Handsome Men of the Bible

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.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and it is, I think in real time, April 8th, Wednesday, 1117 a .m.

And day, I think this is what, the 58th day of March, beware the

Ides of March, plus 50. You can write me, info at nocompromiseradio .com.

I thought I'd do a Facebook Live today for the NoCo group, if you want to be a part of that. I don't know how all the details work, but you just have to ask, can

I be part of the special Gnostic group, the Insider Club, and then we say okay.

You send in your peach coffee, and then you get to be watching. So this is a regular recorded show and the

FaceTime, FaceTime Live? We do that now on Sundays, don't we? Crazy.

We have 10 deposits in for the Israel trip. I think I have 24 slots, so 10 plus my wife and I, so there's 12 more slots.

We should have the number, the exact number for the cost, hopefully sometime this month, and hopefully it's going to be cheaper in light of all this.

We're still planning to go. Before I get into the topic today, I had an old book sitting around called

A Theological Miscellany, and it's by T.

J. McTavish, and here's the subtitle, Odd, Merry, Essentially Inessential Facts, Figures, and Tidbits about Christianity.

It's kind of like, you know, Bible trivia, how to make the Bible trivial. I never knew if I liked that, and plus, if I ever played

Bible trivia, I never could win. That is to say, if I won, they would expect that because I've been to several seminaries, and if I lost, then they would say, well, you've been educated, you should not lose.

So I never really liked to play Bible trivia. Bible Pictionary, we used to do that when we first got here to Bethlehem Bible Church, and we wanted to make sure our home was open to people, so if you were single, if your birthday was in January, or if you were married, and you were married in January, we'd have a

Pot Providence potluck at our house in January, everybody could bring the food over, and then we would play

Bible Pictionary. So that was interesting. But anyway, in this book that I have here in front of me,

I just want to say, this is just like, what do people do with their life?

I mean, this is, you'd think they made this up during the quarantine. Here's page 86,

I kid you not, good -looking men and women of the Bible. See, I told you,

I'm not making this up. It might be backwards in your camera, but good -looking men and women in the

Bible. Speaking of men and women, people self -identify certain genders, but now that the administration has said that 1 ,200 people go out to every man and woman, there's only two genders again.

I don't know about you, but when I read the Bible, I'm looking for good -looking people. No, of course not, but I will make a theological comment about that in just a second.

These are the beautiful people in the Bible, according to T .J. Sarai, Rebekah, Rachel, Abigail, Bathsheba, Tamar, Abishag, Esther, the daughters of Job, the king's bride, the bride in the

Song of Solomon, and we'll throw in an apocryphal book, Judith. Those are the pretty people of the

Bible. Now, not to be outdone, there are probably some handsome men in the Bible, are there not?

Yes. Joseph, son of Jacob. That's the Genesis 37 -50

Joseph, not the Matthew 1 Joseph. Saul, David, Absalom, an

Egyptian warrior slain by Ben -Aniah. I didn't know he was good -looking, did you? Okay, I have to just look this one up.

If I can remember where 2 Samuel is. 2 Samuel 23.

Now this is, I know, live radio, and we're taking our chances, but I'm going to read something here from one of these men who certainly were handsome.

2 Samuel 23 -21, and he struck down an

Egyptian, a handsome man. The Egyptian had a spear in his hand, but Ben -Aniah went down to him with a staff and snatched the spear out of the

Egyptian's hand and killed him with his own spear. He was handsome, okay.

He was good -looking, I guess I have to admit that. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, Adonijah, and the king as a groom,

Psalm 45. So we have good -looking men and women of the Bible. Here's my theological point for today.

Isn't it interesting that we judge on the outside and we would tend to pick people based on how they look?

You look at Saul and why was he chosen as a king. Lots of descriptions about Saul and what he looked like.

David, to some degree, we have some of that, but we also have a lot about David and he was a man after God's own heart.

You think of Absalom, I think he's the guy that had the hair, didn't he? Let's look at 2

Samuel chapter 14, and I think his hair was discussed much.

I don't know if it's in this particular passage or not. 2 Samuel 14, 25, again, this is live radio, but remember this is free.

And now, in all Israel, there was no one such to be praised for his handsome appearance as Absalom.

From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, there was no blemish in him.

And when he cut the hair of his head, for at the end of every year he used to cut it, when it was heavy on him, he cut it, he weighed the hair of his head, two hundred shekels by the king's weight.

There were born to Absalom three sons, one daughter whose name was Tamar. She was a beautiful woman. Now I'm kind of making fun of all this, but of course the

Bible does describe it. Here's my point. Tell me something about Jesus. Describe Jesus physically to me.

