Terry and the Message translation

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, I almost said Steve, to Bethlehem Bible Church, but welcome to No Compromise Radio. My name is Mike Abendroth.

Steve Tustigai-Cooley. Welcome. Hosted by Bethlehem Bible Church. I know.

Death, Priorities, and Learning to Die Well

So, Steve, I have been negligent in having you on. And derelict. Well, that�s true, but you�ve been out of town, you�ve done funerals, you�ve been sick. Yeah, part of it was sick, right? I was going to do my own funeral.

Would you do your own eulogy? I would love to. You know, can you imagine writing your own eulogy? Because do you do self-deprecation and be honest and humble or do you puff yourself up?

I would tell the truth and everybody would be like, they�d be like shaking their fist at whoever was reading it. Why are you being so mean to Steve?

Well, actually, Steve wrote this. You know, maybe that would be a good pastoral thing to do, is encourage people to write their own eulogies and they�d have to come face to face with really who they are and their spouse would have to sign off on it.

Well, I would, you know, I encourage people to think about death in a different way. You know, I say, just imagine you�re on your deathbed. What are the things you�re going to regret? You know, and it�s not going to be the things that you�re investing your time in now.

It�s going to be the things that you didn�t invest your time in, the things that you did and wish you didn�t do, the things that you didn�t do and wish you did, which, you know, usually of a spiritual nature, you�re not going to think, oh, if only I�d gone to the Eiffel Tower, you know?

But I mean, seriously, I mean, on my deathbed, what I�m going to most regret are the people that I�ve hurt, you know, and sinned against and that I�m not going to be thinking, oh, poor me. I mean, the fact that I�m going to heaven is all I need to avoid the poor me thing.

Steve, I first got diagnosed with prostate cancer and we didn�t really know, okay, is it outside the prostate or is it not? And if it�s outside the prostate, it�s a slow, painful death. But it was contained and all that.

And I think the recovery has been good so far. But it did make me think immediately about all the things that I had in my life as priorities that were irrelevant. And that could be as simple as, you know, I can�t get a sticker for the truck for smog to everything else, right?

It just took everything and it�s like a bunch of plates and cups on a table and you just pick up the table cover and just snap it and everything goes flying off. It was a good, I mean, I�ve probably gone back to my old ways, but that was a reset that needed to happen.

Well, I mean, you have a list of a hundred things to do and all of a sudden, you know, this comes into your life and you�re like, okay, really I have two things to do. I know.

I need to die well, see my family and make sure they all, at least that�s been put into my brain. You know, some of us come from backgrounds and I know your background was not a believing background and neither was mine.

But since my dad didn�t say, I love you and I�m proud of you, either A, ever or B, not enough, then we learned from the mistakes of our parents and I think, you know what? Those are two things that my kids regularly hear.

Maybe and if it�s so much, they don�t even know if it�s true or not. I don�t care. I still say it regularly.

I agree. And I just think, I thank God that he has enabled you, me to learn because there are people who just make the same mistakes their parents did, you know, commit the same sins.

So true. So today on No Compromise Radio, I�m going to make Steve laugh, not at his own expense, but I got a letter in the mail from my friend Terry Flood and he says, �Mike, you love the message almost as much as this guy.

Perhaps you and Tuesday Guy can cover this from your second favorite listener from Ohio, Terry Flood. So, Terry�s been in the audience here, the studio deal here, and here�s the funny part. Here�s what�s going to make Steve laugh.

And I haven�t read the article yet. We can do that together. But this is the letter I received from Terry and I�ll let Steve take a look at that.

�Pastor Mike Hafenhorff of NoCo Radio. Am I speaking to Mike Hafenhorff? I never understood where either one of the H�s comes from.

I know. Maybe there�s some kind of like, you know, the silent A, it�s maybe the, you know,.

The silent mark. Or maybe it�s a Hebrew pronouncing, you know, how do you say Avendroth in Hebrew, Hafenhorff?

Well, Terry has one of these little stickers instead of his address, it�s like a stickered address and everything. And, you know, sometimes you might have John 316 at the corner and you�re like ordering checks.

