Dopey Children Stories (Part 1)

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, a ministry.

Shepherds Conference, Travel, and Ministry Updates

My name is Mike Abendroth. And today, real time, it's March 13th. Noco time, it's probably April-ish. But it's snowing outside, slippery. I know this isn't a word, but I'll make it up. Sleedy. Sleestacks.

Remember the sleestacks? I was looking at the YouTube demographics for noco90 .com. Thanks again, John. And I think we've got 45 to 65 is the demographic. How do we get in with the younger folks, Ben?

Make that happen. And so, anyway, the older people all know the sleestacks from the land of the lost. Maybe the newer movie had sleestacks in it. I don't know. I didn't see it. Because the newer versions of things, most of the time, aren't as good.

Although I have a newer version here of the monster energy drink, Ultra Blue. If you're older, Ultra Glide in Blue. Anyway, no sugar. And I don't think I really like it, but I need it. What's happening here?

Well, in California, I went to the Shepherd's Conference, flew out with my son, Luke, who's 17 and is hoping to go to the Master's College in the fall. We took the college tour. We went up and saw a family that lives close by that Luke could go to during Thanksgiving.

I don't know, laundry runs, surf trips. During the tour, I asked the tour guide lady. She was driving us around in a go-kart and said, well, which room has, which dorm facility has the most surfers? Because I don't think my son's the typical surfer, like, hey, dude, but he likes to surf.

And so without a car the first year, how are you going to get from Santa Clarita to Malibu, Hermosa? I didn't surf Hermosa, but Luke did. And I did surf up in Santa Cruz where the waves were a little bit bigger.

And somebody that I was with got yelled at for being a kook and a Barney, and it wasn't me, and it wasn't Luke. I know my place. I talk about kooks and Barneys on the radio, on Wretched Radio. I think that's the last time I sat in the studio was doing Wretched Radio.

I saw Todd there, but he didn't see me. I did greet someone in the line for coffee the first morning at Grace Community Church for the Shepherd's Conference, and this is a true story. And I said, oh, thank you for serving.

And they said, oh, Mike Ebenroth, No Compromise Radio. And almost immediately, they just shrugged me off and said, is Tuesday guy here? I kid you not. I think maybe they were related somehow. Anyway, great to see old friends.

I got to have a two-hour lunch with Phil Johnson, not trying to drop any names or anything. That was exciting to see Phil and catch up. Old ministry friends that I went to school with, Russell Honig, and even though he won't invite me to New Zealand, I still think he's a pretty neat guy.

My favorite all-time Russell Honig story was there was a wedding going on at Grace Church, and I think it was about twilight, dusk, somewhere around there. Had to be on a Saturday. I'd lost my Corporate America job, and I was working as a janitor at Grace Church, and so was Russell.

He was a seminary student. And so I liked to scare him. You know, you make an eight bucks an hour, you have to do things to earn your money. So we'd clean things, and then we would scare each other. It's a biblical concept, you know, to be frightened and terrified and fear.

And so I hid inside a very large garbage can, but it was the large one that we would wheel around the campus. And you could put all kinds of tree limbs, I mean, smaller ones, of course, twigs, branches.

That's what I'm after. Not a limb, but a branch. And you could put a couple other big garbage containers in there. That is to say, what are those like, those plastic containers, ties, those garbage bags.

This is hard to do. I'm on jet lag still. Anyway, I crawled in one of those and kind of put one of the tree bags, tree leaf bags on top of me. And so I was disguised. It was covert ops. And Russell came over, put some trash in there, and I jumped out.

And he yelled so loudly. He actually got chastised because he was interrupting the wedding. What else is happening? Shepherd's Conference. It was interesting to see John preach through a passage in John 5 when the electricity went out.

I thought it was kind of funny. It was cute. Can I say cute? When they came, John finished preaching and then a guy came up and said, all right, we're going to have a longer break. They're trying to figure this out.

We call the power company. It's not a Grace Church issue. It's the power company here, the grid. And I told them there was a great need to have the power back. There was a conference with 3 ,000 or 4 ,000 of the most important men of the world, in the world.

