Preaching Christ

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 Saturday. It's rainy and cold outside, is it not?

Maybe it's a good day to be quarantined, I don't know. Oh, you can always write me,

Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. Oh, I do want to say thank you. I guess

I can't show this part because it's got the bar that you could scan. But I just received from Stephen Holley $25 gift certificate for Pete's Coffee.

How about that? Come on. That is excellent. Thank you. I appreciate that.

And it's, you know, in the old days, I like coffee because it worked. It doesn't work now, but I still drink it.

It works in the afternoon, right? If I drink it after three o 'clock at night, I can't, at three o 'clock in the afternoon, I can't sleep.

But it doesn't really work in the morning to wake me up. But Stephen, thank you so much for that. Today, I'd like to talk a little bit about Jesus Christ and how he is the main object of our preaching.

And if you're not a preacher, he should be the main object of the preacher, as you, the congregant. Listen, if you evangelize, the dominant discussion should be about our

Lord Jesus. We have a Christological problem in evangelicalism, and it's

Jesus is missing. There are all kinds of morals talked about and piety, and I'm not against morals, nor am

I against piety. I'm against pietism and moralism. But I regularly encounter people when they evangelize, when they teach a

Bible study, when they read their own Bibles, when they do family Bible time with their family, the missing person, the missing ingredient, as it were, is the

Lord Jesus Christ. And if you have been listening to this show for any amount of time, you realize that Colossians chapter 1, verse 28, and it's phrased kind of interestingly in the original language, and some of your

Bibles will translate it this way, him we proclaim. Present tense.

We have a proclamation, whether we're in Colossae or anyplace else, Paul would know that the person to be preached is the

Lord Jesus. And when you look at the Old Testament, the types and shadows and prophecy and everything else, no matter what your view of types are, how much

Jesus is in the Old Testament, you at least ought to see him as the dominant person in the

Old Testament and of course in the new, and therefore he has to be proclaimed. When you evangelize, when you teach a

Bible study, he is the one that needs to be discussed. Now there are different things in the

Bible. We can talk about imperatives and law and other things, but I wonder if evangelicalism could get a greater dose of the

Lord Jesus. Matter of fact, I've said before that King James only fundamentalist preachers,

Arminian free willers, they talk about Jesus more than many evangelical pastors, because at least at the end they have an altar call where they will talk about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

And so sometimes I'll sit there and I'll listen to preaching and I'm thinking, are they ever going to talk about Jesus?

When Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 2, I've determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, even the crucified one, are

Jesus Christ and him crucified? That's the one I talk about. And when you listen to Paul, when he is preaching, when you listen to Peter, when he's preaching in the book of Acts, those men had a dominant theme to their preaching.

It was Jesus Christ. And I sometimes think it's funny, but back in the old days when you'd ask your child, what was the pastor's sermon on?

And they're like, Jesus? But that's the right answer. And of course, that doesn't mean we can't teach through all of the

Bible and there's different genres, or as D .A. Carson would say, genre.

There are different genres, but the dominant message in a preacher should be

Jesus. Should it not? Where are the preachers of Jesus? We have a Christological problem.

Matter of fact, I'll even say this. When it comes to counseling, when it comes to your friend calls you and needs advice, how often do you talk about Jesus?

Oh no, no, no. We know about Jesus. We assume that death, burial, resurrection. Yeah, we know all that.

No, I need some practical help. Really? I think most people's problems, my problems, it's a deficient view of who

Jesus is. The life I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians chapter two. How am I walking by faith when it comes even to living a holy life?

Now to back this up a little bit, I'm going to give you a Sinclair Ferguson quote. I have a few books here just behind me.

I keep these three here because these have been three influential books in my life the last five years that have pretty much changed a lot of my thinking.

The whole Christ, we have there the Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry by Scott Clark, edited by Clark, it has some other things.

And then the Gentle and Lowly, which maybe is not up there with the other two, but it's recent and I've been thinking about it quite a bit.

Well, here's Sinclair Ferguson from the whole Christ. If that is true, we should probably ask a further question.

Is it obvious to me and of engrossing concern that the chief focus, the dominant note in the sermons

I preach or hear, is Jesus Christ and Him crucified?

Is that the dominant theme? Or is the dominant emphasis and perhaps the greatest energies of the preacher focused somewhere else?

Now listen, this is so convicting to me. Like how to overcome sin or how to live the

Christian life or the benefits to be received from the gospel. Is that the dominant thing?

All are legitimate emphasis in their place, but that place is never center stage.

