'm going to interview later today, Rich Harasick, an elder at Grace Community Church.
Rich, rather. And he says he listens to NoCo sometimes at double speed. Does he really? Yeah, that's 12 minutes and 15 seconds.
Boy, he could get a lot of NoCo shows in.
He could get a lot in. See, that's double edification. Today on No Compromise Radio, we're talking about hymns and songs and good songs, bad songs. Steve, give us a little an overview of maybe a bad song or a song you particularly like, or maybe a bad song you like.
I really try, I'm really trying not to. Bad song I like. I really try not to like bad songs. Here was one that just really struck me. I mean, this is a Proverbs 31, 28 reference here, but I'm just like, why would we sing a song called, She Will Be Called Blessed?
Why would we sing that song? That would be called Mother's Day. Well, that's not a... Okay, so today if that's what you gave me, you asked me a question. So today for worship, we're going to worship mothers.
They will call me blessed. By the way, that is really crazy.
We could talk about fathers because maybe they have thicker skins than mothers on Mother's Day, or maybe because mothers do more things around the house and work harder than men. I don't know the answer to that question, but when moms come in on Mother's Day, expecting the whole service to revolve around them, we are happy to have mothers in our service.
I was happy to have a mother. I'm happy to be married to a mother. But do you know what? This is about Jesus today. So if you like Jesus, you'll like our church. If you're here to learn about mothers, then what do we do with the ladies who can't have children, would love to have children, but can't?
What do we do with them? I guess it's not their day. They get a different Hallmark holiday. Terrible.
I always like what we do, though. My wife loves what we do. When you have the men all come up and sing for the ladies, every man at Grace Community Church comes up. My wife loves that. So I'm not really a big fan, but my wife loves it.
So that's all about it. That's an all-come choir.
And why don't we do this year, Steve, why don't we get up there and sing that song about she'll be called blessed? That'll be our, the men all-come choir song because nobody knows it.
Nobody knows it. Nobody knows it. That would be the, that'd be a good reason.
Now, Steve, what do we do with our hymnal? I noticed there's something in the very front. We pasted something. Tell us about our cut-and-paste philosophy of the hymnal.
What we've done, and this is Psalm 99. What we've done is we've taken, or as we like to call it, the pink hymn, because it's on pink paper. We've taken and pasted some or taped some hymns in that we sing because they're God-honoring, they're Christ-centered.
This one's called Psalm 99, but Jehovah reigns in majesty. Let all the nations quake. I mean, this is just kind of walking through Psalm 99 and we sing it. And again, we've done it with a number of, well, here's one, like Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee, the Unitarian hymn.
We've changed to God our Father, We Adore Thee. We've just taken better lyrics, same tune, better lyrics, and we've taped that in there so that we sing that. And we've done that on a number of occasions to correct doctrinal errors, things like that.
Like what's the name of the song I'm thinking about? And Can It Be. Yeah, And Can It Be, which has the, is that the one with the kenosis with a vengeance? It is, isn't it? Yes, it is. I was quite Emptied himself of all but love.
That's just a false
Kenosis with a vengeance. I like that. That would be a good no-compromise sub-slogan. The kenosis with a vengeance. Well, I'm always surprised, and can it be that Charles Wesley writes Calvinistic songs?
That's how much wonder I have.
Yeah, every once in a while, too much Bible seeped into his hymnody, you know? Well, that's true.
Speaking of hymnody and hymns, why is it that we don't have one great, awesome hymnal? Now, you might say, if you're listening in your Presbyterian OPC, we do. It's called Psalm 1 through Psalm 150. But Steve, even when I pull out the Trinity hymnal, probably, overall, they have more biblical songs than the hymnal we have.
What's the hymnal we have called? We have the The hymnal. This is not a hymnal, but out of all the hymnals that have ever existed,.
We have the hymnal. I'm surprised they don't underscore it. The hymnal. And who publishes it? Let's see. Right there, probably.
