Making a decision

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.

We're here to take your calls as well. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio. My name is Mike Abendroth. Today is Friday, September 18th. In a No Compromise style, it's called Mystery Friday.

Biblical Decision Making and the Danger of Subjective Guidance

And I don't know if it's too mysterious today. I wanted to follow up on church discipline in our discussion that if you're not doing church discipline in your church, you're not really a church. But yesterday, I began to talk about decisions and making decisions.

How do we make a decision today? What does God say to us? What if God told you to stop reading your Bible? What would you say to that? What if somebody came to you and said, God led me not to preach? I remember one time, 12 years ago, when I moved to Massachusetts, I liked to ask pastors what they like to preach on or what they're preaching through now currently, verse by verse, which book of the Bible?

And a pastor told me, well, last Sunday, God led me not to preach. We wanted to sing some extra songs, and I thought to myself, God never leads us contrary to His word. In 2 Timothy 4, verse 2, the Bible says, preach the word.

You don't need to be led to preach, you are to preach. Thankfully, that man is no longer in ministry with an attitude like that. How do Christians make decisions? It's easy for us to talk negatively about the obvious evils of seances and tarot cards and mediums and divination.

We would all say no to that. But lots of times, Christians come up with kooky, zany, made-up ways to make decisions. I think maybe they eat too much curry at midnight or eat some kind of strange Jell-O pudding before they go to bed, and they come up with weird things.

So today on No Compromise Radio, nocompromiseradio .com, by the way, if you'd like to get some of the podcasts, we're going to continue with yesterday's theme, and that is, how do we make decisions? With Scripture at the top of the list, what does the Bible say?

How to get wisdom, number two, from God, James 1, and then from other godly people. It is very good and godly to ask other people, well, what do you think about this? I can't see outside of myself, I'm living in my own self, and what do you think from an external perspective?

And then, what is your desire? And then if you have a desire to do something, you've prayed about it, you've read Scripture, just do it, but don't say, God gave me this leading. No, you're just to make a decision.

And so today we're going to follow up on this question that I asked yesterday, a Thursday, and that is, how do we make decisions? What do we need to watch out for? I reminded you yesterday that we have to be careful when it comes to impressions.

God gave me an impression, a Bill Gothard check-in-your-spirit type of thing, or Henry Blackaby experiencing God. God speaks to us by means of impressions. And we said yesterday, impressions are fallen and fallible, and we can't trust our hearts.

Secondly, we looked at yesterday, well, God led me. God led me to do something, and we want to put a divine stamp of approval on our behavior. Instead of saying, God led me, why don't you just make a decision?

Of course, God led you up to this point, but I'm talking about future decisions. God's leading me to make this decision in the future. Let's be careful how we talk. Number three, I had a peace about it.

I really had an easy, peaceful feeling. And we have to be careful that feelings are basically the result of what we should do, not the initiator. For instance, Proverbs 29, 18, happy is he who keeps the law.

Obey the scriptures and you become happy. Happy is not the one who goes by their feelings. We have to be very, very careful that we avoid making the mistake of putting feelings as the engine or the caboose of our lives.

We also looked at, well, God told me. God said something to me, and it's really found especially in prayer. People say, well, I'm listening to God in prayer. William Blackaby said in Experiencing God, page 144, when God speaks to you through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, the church, or in some other way, he has a purpose in mind for your life.

God does not speak in prayer. You speak to God in prayer. God speaks to you through his word, Hebrews chapter one, in these last days. God speaks to us through his son. And then, of course, his son has his apostolic messengers.

Don't go around saying God said. Why don't you just say, I decided, I sought out scripture, I sought out wisdom, and I just need to make a decision. Quakers were the ones who did believe something crazy.

They thought that you could not have any firsthand knowledge of God except that which was experienced. And they believed that the inward revealed experience of God was God's spirit. George Fox was a man who talked about the teacher within.

We believe in depravity. We believe in the fall. We believe that we can't trust ourselves, so we have to go to a higher authority. The scriptures, we never want to say, well, the Bible tells me to listen to my inner voice.

No, we are to discern, yes, but we are not to discern based on our feelings, but the external word of God. Now, the one we didn't talk about last time very much was God opened the door. He opened the door for me to go to this other city to get this other job to make $20 ,000 more, but I haven't found a good church there, and frankly, there probably isn't a good church.

Just because there's an open door doesn't mean you ought to go through it. First Corinthians, excuse me, Second Corinthians chapter two, verses 12 and 13. Second Corinthians two, 12 and 13. Paul had a wide open door for ministry in Troas, but he didn't go through it.

He didn't make a decision based on that and somehow say, this is God opening the door, therefore I must go through. Maybe God opened the door, but you should say to yourself, I probably ought not to go through that door.

Paul went to Macedonia instead. Just because a door's open doesn't mean you should walk through it. It could be a test. You could be saying to yourself, well, I think my pride and I think my greediness wants to go for it.

You can't say, well, God told me to do that. God opened the door. One man said, serendipity does not always equal divine approval. God reveals himself to us from the outside. There are two basic religions in the world.