I mean, that is convicting. Your evangelism, your Bible reading, the sermons you hear, who's on center stage?

What's on center stage? The same question can be asked more starkly in our techno -sermon age when many

Christians listen not only to preaching in their own churches, but to their favorite preachers in the contemporary galaxy.

Is the dominant theme, the lasting impression, the most natural word order association in relation to the preaching

I hear, Jesus Christ and Him crucified or something else? Without wanting to denigrate the value many experience from listening to sermons on the

World Wide Web, two words of caution, Sinclair Ferguson says, are surely in order here.

Namely, one, am I fully aware of the emphasis to which I'm allowing myself to be exposed?

And is it a Christ -filled emphasis? That is so convicting to me.

What kind of sermons do you like to listen to? Now, for me, I like to get on the bicycle or the treadmill or whatever when

I work out and listen to podcasts, and so I have to ask myself the question, what kind of podcast do

I like to listen to and why? And of course, there's nothing wrong with listening to, I don't know, you like to listen to Jocko's podcast or something like that.

I'm not just talking about, you know, it's wrong to listen to some secular podcast. I wouldn't say that at all.

But I am saying for the people that you listen to for your spiritual nourishment, is Christ the center?

Is He the one who is on center stage? You think, okay,

I'm going to learn about my Savior today, right? It's just kind of like, what's that David Wells thing?

Remember David Wells, the theologian at Gordon, you know, my favorite theologian at Gordon Conwell here in Massachusetts until he retired.

It's like, you know, you have the party for the newborn, and then everybody, you know, throws the coats on the bed, but the baby's on the bed and the kid's covered up and you don't know why you're there.

I was so thankful to see the space station again, and hello from Texas. I have no idea what

Daniel's saying. I do know what Dan's talking about though, Dan, thank you for that, and I appreciate your prayers.

What I'm after on No Compromise Radio is to proclaim the person and work of Christ Jesus.

Now, you can tell it's a rerun, right? We play Friday reruns, and I started that a while ago just to give myself a break. You can tell if it's a rerun of No Co if I quote

Richard Baxter positively, because I would never do that now, right?

You can tell if, you know, there are people I don't quote anymore. It's like, you know, Doug Wilson I don't quote, Richard Baxter I don't quote.

If somehow I quoted them, C .S. Lewis on a, you know, it's a Friday, it's an old show, right?

And so some of the older shows I might be embarrassed to listen to, but I try not to listen to myself anyway.

We are after people who preach Christ Jesus. When you evangelize, I want you to talk about Jesus.

When you talk to your children, you're like, well, they've already heard it. Believe me. And I'm going to try not to offend

Michael and Daniel, because they attend the church that I pastor, and it's not meant to offend anybody, except to just state a fact.

I can preach for 23 years, and people can listen, and somehow they don't end up listening over and over and over.

And that's why we can never assume that our children know the gospel, because we tell them regularly.

No, we tell them regularly and often. And we just keep repeating over and over and over.

Just like when I would go to the church when my kids were little, every single Sunday, I would say to them, like to Luke, I would say, now

Luke, I want you to shake somebody's hand for me. You look at them in the eye. You don't just say, how are you?

You ask them, how'd your week go? Or something like that. That's some other question. When you see a grandma get out of the handicap parking, or grandpa, you quick run over there, open the door for them, et cetera.

When you see snow, you grab a shovel. You do all that. I mean, and I said that every single Sunday for I don't know how many years.

And to my young daughters, I would say, this is what you do, and smile and ask questions and everything else over and over and over.

And so while many parents will regularly tell their children, I mean, at our dinner table, this is the way we operate.

May I please be excused? They'd ask. I'd say either, yes, you may, or no, you may not. Dad's going to do a Bible time, et cetera.

And when you heard the words, yes, you may be excused, then they were to get up, push their chair in, because nobody pushes chairs in anymore.

Even adults, you don't do that anymore, and you should push the chair in and say, mom, thank you for dinner.

Can I help you do the dishes? It's just, I mean, how many times I say that? Thousands.

Thousands. But when it comes to the gospel, we just assume that our children know it.

When it comes to evangelism, we just assume people know about who Jesus is. I mean, most people now, when you evangelize and you talk about Jesus, their default is he was a good example.

He was a moral teacher, and he led a religion with a bunch of kooky, politically driven, you know, nut jobs.

That's probably what they think. So I need to tell them who Jesus is, and I need to educate them.

This is what John Newton said when he was 65 years old, and he was writing to another pastor.

And, of course, John Newton was most famous, I think, for writing several lines of Amazing Grace.