The publisher. Oh, Word. Word. Word. They've got a few dopey songs in there. Oh. Battle Hymn of the Republic. Yeah, more than a few dopey songs. But when I looked at Trinity the other day, because I have several copies of the Trinity hymnal, I have the Baptistic version.
I particularly like the Presbyterian version better for binding and other things, but it's got a came upon a midnight clear. Yeah, they've got the,.
And if that was the only bad song, but they've got dopey songs in there. Even some of the songs that I object to in our hymnal are in their hymnal too. And it's just like, yeah, I would love to get to a, maybe this will be my life's work, a biblical hymnal.
We'll just, you know, all the lyrics that are fit to print. I mean, they're all biblical. That would be great. I would love that.
Steve, give us a song that you really like and tell us why you like that. So we don't have to be, you know, maybe people are thinking we're kind of negative and we're always kind of blasting things. Well, I can give you a few.
I love 43 Great is Thy Faithfulness. And why do you like that? Because it's about God and his faithfulness. And it's true. I mean, this is, it's a biblical thought right out of Lamentations 3, verses 22 and 23.
I love Immortal Invisible. Why do I love it? A, because it's biblical. It's out of 1 Timothy 1. But also because it just speaks of God and his attributes. And that's what we need to be focused on in worship.
Not, you know, gee, I really like that song. I really like the guitar riff.
I really like whatever. Yeah, but Steve, a lot of unbelievers are at our church. And if they come and visit and they hear some old Mighty Fortress kind of pipe music, you know, organ pipe stuff, they're going to be turned off by that.
I'm taking a pregnant pause there. Listen, church With that pause, that was about a nine month pause.
I'm going to address all 14 of our NoCo listeners right now. Listen to me very carefully. Church is not primarily for unbelievers. Now, certainly unbelievers are welcome to come, but if we start catering to unbelievers, guess what we have?
Well, we have a concert or we have what most of evangelicalism calls church. But it's not anything resembling what the Bible would call us to as far as a people who love and want to honor Christ. We need to be focused on him and his glory, not on unbelievers and whether or not they like our services.
I mean, they're not going to like the Bible either. So why don't we just get rid of all of it and put on plays? Oh, again, I'm talking about contemporary evangelicalism.
See, well, we want to pick songs that please God and honor him and lift him up and lift his son up. We want to pick songs that are conducive for corporate singing as we honor him with our minds and souls and hearts.
Additionally, Steve, I think what happens is we are so immersed in evangelicalism and seeker sensitive, we have to do things for unbelievers. Gordon in his book, Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns, which I endorse even though I didn't get a free copy.
T. David Gordon, PNR. There's a shout out. Here's what he says. You're going to love this. As an analogy, suppose the members of a local Jewish synagogue determined to use their Saturday meetings to reach their neighborhood.
So they designed a liturgy that avoided all the distinctives about Yahweh's relationship to Israel. No mention of Exodus or Passover, nothing about the calling of Abraham, the birth of Isaac, the temple, Levites, the tabernacle.
This might make the visitor feel less of an outsider, but it would severely compromise the synagogue as a meeting between Yahweh and the particular people he once called his own.
It would stop being Jewish. And I would argue that many of the so-called evangelical churches have stopped holding Christian worship services. And that's what we mean when we say dazed and confused. Jesus comes in and goes, I thought you guys were here to worship me.
I am really confused because I see a play. I see a drama. I see families up there on the stage fighting with one another. I hear a bunch of loud music and everything else, but I don't hear anything about me.
I see lambs on stage.
I see dead people. See, we just, you can take Steve out of the world, but you can't take the world out of Steve. See what I mean by that? Is there any truth to that statement? Well, you can write us at infoatnocompromiseradio .com.
So far, we're not getting a lot of letters just because we probably taped the show, the last show, the first show of the series, just 35 minutes ago.
Yeah, but my guess is it's probably just because people are still trying to soak it all in.
So write us at infoatnocompromiseradio .com with good songs or with bad songs. 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.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.