You can have things, you know, embossed or something like that. And maybe other people might have, you know, lighthouses or something. Terry actually has a graven image in the top left there. Oh, really?

I think that�s Diana of Ephesus. I wonder why he would have that.

That�s very odd. I mean, I have a surah in the online, you know, so.

Bible Translation Theory and Eugene Peterson’s Message

Well, what is this article? It says, �Which Bible translation is most reliable Now, we don�t have time to read this on the air, but I�m just going to under, we�re going to read, this is going to be experiment, Steve.

We�re going to read what Terry has underlined to see how discerning he is.

Oh, for discernment or as I like to say, for dessert.

Well, some people have discernment for dessert, right? What is your favorite dessert, by the way? My favorite dessert? Right. You�re on your deathbed, I come over, I rip that tablecloth off and we have to reprioritize everything.

Okay. It�s going to be cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory and it�s going to be key lime mango, probably.

Seriously, I�ve never had that, but it sounds like that�s 1400 calories.

It�s less than that, but it�s close enough. All right.

We went out to dinner the other night and I got that fried ice cream. Wasn�t that good? No, it wasn�t. No. I think that place is overrated. We went to. Yeah. Well, it�s not terrible. It�s just not awesome.

You know what? I just think Arby�s needs more horsey sauce. That�s all. Whoever came up with that? I mean, there are some names that ought not to be named, right? Dress Barn, right? Do you get your wife a Dress Barn gift certificate for Mother�s Day?

Not recently. Not since she told me. If you do that again. I don�t know. I don�t know. So, Terry has underlined in an article written by Ryan Pemberton, didn�t he play for the Master�s College?

Wasn�t he a good basketball player? Point guard. Could really fill it up and then add a year or two with the Lakers. Shaq.

I had more to say than she bargained for. Something about the message Bible here. Started explaining different Bible theories. He�s also underlined, so I started translating the Bible in their language not knowing what I was doing.

That�s a quote by Eugene Peterson.

Terry! Well, that instills confidence, doesn�t it? Now I have to read the whole paragraph.

When I did the message, this is Eugene Peterson who authored the message translation, I had a congregation of people who didn�t read books. So, I started translating the Bible in their language not knowing what I was doing.

And suddenly they started paying attention to me in a way they never did before. End quote, Eugene Peterson.

Well, that just makes me want to study that all the more. I didn�t have a clue what I was doing, but I just thought I�d take the Word of God and just work on it.

Well, I got up to preach. I opened the Bible and read a section. I didn�t know what I was doing.

I didn�t know what I was doing. I mean, how would you like to have a house where you go, and the architect looked at it and said, �Yeah, that was my first build.

I didn�t know what I was doing. I had the patient open up their mouth. I got out the lidocaine and the, you know, excision extractor tooth deal, and I didn�t know what I was doing.

The test of that, of course, is when I took the drill and started drilling and the patient was screaming in pain.

Hearing God’s Voice Together and the Problem of Subjectivity

So then this article ends and Terry, he doesn�t have this underlined, but he has it marked off in a certain way. What do you call it when you have the marks on the side of the paragraph? Marks on the side of the paragraph.

I don�t know. You know, that�s kind of sidelighting. Oh, I just came up with that. Oh, that is very nice.

Sidewinder? Sidelighting. Why do you use this translation? Question. If I could go back to that conversation, rather than offering a mini-lecture on Bible translation theory, I would say something like, and so the author is basically saying, he met someone.

Why do you use this particular Bible? And he talked about living in the Bible. Hebrew and Greek texts and readability, contemporary language, et cetera. He wishes, this author does, not Eugene Peterson, but Ryan Pemberton.

I shouldn�t have done that. Here�s what I should have done instead. I would say something like, and here�s a quote, and this is not just sidelighted by Terry Flood, but it�s highlighted. Oh, yeah.

Uh-huh. In some kind of mustard sauce.

Because we�re trying to hear God�s voice together. Hear God�s voice together. Okay. Well, we�re going to pick a translation now, so we can hear God�s voice together. Hmm. That�s rich. Remember that old bumper sticker?