Now maybe you'll say, well, he's got feathered hair, I've got a picture of him, there's that boy with the steering component for the ship, and he's behind really sailing the ship of the boy.

There's that picture of Jesus, that kind of Aryan -looking Jesus with blue eyes. I know people have different versions of a dark -complected

Jesus that looks more African. There's all these things about Jesus. Well, ask yourself the question, why isn't there anything in the

Bible that tells us this is how Jesus looked? It's almost we go through the sweep of church history and of all of life's history, and a lot of stuff was talked about early on by these men of what they look like on the outside, and it's slowly tapering off when we get to David, and then all of a sudden we get to Jesus and there's nothing said about him.

And I've said many times before, we don't know what Jesus looked like. I think he looked average.

He didn't have some kind of glow or halo over his head. That's certainly not true.

He was circumcised on the eighth day, so we know something about his body. That's probably it. He looked Semitic. He looked like his mother.

He didn't look like anything of his father. If it did, it was coincidence, right, because there's no DNA from the father. And so what we're really concerned about, the issue is on the inside.

God, of course, sees the external appearance, but it's really on the inside is what he's looking at.

And I don't need to know what Jesus looks like. I don't need to know how tall he was.

I just regularly, like this morning, I was listening in Luke. I was reading Isaiah, but then I was listening to Luke, and I'm impressed with Jesus by who he is, what he does, what he has done, and what he will do.

That's the main thing. So today on No Compromise Radio. We just had to start off with a theological millennius.

They have other things that are more interesting to me, most reprinted hymns that you can't sing because CCLI will require $2 ,400 for you to live stream.

All hail the power of Jesus name, Jesus lover of my soul, alas, did my savior bleed?

How firm a foundation, am I a soldier of the cross? Come thou fount of every blessing, guide me,

O thou great Jehovah. On Jordan's stormy banks I stand, rock of ages cleft from me, and one

I've never heard of, but I hope it's good. When can I read my title clear?

Isaac Watts, 1707. Among Catholic hymnals published more recently, the following hymns are the most often reprinted.

So what would you guess? What do Roman Catholics sing? Now, of course, you know, I'm no

Roman Catholic, nor am I a Roman Catholic apologist, but I just found this fascinating.

Faith of our fathers, O God, our help in ages past.

Whenever I see that title, I always try to enunciate every word, O God, our help in ages past.

All hail the power of Jesus name. Come thou almighty king, amazing grace, joy to the world, holy, holy, holy,

Lord God almighty. From all that dwell below the skies, love divine, all love excelling, rejoice, the

Lord is king. Well, there you have it. When I first went to a Roman Catholic church that was across the street from our house in Omaha, Nebraska, its name was

St. James. Not a bad name for a church, right, St. James? And the nuns across the street, they weren't mean, but they weren't very nice.

They did go golfing in this back area they had there, so of course they would lose their golf balls and we would go find them.

I don't think we ever returned them, but we would find them. And the nuns thought my dad looked like Billy Graham because he kind of had, it was the day where you kind of sweep it, the hair over 70s, pretty thick sideburns, it went pretty low, kind of the

Billy look. So they thought he was Billy Graham. Really, he didn't really have to go to church at all, but that's not the point.

Well, we went to St. James and I wanted to just get along when I was a kid, and so when people would say to me, well,

I'm Catholic, I'd say, well, I'm Lutheran, but we're just like the Catholics because in essence, we pretty much were.

It was very sacramental. It was very, not necessarily sacerdotal through the priest, but functionally probably the same.

A lot of repetition, a lot of other things. Anyway, I went to the church and of course we're reciting, I don't know what to think.

I'm in a Catholic church for the first time. I'm 15, 12, something like that. And we began to recite the

Lord's Prayer and I thought, oh, at least I know how to do that. At least I know our father.

And so I began to be more emboldened and I would say it louder. And what I didn't know was they would not use the

Texas Receptus family or Byzantine family for King James, New King James, which is about,

I think, all we had back then besides the RSV. So I thought, I thought thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Oh, I better be quiet because nobody else was saying anything. So that was my introduction to the pomp and circumstance of Roman Catholic church.

We didn't have keys once in a while to get into the gym and we played a lot of basketball in the gym. And so there you have it.

Well, what are we going to do today? We're spiraling down. We're spiraling down.

Oh, man, first women bishops. That'll be good. Let's, let's just go for that.

I have, I have something else here on my iPad. Look at that iPad. You want one of those stickers?

Just go ahead and write us. No Compromise Radio, 307 Lancaster Street, West Boylston Mass, 01583.