So I felt good. It was a good self-esteem booster. And you know, a couple of people said, hey, Mike even wrote No Compromise Radio. I said, hello. I said, you want my autograph? No, but I was eclipsed because when I sat with Phil, nobody wanted to come over and say hi to me.

Although JD did, so JD, kudos to you. Now that you have your own show, you don't listen to mine. So there you have it. Okay, what else is happening here? Highlights of the Shepherds Conference? Well, next year it's going to be on inerrancy, I believe.

Lots of speakers from Carl Truman, right on down the line. Lots of English Presbyterians, I heard. So not every Presbyterian is English, but most English are Presbyterian, in my book anyway. Israel 2015, we are set and now reserving spots.

300 if you would like to go just to Israel. February 17th for nine days, 2015. So that's 11 months away. First come, first serve. I think we're at about 10 or 11 spots now. And it's going to just, I only think I have 24, maybe 25.

Slots Omaha Bible Church and Pat Abendroth are going to take the rest. And so first come, first served. If you are out of town, you want to fly through Boston. And well, I guess you have to, either Omaha or Boston, you can do that as well.

Write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com. It's not up on the website yet because there's a few other hotel issues that we're just trying to work through. But the trip is a go with the extension to Jordan slash Petra slash Moab slash Mount Nebo slash the east side of the Dead Sea.

Why Children's Story Application Must Be Biblical

Well, what else do we have here today? I found a little story that we are supposed to teach our children. And here's the bad news. Well, I've got two bits of bad news. One, it's a horrible story. The Bible part's good, of course, but what they do with it's bad.

And the second bit of bad news, I can't find out where this is from. There's no small print. It doesn't say, you know, Pioneer Club, VBS, Awana, you know, it doesn't say anything like that. So I don't know where this is from, but I didn't make it up.

How could I? And on the cover, there's a picture of Jesus and five disciples in a boat. The boat looks pretty authentic because we're into authentic missional stuff. There's some waves, two lightning bolts, pretty big raindrops, and Jesus is sleeping in the front of the boat.

So we know what story that is. It says, lesson 10, this story is based on Mark 4, 35 to 41, Jesus stops a storm. So let me just read this. And the moral of the story today on No Compromise Radio is, we'd like to tell our children about Jesus and we would like the pulpit to drive such thinking.

So eventually it filters down into Sunday school classes and the curriculum that we would purchase. We tend to take stories and then we don't have the right kind of application. I believe it was Walt Kaiser who said the majority of, no, no, no, it was Haddon Robinson.

The most, well, how do I want to phrase this? More bad doctrine gets into the church through bad application than any other way. And so we just somehow don't know how to apply the scriptures. We think we have to make them applicable.

We think we have to talk about Jesus and then give you three easy steps. One day Jesus, excuse me, was teaching by the Sea of Galilee. I think we need monster drinks, don't you? No letters about monster.

I did have pizza coffee quite a bit in California. That was nice. People kept coming to see him. He stood up in a boat so everyone could see. When it began to get dark, Jesus' helpers rode the boat out into the water.

Jesus laid down to sleep. Suddenly the wind began to blow and waves of water splashed against the boat. The boat rocked back and forth. Jesus' helpers were afraid. They woke Jesus up. Jesus stood up and said to the wind and the water, be still.

The wind and the water were still. The waves stopped splashing. The wind stopped blowing. The boat stopped rocking. You know what? I like the story so far. Jesus asked his helpers, why were you so afraid?

Don't you know that I can help you? Jesus' helpers saw that the wind and water obeyed Jesus and they knew Jesus cared when they were scared. We were going along so well. Now, I flip this over. I don't mind the butterfly.

I don't mind the teddy bear with X eyes. Have you ever seen a teddy bear with X eyes? So we have one of those here. The Bible memory verse, the Lord is my helper, Hebrews 13 .6. How could I not like that?

Lesson focus in purple, kind of coming out of the mouth of the fish here, the purple fish, purple people eaters. Jesus cares when we're scared. He cared when they're scared. Family time. So it tells you what to do.