God said it. I believe it. That settles it. Uh-huh. And then people came along and said, it doesn�t matter what you believe, if God said it, that settles it. Yes. I think that�s better. It�s way better.

Right? Um, thy word is our lamp to our feet, and we decide its meaning together. Is that kind of like the Jesus crisis?

Remember the marble deal? Well, let�s just decide what Jesus actually said, and those would be the marbles, the red marbles.

If he didn�t say it, it was black. Yeah, because I think they did something with the red letter Bible, right? By the way, do you think the origin of the red letter Bible came from Jesus, you know, he spilt his blood for us as a vicarious sacrifice, and therefore what he said we�re going to put in red?

Probably. I want to say yes. I don�t know. Maybe that was just a cheap font color?

Or did it exist, you know, did it exist before or after the Jesus seminar? What if it was green? What if it was the green Jesus? That wouldn�t really work for me. Although I bet there is a green letter, you know, I guarantee, you know, every place that highlights the need to care for the planet, or that can even be twisted to mean that, you know?

And then the last paragraph by this Ryan fellow, �No single Bible translation should be understood as the reliable source for God�s voice, but through daily study of many faithful attempts to interpret Scripture, we can collectively discern and live into the story God is still telling.

How do you live into the story God is telling? I don�t know. Especially if it was a historical account of Jesus.

Could you live into that for me, please? I don�t know, but I�m going to say that Ryan Pemberton is not going to the list of my favorite authors right there.

Well, is he your second best author, like Terry�s your second favorite listener? No. Ryan�s probably not even top ten. All right. Duke Divinity School. That explains a lot. That�s where he went to school.

University of Oxford. Mm hmm. Smart guy. And he is a minister for university engagement at First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley,.

California. Well, he�s a lot smarter than I am, but yeah, Berkeley, California.

And then he also has written a book called �Called, My Journey to C .S. Lewis�s House and Back Again� and �Walking with C .S. Lewis, Companion Guide. So, there you have it.

Yeah, so if I want to go to a church and hear exegesis of C .S. Lewis, I guess that�s probably.

Why C. S. Lewis Is Quoted Less Favorably Than Martin Luther

Steve, here�s a legitimate question. I�ve been asked before, �Mike, you�re hard on C .S. Lewis, but you�re easy on Martin Luther. Why are you so hard on C .S. Lewis when Martin Luther had his problems too?

What�s the difference?

What would you say? That�s interesting. Well, because, I don�t know. What would I say? I would say, first of all, I�d say Martin Luther was instrumental in the recovery of the biblical gospel. C .S. Lewis, not so much.

Let me then lead you down this path a little bit more. Don�t you think that Martin Luther, King Jr. sorry don�t you think Luther got justification by faith alone? He got Sola Fide right? Yes. And if you get Sola Fide right, then it makes me a little more apt to overlook some of your other foibles while you�re running to the Vortburg Castle for your life trying to figure out certain theological issues.

I mean, certainly. And he put his life on the line for the gospel, you know, whereas C .S. Lewis, again, not so much and actually had a wrong view of many things, including, I think one could argue, the gospel itself.

So, if C .S. Lewis, and people will say, �Well, he�s not a theologian, but he writes a book called �Mere Christianity. And by the way, when I first got saved and read it, I thought it was brilliant.

And by the way, some people would like to make it the 28th book of the New Testament. Oh, okay.

All right. Well, in light of that, I�m just trying to hear God�s voice together, Steve, so just. Well, I guess the bigger picture is, I did that video, and Steve, you and I are going to do videos next Tuesday.

Really? That�s going to be fun. Tuesday guy on Tuesday doing videos on Tuesday night. Is there going to be like music in the background too? It�s going to be the Tuesday night guy. Are we going to be singing in these videos?

Are these music videos? Well, I think, �May you all who come behind us find us faithful.

How about we wear top hats, use canes, and just kind of.

Those special hats, those straw hats that just kind of we could flick really far and throw. Nice. The James Bond head with like, you know, razor blades in them and stuff.

Yeah, we need to do some kind of like takeoff of singing in the rain, and we�ll just, you know, I�ll be Fred Astaire, you be Gene Kelly. Okay.