Spray Lysol on the envelope first and include a self -addressed envelope, stamped envelope, and we'll send you one of those stickers.

No go. The concept of apostolic succession means that a person is a true bishop only if ordained or consecrated by another bishop whose ordination goes back through an unbroken succession of bishops to apostolic times.

Hmm. While other churches and denominations have officers called bishops, only those of the historic

Eastern and Western churches and the Athean churches, a division of the Western church, have bishops in the apostolic succession.

Well, they probably should be pretty smart. At least they could maybe tell me who wrote Hebrews. Using this criterion, the first woman bishop was

Barbara Clementine Harris. Probably a nice lady.

An African American elected in 1989 as a suffragen assisting bishop in the

Episcopal Diocese of Drumroll, Massachusetts. Apostolic succession bishops finally make it to Massachusetts.

Not through Cotton Mather. Not through Thomas Shepard. Not through any of those guys.

Not through Jonathan Edwards. Pick your favorite Massachusetts person. But we've got the apostolic succession of bishop.

And her name was Barbara Clementine Harris. If legend is correct, however, the first female to receive

Episcopal ordination was Bridgid. B -R -I -G -I -D.

Bridgid. Or known as Saint Bride.

Died around 523. Whom Saint Patrick converted to Christianity. She founded the first convent in Ireland at Sildara.

R -K -I -L -D -R -E. If you're not Welsh. Welsh. Welsh.

And Bishop Eibor. Igor. Eibor. Reportedly consecrated her.

I mean, you should know this if this is an apostolic succession thing. Well, he supposedly did. The Roman Catholic Church discounts the story.

That is so funny. They discount the story. Oh, uh -oh.

Here we go. This is going to get spicier as we go. Page 90 in this miscellaneous theological book.

I would say miscellaney, but it's hard to really say that. By T .J. Self -Publish.

Speaking of Self -Publish, I am working on the Colossians, S. Lewis Johnson thing. I have been putting it off for probably four years.

Talk to S. Lewis Johnson's son, Samuel, a dear man, who used to be in publishing, by the way. And Zondervan doesn't want

Discovering Colossians, so we'll just do it on our own. I'm trying to work an hour a day on it, although I haven't been so faithful because I'm so busy now.

Running all the errands and going to the beach and movies and restaurants and all that stuff. Anyway, so that'll be

Self -Publish underneath Amazon because nobody really wants to push it. But we want it out in your hands and it doesn't matter anyway.

Vanity Press, if they say, well, you have Vanity Press. If that's the least of my problems, then

I'm okay. Well, anyway, this is famous Africans of church history. Here's the real truth behind what

I'm going to say here. This is my theological point. There are people that you know in high places, in denominations that are super popular and fairly evangelical to some degree, at least by name.

And they are trying to make sure we have racial, not just equality.

We're only derived from Adam. There's one race, the human race.

You're either in Adam the first or in Adam the last. That is the Lord Jesus trusting in him.

So the way you think about things should be essentially Adam. One Adam, two Adam.

Two people in this world. But here's what they're wanting to do. Bible translations, you have to have an appropriate number of non -white people in your

Bible translations. It doesn't mean if they're good or not. They just have to be a different color. We have commentary series now that typically are all white people, mainly men.

But for Esther and for Ruth, they get to be women. Why is that, by the way?

We have Esther and Ruth. If you look at a commentary series, and then you'll see who wrote what.

It's always Joyce Baldwin for Ruth, Esther, or something like that. Why is that? That's interesting to me.

I'm not trying to say women shouldn't write commentaries, but they only get the ones that are named after women. I don't understand that.

Anyway, the point is not, well, we need to have enough males.

We need to have enough white people. We need to get rid of them. We need to have blacks. We need to have Hispanics. We need to have

Puerto Ricans. All chiming in to help us translate the Bible, interpret the

Bible, and write commentaries on the Bible. I just think that that is so wrong.

I'm looking for people who are experts in poetry,

Semitic poetry. I don't care what color they are, honestly. I don't care what gender they are, but I want them to be experts.

And so that's why we want 50 or 60 people. For instance, for a Bible translation, from all kinds of backgrounds, because not one person can be an expert in such a diverse book.

Yes, written by the Holy Spirit, and it's, yes, diverse through human authors, but it's organic in its unity by the one author, the

Holy Spirit. I don't care how people look. I don't care their backgrounds.

I want experts. That's what I want, because I'm trying to figure out what this says. Not through the lens of my pigment or lack thereof.

I just think it's insane. And pretty soon we're going to have these commentaries that are written by, you know, it has to be, you have to be black.

But we're going to have problems because how are you, if you're 49 % black, are you still black?