The older I grow, the more I am drawn to preach much concerning the person, the atonement, the glory of the

Savior, and the influences of the Holy Spirit. There are other truths important in their places, but unless held through the lens of Jesus, I don't really care, essentially.

And so we're not even talking about the benefits of Jesus. You receive the benefits of Jesus, and I'm glad for that.

Forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption. I mean, can you imagine? You're forgiven for all your sins, even this last week's.

Forgiven. I mean, that's an amazing thing to think about. And you're given the Holy Spirit. You've been justified.

You've been pardoned. You've been given power to overcome sin. Sin might remain, but it's not this dominating force any longer,

Romans 6 and 7. No condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, chapter 8, the Holy Spirit's work.

We can talk about all that. That's true, and I'm glad for that. But what about the person and work of Jesus?

What about the way he deals with sinners? What about the way he deals with the weather and storms?

What about how he acts with his disciples? What about his kindness and compassion? What about Luke 4, where we know from Isaiah chapter 61, what's he going to be like when he arrives?

Where is the message? Where are the messengers? Where's the message about the Lord Jesus? I don't think we have that many preachers that talk about Jesus a lot.

I've been preaching through the book of Hebrews and finished it a while ago, and Hebrews is called the fifth gospel because it's about Jesus being the priest.

If you think about his trifold office, prophet, priest, and king, as Calvin would say, and you see easily in Scripture, that he is the great prophet, priest, and king.

Where's the talk about that? Jesus the prophet, where he proclaims the truth. He is the truth incarnate and he proclaims it.

Where's the truth about Jesus the king? There are people now, some people, dispensational people, that say

Jesus isn't reigning on his throne now. I mean, would you ever say that? Jesus isn't on the throne?

But anyway, he's a priest as well. He's the high priest. He's the great high priest.

He's the shepherd. He's the great shepherd. He's the chief shepherd. He's the good shepherd. Where's the talk about Jesus when it comes to evangelism and preaching?

And my question to you who watch and my question to you who listen, is that the kind of preaching you're drawn to?

And if you're not, why not? I mean, it is convicting to me because it's much easier to just lay out the law.

And of course, I'm not against law. The law is good. Law is a schoolmaster. It's a mirror and it shows people their sins, so they need a savior.

And then after they're saved, it shows them how their life should be normed, should be directed, should be guided by this law of God.

Not to get them in, not to keep them in, but because they're in, right? They're in good graces with God because of the

Lord Jesus Christ. When you think about the good news, the good news is about a person.

The gospel is about a person. I even think sometimes with all our gospel talk, we're gospel -centered.

We're good news -centered. And then they never talk about Jesus. I mean, they might talk about the effects of Jesus.

You know, think about it. If you're baptistic and there's going to be a testimony before someone gets baptized, what kind of testimony do you think most people give?

I'll tell you what they do. It's just a default of, well, then I saw this and I noticed that, this, that, and the other, but it's not a lot about Jesus.

Matter of fact, we regularly have to meet with people and they give their testimony the first time and then we trash it.

We rip it up in their face. No, we help them.

And instead of you being the active person in all this, and I did this, and I did this, and I did that, then this is how

God saved me. I mean, think about it. Titus chapter 3, God saved me.

It says saved us, but, you know, saved me. He's the active one. I contributed sin.

He did all the saving. Titus, God our Savior, God our Savior. 2 Timothy, God our

Savior, God our Savior. 1 Timothy, any guesses? God our Savior. The triune

God, Yahweh the Father, Yahweh the Son, Yahweh the Spirit, is a saving God. And the Holy Spirit, He loves to point to the

Lord Jesus Christ. And the Father is glorified when the Son is highly exalted. This is my beloved

Son in whom I'm well -pleased. And by the way, even when you give your testimony to people, you say, well,

I don't have a good testimony. I wasn't a drug addict and I wasn't involved in sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

I just was a self -righteous homeschooler. Do you have a good testimony? If the testimony is about you, well, maybe it's not that exciting.

By the way, why do our testimonies get more exciting as years go on? My wife will always say to me, honey, you tell that story, and it's more embellished every time you tell the story.

Well, that's part of the fun. I've told this story before.

I was in Cleveland, and I didn't really want to go, and I just had radiation. And I went anyway and spoke.

And I think somebody called that conference a flock of Pharisees.

I just didn't have the flock of seagulls hair. And a lady was hearing me talk about good news, and I delivered of his first importance.

Here's the gospel that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the scriptures, and he appeared.

And it's about Jesus, and that's the gospel is about the Son. And anyway, she wanted to talk to me, and we were in a large room with a lot of people, and she started to cry.