Anyway, I did the video, �Stop Quoting C .S. Lewis. And of course, it�s just a no-co video. If you want to quote him, fine, it�s just clickbait for you to say, �Well, he believes in purgatory, last rites, Jonah�s a myth, you know, Job is made up, baptismal regeneration,.

And the list goes on. And he�s got the ransom view of the atonement. Right, right, right.

And my point was simply, when I get up and say C .S. Lewis every week to the congregation, I think they should catch, �Oh, you know what, he�s quoting this person, and therefore I should probably study him.

In other words, I�m not going to get up and keep quoting people all the time without assuming they�re going to think that I�m quoting them so that they will like them.

Approvingly, right? Yeah, right. I mean, there are people that I just, I may have differences of opinion with, but I have no problem quoting Hendrickson or Kistemacher or, you know, just all kinds of contemporary writers.

But you won�t hear us quoting some others, should I name any?

Well, those are the unquotables. How about this, Steve? I think you�ll agree with me, and we�ll get back to C .S. Lewis in a second. Remember when Billy Graham was alive and he was doing a lot of this Catholic stuff?

I don�t mean just having Catholics, you know, up on stage with him and Catholics receiving people who have gone up for the altar call. But remember he was talking about, you know, universalism essentially, and just, he was just saying some things that they just should have said, �Billy, you�re too old, stop talking to these people, they�re leading you on or whatever.

And therefore, when I was quoting Billy Graham, the Bible says, you know, I might have said from the pulpit something to the effect, while Billy has said some things that he has not thought through recently, and, you know, I think he�s got Alzheimer�s or something, theologically at least, what Billy did say, the Bible says, is something we regularly ought to say when we evangelize.

The Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says.

And I think it�s the same thing. We would say, remember when MacArthur said, the old G .I. Packer said, in his intro to John Owen�s The Death of Death and the Death of Christ, such and such, compared to the new Packer with E .C .T. or whatever it might be.

Anyway, so I have been questioned, why do you quote Luther positively, because he�s said some baptismal regeneration things, but then you get after baptismal regeneration of C .S. Lewis. And my answer, I think, goes back to what you just said.

He, Luther, had the gospel right. He, Luther, had these soteriological issues nailed down when it comes to legal standing before God, and therefore, that�s one of the reasons why, I mean, who am I going to pick?

C .S. Lewis? Oxford? Cigar? Fiction? Although well-written? Or Luther? You know, he�s standing for his life. When he stood before those people at the Diet of Worms, I think he thought, �I�m dead.

Well, I mean, he laid the foundation, basically, not just for the Reformation, but for a lot of what we see now, rightly, going on in the Church, and I don�t think we would give such credit to C .S. Lewis.

Now, he fought, you know, in World War I, and was, you know, I�m sure, valiant and all that, but you just can�t compare leading, basically, the biggest theological revolution since, you know, the Apostles died out.

And, see, don�t you think, I guess I could call it a counter-revolution, but, yeah. Yeah.

Don�t you think, if you look at Church history, and we�re reading that book, None Greater by Matthew Barrett, and he�s got the three A�s. He calls them the A-Team, and it�s Aquinas, Augustine, and Anselm, and let�s just think about Augustine and Anselm for a while.

They had so many things right, but if you look at Augustine, why did the Catholics claim him as one of their own? Because he said some things that were Roman Catholic. Anselm didn�t quite get, you know, substitutionary atonement, penalty substitution, down to the exactness that we now have it.

I give those men more of a pass because the Spirit of God, he�s building his church, he�s maturing his church, he�s alive in his church, and he�s building upon these men and, you know, Augustine, well, let�s move to the Reformation.

The just shall live by faith. How do you stand before God? That was Luther. God used Calvin to then ask the question, well, where do you get the faith? When were you chosen? Those kind of things. So, here�s my point, Steve.

Talk to our listeners a little bit about, well, wasn�t C .S. Lewis a lot farther down the line? Should he not have known better? Had not the Spirit of God matured the church, even in systematic theology, more by the time he came along?