Are you 50 % black? Now you're black. If you're 20 % black, my brother just did the ancestor deal and you swab and send it or whatever.

I was always told that I was 50 % German because my two grandparents were German. I was one half

Danish because my grandfather on the other side was Danish and one quarter, one half

German, one quarter Danish and one quarter Swedish because my grandmother on my mother's side was Swedish. And therefore it was 50, 25, 25.

Well, Pat, if he's got similar DNA to me, which I'm guessing it's true to some degree.

I know there's some variation. 37 % German, 31 %

Swedish and like 25 % English. And then a bunch of other stuff. Now I was hoping for Scottish, right?

This scotophilia and this love for Scotland. And I could have been a much better theologian if I would have been

Scottish. But my point is this, God uses over time, different people from different places.

And if I look back to, if this is true in this book, famous Africans in church history,

Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, Augustine, Cyril, who else is on this list?

Some unbelievers are on this list too, but there's famous Africans in church history. I don't care, right?

I think I've told you this story before. I'm in the Czech Republic. I might as well just say it.

I'm in the Czech Republic and I'm talking to a local pastor and he speaks English and he's getting trained in the U .S.

And he kind of had this attitude, I think, well, you know, we're not just going to buy everything that the

Americans are selling. Great. I don't want that. But what I said to him, for whatever reason, in the providence of God, God's sovereign plan, right now, the best biblical scholarship comes from America.

In many cases. See, I'm trying to give the caveats. Who cares?

I mean, was it, oh, I'm really bothered that Luther and Melanchthon and a lot of people came from Germany.

I'm really bothered that Calvin was originally from France and right there was at the border of, you know, in Switzerland, of course, but right there across the way was

France. What do I care? I don't care at all. And so, therefore, if you want to read theological articles, well, if you're in the

Czech Republic or in Poland or someplace like that, you better learn English because if you want the best stuff, that's what you're going to have to do.

That doesn't mean I'm the best. I happen to fall into the category of, yeah, I'm a white man from America, but that doesn't mean anything.

Because if I say to myself, you know what? I need to read Augustine. What color was he? Do you know

Athanasius? Did he really write the Athanasius Creed or was it derived? By the way, what color was he?

Because I don't know if I want to study him or not. Seriously, that's asinine. That's ridiculous.

We can watch God's hand in all this stuff and I don't care who the best scholars are, who the best preachers.

I mean, I like Scottish -accented preachers and I like to listen to them, but does that mean they're better?

I mean, what do we have that we haven't received? This is just the wrong way of thinking.

So here's my point. If you're watching today or listening, don't get caught up in all that. Don't get caught up by saying, you know what?

I have to make sure. This is this whole Matt Chandler -ish village church kind of deal where, remember

Matt? Well, if you have a white pastor on the scale of 1 to 10 and you're thinking about hiring him, he's a candidate.

And he's an 8, the white pastor. And the black pastor's a 7. Who will you hire?

And Chandler's like the black guy in a heartbeat because I'd rather hire him.

And it's just, this is crazy. This is crazy world. And it's driven a lot by not necessarily the

PCA, but the SBC at the highest levels with Russell Moore and the seminaries.

It's crazyville, but it sounds good. It just won't last. And it's basically liberalism.

So you ought to read J. Gresham Machen's book, Christianity and Liberalism, 1923

Urbans. You'll see it all. You'll see it all for yourself. I'm glad God uses people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

And when you look at the Bible in Revelation, you're going to see that. You're going to see people from all kinds of Gentiles.

What do I care if the Gentiles got less pigment or more pigment than I do? I'm just glad that I'm in. Right? Because when you think about salvations from the

Jews, I'm just glad to be in because I'm not a Jew. I looked at that little sheet there, the ancestor deal.

There was not much stuff about, you know, Semitic countries and Jewish background or heritage.

By the way, how could somebody test spit and figure out what country I'm from? How does that happen?

That's crazy. Well, my name is Mike Ebenroth. This is No Compromise Radio. I'm just in the studio today.

I was going to practice Hebrews 12. That's why I'm here. It's a work day. I wanted to practice a little bit of Hebrews 12 since I'm preaching that,

Lord willing, this Sunday. You know Hebrews 12, that great resurrection passage. And I got bogged down in theological miscellaneous.

But in about four minutes, we're going to switch over. We're going to do round two here on this live Facebook deal.

And we're going to talk about Hebrews chapter 12. Don't forget, you can write me, info at nocompromiseradio .com.

There are about 10 slots open for Israel, February 24th through March 4th.

And we would love to have you go. Again, Mike Ebenroth, No Compromise Radio. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebenroth 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.