There's family time and Bible time. So here's what we do. Spend time one-on-one with your preschooler or include your entire family in these activities that help you revisit the Bible lesson for this week.

Go to the Sea of Galilee, wait for the wind. Little chefs. Now, this is the part that I read and I just thought, now, who does this? I mean, really, who does this? Make a simple, healthy snack. Okay, that's fine.

You know, kids have a snack time and, you know, I like that. I like snack times too. Snack times at the Shepherds Conference were amazing. My son, Luke, 17, just works out like a maniac, thin, tall, metabolism, fast.

Anyway, they had Krispy Kreme donuts one morning. I said to Luke, because I told him, you know, just don't make a pig of yourself in terms of in front of other people, but if it's not in front of other people, hey, there's one price for the conference.

Just go for it. It's not on my dime this week. And he said he ate six Krispy Kreme donuts that morning, besides his regular breakfast. And so I asked him why. I wasn't mad at him because I told him, eat what you want.

And basically the answer was because I can. And so I thought, yes, I'm jealous. I want to be able to do that. Make a simple, healthy snack to remember that Jesus cares when we are scared. I just simply have no words.

You know, I'm tired today and didn't know if I could pull off a good show. A really big show. So, you know, what do you do with that? Make a simple, healthy snack. Like peanut butter on celery or something.

What would we do? Why don't we get those goldfish? You know, kids love those goldfish and we could make some story. We could make a Jesus the size of a small broken off tip of a toothpick. And then there'd be like this fish and a fish coming over, kind of like Jonah or something.

We could just morph all these stories into one. How does a simple, healthy snack? What if we have a complex, fat snack? I guess those goldfish are that very thing. So we're teaching people about what?

Jesus calms the storm. Of course, calming the storms of your life. You know, we've all heard that. This goes on to say, cut a peeled banana. You can actually cut unpeeled bananas, but here's a peeled banana in half lengthwise.

Fill the boat with bear shaped crackers. Now, where's the boat? I don't know. How do I get? Is that the boat? Is the peeled banana lengthwise the boat? I don't know. Is the peel itself the boat? Is there an external boat I didn't know about?

I need to order the boats? As you munch on your snack, talk about how the disciples were scared during the storm. Jesus cared for them. He also cares for us when we're scared. Now it is absolutely true that Jesus cares for us, right?

All the time when we're scared, when we're happy, when we're sad, when we're not scared. But is that really what Mark 4 is talking about? Is that really the issue? You can make a joyful noise if you like, according to this little anonymous deal.

This song will remind your preschooler that Jesus cares for us all the time. Sing to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb. Are you sick, alone, or scared? Jesus cares, Jesus cares. Point up to the word Jesus.

Are you sick, alone, or scared? Jesus cares for you. Point up and then to the person next to you. Are you sick, alone, or scared? Jesus cares, Jesus cares. Are you sick, alone, or scared? Jesus cares for you.

I sang that, by the way, with my finger up to my mouth because I'm trying to stop laughing. Sweet dreams. As your child takes a bath before bed, have your child make waves in the water. How can I make this up?

The Real Point of Mark 4: Jesus Reveals His Divine Authority

Okay, let's stop right here for a second. Mike Cavendroth, No Compromise Radio. What's the moral of all this? Why? Yeah, what's the moral of the story without the indicatives? See, that is the problem.

Hence, therefore, hereafter. We don't want to dumb things down. Now, I like making healthy snacks. I like making waves in the tub and having the kids have a great time. I'm all for that. Count me in. I'm all in.

But I just like to make the application biblical. That's all. I'm after biblical teaching, which this is doing, right? It had the Mark 4 story and some biblical application. That's all. That's all. Use a plastic boat.

See, now we're talking about the boat. If you use your banana boat, it's going to sink. And people, for more fun, say, be still and have your child stop making waves. Then make your child say to you, why are you so afraid?

Why so you still have no faith? That I mean, okay, back to the point here, Bible time. Use these special Bible activities during family devotions, our special Bible times you have with your preschooler.