Steve. He should have. I mean, the only thing I can really say in C .S. Lewis�s defense, per se, is the man who was evangelizing him was Tolkien, you know, who was a Roman Catholic. Now, that doesn�t really get Lewis off the hook, but it does explain, listen, he wasn�t even starting from zero, right?

I mean, he�s unsaved and, you know, let�s presume that he was saved. He had a very poor teacher, you know, a very poor evangelist, and at least he didn�t go Roman, you know, full-blown Roman Catholic.

So, he was pushing away from that. And there were other incidents in his life where you just look at how he handled it in totality and you go, well, you know, that might be the evidence of the Holy Spirit.

I mean, I�m not going to judge C .S. Lewis and say that he wasn�t saved. That�s not my job. But what I can do is look at what he wrote and say, well, that�s theologically deficient. I can look at it and say it�s very well written, right?

I mean, I wish I could communicate the way C .S. Lewis can communicate, but I wish I had more truth, you know, in my C .S. Lewis writing than what we see, so.

Petey. This may sound bad. It may sound prideful or self-righteous, but I�d rather communicate the way I do, which is often poorly and grammatically incorrect and not very smooth, but I�d rather communicate truth sola fide, sola gratia, etc. than communicate error.

Well. Yeah.

I mean, ideally, you know, I would like to communicate well.

Pete I communicate good, gooder sometimes than others, but that is a very wonderful encouragement to all of us, for you, Steve, for me, for our listeners, that it�s the power of God unto salvation for all who believe.

It�s not our rationalism and our pietism or anything else. It�s the Word of God that saves, and so that�s why we ought to be like Billy Graham and regularly say the Bible says.

Pete Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says, because it�s all that really ultimately matters is what does the Bible say? The Holy Spirit will use scripture.

That�s what he does. Pete Because, Steve, we�re trying to hear God�s voice together. Pete Yeah. No. No, we�re not. We�re not. Pete Steve, I�ve got just a couple minutes left, but that whole idea of let�s understand it together, it�s kind of, it takes a village for us to understand.

There is a fixed meaning to scripture. Was it not maybe Harley Howard back in the day where he would say, what would this verse mean if you were dead? It�d still mean the same thing, alive or not.

Steve. There�s so much subjectivity, and that�s kind of what this article is getting at, you know. It really doesn�t matter, and I just, I reject so much of that thinking as I think about, you know, how the Lord has gifted the Church with men over the centuries.

Well, what it means to me, well, what did it mean to Luther? What did it mean to Aquinas? What did it mean to, you know, all these different men over the ages? Don�t they have anything to teach me? You know, am I on an island all by myself?

It�s just me, the Holy Spirit, the Bible? I don�t think that�s a very biblical take on things.

And if you want C .S. Lewis read to your children and you want to read him, I don�t have any problem. I did. But I�m just not going to say, by the way, let�s go to Bible class and here�s mere Christianity and off we go.

No, I�m not going to do that either. I mean, I recently was talking to a parent about, I�ll just say it this way, the virtues of reading Lord of the Rings. And it wasn�t about, oh, you�re going to learn a lot of biblical truth.

I think there�s imagery in there that�s very biblical. But the main thing is, you know, just learning kind of, in this case, I was talking about just manly virtues about, you know, loyalty and just trustworthiness and, you know, all kinds of, and responsibility, you know, those kind of things.

And I think it�s helpful for that, but I�m not going to go to Tolkien or Lewis or any author like that, especially in fiction, and think, oh, I�m getting biblical truth, you know.

Peter Delusion. I wonder if C .S. Lewis lived longer and had better teachers, that he would have embraced those truths or he would have said, no, I don�t. But my hope is that he would have said, oh, that�s right.

I didn�t know Hermann Bavick was in English. It wasn�t in English by about that time.

Well, I guarantee you, you know, whatever his foibles were theologically, if he was saved, he doesn�t have them any longer, you know. And he�d probably be the first one to say, I wish I could revise some of those books.

Pete I wonder if Methuselah got better as he got older when it comes to maturation. Pete Probably. Pete I think he did.

Pete. How about this one? Instead of mere Christianity, how about thorough Christianity? He probably would have liked to have written that book.

Announcer No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth 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.