And so I said, well, come over here, and then you turn your back to the people who

I don't want them to have to see you cry if you don't want to, because she looked like she was embarrassed. And so we were standing off to the side, and she essentially said,

I don't know if I'm a Christian. I said, well, I'd love to help you. Thanks for being honest. And I said, why don't you think you're a

Christian? And her answer was basically, I don't have a fancy testimony. I don't really remember a time

I didn't believe. I grew up, and my parents taught me the Bible, and what they said was true, and I took it as truth, and I've always believed that Jesus was real and that he did what he said he did in the

Bible, and he healed the leper, and he healed the blind man, and he cast out demons, and he walked on water, and he made food for 5 ,000 men, and cast out demons, and he died for my sins and was raised from the dead.

And I said, well, do you believe all that still? Yes, I do. And I said that you don't know that there was a time.

It doesn't mean there wasn't a time when you were in darkness, and then God regenerated you and made you alive.

But the point now is, are you believing now? Because if your testimony is, this great savior can not only save unrighteous people, and scallywags, and real scoundrels where they think they have a great testimony, they used to be prostitutes, and now they're

Sunday school teachers. Well, that's wonderful, and I rejoice, but it's almost a greater miracle.

Now, I have to say almost because technically speaking, I don't want to get involved with that. But from the human perspective, it is more wonderful in my mind when a self -righteous person gets saved because self -righteous people don't think they need righteousness.

Unrighteous people, they know it. They come to the Lord with open hands because they realize they do not do the right thing and they aren't right.

But when people who think they do the right thing and they are right compared to everybody else in their mind, they're good.

How do those people ever get saved? Self -righteousness is one of the most damning sins in all the world.

And yet, if you are self -righteous and then God opens your eyes and he saves you, you have a good testimony because the testimony is about the

Lord Jesus. I think regularly what's happened in our churches is we forgot to be historians.

You have to read J. Gresham Machen. J. Gresham Machen, there he is, shining with that Shekinah glory just underneath him.

He talks about every good Christian needs to be a historian first because Jesus was a real man.

He was more than a man, of course. He's truly man and truly God, verily God, verily man.

I understand that. But when I talk about Jesus dying, that is historical fact, right?

That's why I love in the creeds, crucified under Pontius Pilate. And when you go to Israel and you go to Caesarea by the sea and there's that stone that in Latin, it's got

Pontius Pilate, some description that they found. That's a copy. The original's in Jerusalem in the museum.

But you will realize there's a real Jesus. This isn't, as my brother would say, Narnia. This isn't made up.

Jesus Christ, that's history. And of course, a historical person who's going to be our representative.

And then, of course, a substitute, does theological things. When I say he died for our sins, now we've moved into theology.

But there's no theology that doesn't come from history. So to talk about the historical

Jesus, not in a liberal perspective where, oh, he was only a man, but the historical

Jesus has to be talked about. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.

That's history. And Machen would say, he loved me and gave himself for me. That's doctrine.

But my whole, yeah, Terry Flood said, embellished equals testimony. I've never heard that.

I've heard of testifony. I've heard of testily, but I've never heard of testimony.

Terry, you should come visit the NoCo Studio sometime. Or you should come to Cleveland to pick me up at the airport sometime, and I'll turn you down.

Oh, the stories we tell, the tales that are told.

Anyway, I think I'm supposed to be back in April or something like that, into Ohio, if you're allowed to travel, if there's no secession by then.

What's going to happen on Monday? That'll be interesting. Anyway, my name's Mike Abendroth with this No Compromise Radio.

Here's the theme today. The theme is, I'd like you to continue to sit underneath preaching that talks about Jesus.

If you're a preacher, you talk about Jesus. If you have to pick different things on the internet to listen to your favorite preachers online, make sure they're people that talk about the

Lord Jesus. Regularly read your Gospels. That's what I try to do, is regularly read my

Gospels, the Gospels. I read from the Bible certain sections, and I have kind of a theme, and I'm reading

Nahum and Exodus and other things for Sunday. But I regularly go to the Gospels, and I love

Matthew 8, 9, and 10. I love John 6 through 10. It's just refreshing to read

Luke chapter 5. Just read them over and over and over. Read a section for 30 days in a row to get to know who the

Savior is. Matter of fact, he's going to be the center of heaven, so you might as well get used to it, right? The Lamb standing as if slain.

Here's the God who loved me and gave himself for me. My name's Mike Abendroth with this No Compromise Radio.

Tell your millionaire friends about the show. We could use the support. 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.