In God's book. Two more sections. Pretend to be the disciples on the stormy sea. Use a rocking chair or chair cushions on the floor to make a rocky boat. Yeah, but what are you going to use then to have the cushion where Jesus was laid?

Is that, would that be part of the boat or part of the cushion? It's a cushion boat. Make the sounds of wind and waves. Then pretend to be on a calm sea after Jesus stills the sea. Remind your child that we always can ask Jesus to help us.

See, that part's true on a boat at home or preschool. Let's pray. Children are often scared of bugs in the dark. Talk with your child about his or her fears. Okay. See, I like that part. Talk to him. Help your child tell Jesus about them.

Fine. Thank Jesus for helping us when we're scared. I mean, that's all true, but what about the story? What is happening and who is the star of this and who do we think about when we go to this very passage?

Too often we see ourselves front and center in the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ, according to Mark, is a book about Jesus Christ, who he is as the wonderful, transcendent savior of the galaxies and what he does to show forth his glory.

We're so turned in on ourselves, as Luther would say, curved in on ourselves. I forgot the Latin for that. We forget to see who Jesus is and what the highlights of the passage really are and how we can see the Son of God, the God-man, the Savior himself, not the storms in my life.

Highlighting Jesus, that's what we're after. When you read the book of Mark, the gospel of Jesus, according to Mark, you're going to see in Mark chapter 4 that the storm-calming incident is part of the larger purpose of looking at these historical events from a theological perspective.

Mark doesn't record everything, but what he does record is theological history, highlighting the King of Kings, Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed One. You want to see Jesus as God incarnate to be most specific.

Here is God incarnate, and when you see Jesus calming a storm, what should go through your mind is not, my life is full of storms. What you should be saying to yourself is, hmm, in light of all the Bible, who calms the sea?

Who has authority over oceans and bodies of water like the Sea of Galilee? Who does that? Who can wake up and immediately order nature to do things? And we're supposed to see Jesus Christ as the incarnate God.

That's what we're after. They were panic-stricken, the disciples, even though they were old salts, and what does Jesus do? When I wake up after being rudely aroused, I say to myself, hmm, I've got to get my bearings.

No sign of being startled, no sign of being afraid. Jesus commands water, peace, be still. And immediately you should be thinking to yourself, hmm, God calms the waves and the water and the sea, Job 12, Psalm 33.

He calms the storm and has authority over storms, Job 28, Psalm 107, Amos 4. And Jesus does this with a word. The word incarnate speaks. He doesn't need incense. He doesn't need prayer beads. He doesn't have incantations.

When God makes order out of chaos and speaks things into existence, in Genesis chapter 1, God does the same thing in Mark chapter 4. Be silent, exactly what he told demons to do in Mark chapter 1, be quiet.

And then he says, be still, or literally, be muzzled, be gagged. It is as if the sea is personified as a roaring, raging creature. Morgan said, like dogs, hounds held by the leash, the waves cowered back and the sea was calm.

Be still. And what happens instantaneously without a further word, not gradually, the wind stops and the sea becomes perfectly calm. It's like it was so exhausted by its foaming and frailing, anyway, going back and forth, to and fro, hit or thither.

Now it's like Lake Placid, still, quiet, at rest, calm, it's like you're in the eye of the hurricane. So Jesus turns off the wind and makes the sea still. For by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created by him and for him.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. That's what we're after here. Of course you can tell kids that this powerful God, what are the implications of this powerful God? Oh, he could do something when we pray to him, he's got the power to answer our prayers, he's got the power to protect mommy and daddy.

I'm all for that, later, secondarily, I'm all for Jesus is human, he's sleeping, Jesus is God at the exact same time, because he's not God and man, technically, if you want to say it, he is God slash man, God hyphen man, the God man.

And so that's what we want to teach our children. I'm all for teaching children the Bible. Let's just teach them the Bible. My name's Mike Abendroth, if you'd like to go to the Sea of Galilee with us and go on a boat ride, maybe it'll be rocky, maybe it'll be serene, but you can write me at info at NoCompromiseRadio .com, February 17th, next year.

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 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .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.