God revealed himself from the outside, and that religion is Christianity, biblical religion. And the other one is God speaks to us from the inside, subjective, internal, mystical. You ought to read a little article on the internet by B .B. Warfield, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield.

He was a man who was a seminary professor in Princeton. Lightning hit his wife on their honeymoon and she was an invalid the rest of her life and he cared for her. And Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield wrote a little booklet called Mysticism and Christianity.

And he said this, revealed religion comes to man from without. It is imposed upon him from a source superior to his own spirit. The unrevealed religions, on the other hand, flow from no higher source than the human spirit itself.

They are all, in other words, natural religions in contradistinction to the one supernatural religion which God has made. We see this in our day to day pantheism and new age theology somehow speaking from within.

We don't want to do that. Evangelical Christianity, Bible Christianity interprets all experience, all subjectivism by the external revelation of God once and for all delivered to us in the scriptures.

He is the one through his scriptures who guides us and directs us and corrects us. Warfield said there is nothing more important in the age in which we live than to bear constantly in mind that all the Christianity of Christianity rests precisely on external authority.

In other words, Christianity's bedrock is found in we have an external authority that can be trusted. Don't trust yourself. My daughter is going to Awana and they have Bible verses to memorize and so how do you get kids to memorize verses?

Well, we were going over Proverbs 17, verse nine yesterday and I said, get out a piece of chalk and let's go to the driveway and let's write this out about the heart is deceitful and the heart is desperately wicked and how we can't know about that.

You know, it's deceitful above all else and who can know it? And so we wrote it with chalk all the way down our really long driveway and I was thinking to myself, I wonder what the neighbors are thinking as they see this girl talking about how her heart is black as we used to teach the kids when they were little.

We need to trust God when we need to make decisions. God hasn't told you, look for impressions, look for signs. I'm going to speak to you. He says, trust in me and make your decisions. That is the short answer to decision-making.

Scripture, wisdom, desire, trusting the providence of God. When people say God told me to do something, that is basically code for this. I want to do X, Y, and Z. I've decided to do X, Y, and Z and I want God's stamp of approval on it.

Don't do that. Mike Feazell said something interesting. Quote, wouldn't it be nice to enjoy the godly freedom to say, Lord, I've got several paths before me and based on all the facts as I understand them, here's what I think I should probably do.

Please have mercy on me as I enter into this because as you well know, Lord, I am often a moron. I know that in my need, you have always been there and I know you'll see me through this too. Just don't let the bumps be too hard this time.

If there's something I'm missing here, Lord, would you show me before it's too late? If I miss the cue, then I say it again, please have mercy on me, a sinner and a frequent dumbbell. And one more thing, Lord, if this is a trap door instead of an open door, would you mind not letting go of my hand until I get back to where I ought to be?

Thank you, in Jesus' name, amen. How freeing. Mike Feazell has got that right. Make a decision. Consult scripture, ask for wisdom, and then make a decision. 2 Corinthians chapter nine, people gave money based on choice.

They just decided. People traveled to one country or town or another just based on their own individual choice. 1 Corinthians chapter 16, Acts chapter 20, people ate certain kinds of food based on their own decisions.

They didn't need to have God open the door. Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians chapter eight. Romans 14 also talks about observance or non-observance of holy days based up to the person's own decision. Marriage is the same way.

Why don't you just find a godly spouse, a lady, if you're a man, and ask her to marry you, and then trust in the Lord instead of asking for some kind of sign. I think what really we need here is a fresh study on the sufficiency, the certainty, the surety, the reliability of the word of God.

If we don't think the word is that sufficient, then we'll look towards other things like impressions and feelings. That's exactly what we'll do. I'd like to say to the audience that's listening, there's a one-to-one correspondence here, I believe.

And here's the correspondence. The more you look toward peace about it, door open, door close, impression, God said, God's leading me, the more you deny the sufficiency of the word of God. The more you embrace the sufficiency and the reliability and the certainty and the surety of the word of God, the less you'll have to use these other man-made crutches.

2 Peter 1 .3 declares that God has granted to us everything we need pertaining to life and godliness. He has not shipped us out on some kind of boat that doesn't have a life raft and doesn't have supplies and everything else.

We have the word of God, which braces us for every possible contingency in this life. 2 Timothy 3 .16, Paul says to the elder Timothy, all scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God code for the preacher.

That's what the Old Testament called the preacher, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for almost every good work. No, for every good work. We have a sufficient word. In my ministry, and I'm not all-knowing and I'm not all-seeing, but most of the time, people that respond with the impressions and peace about it and open door, closed door, those are the ones that know the Bible the least.

And so I just want to encourage everyone, today's a good day to start trying to understand the Bible better instead of being a mystic. Psalm 19, verse seven, the law of Yahweh, the covenant-keeping name for God himself, his personal name.

The law of this God, Yahweh, is perfect restoring the soul. God's law, his teaching, his Torah, his instruction, his rule book for us, his instruction for us is what? Perfect. It is complete. It doesn't lack anything.

It's all sided. It is whole. We don't say to ourselves, yes, but God doesn't understand the 20th century technology, 21st century, all that. No, it is a complete, perfect law. It is sound. It is in accord with truth and integrity.

This is a term, perfect, that is also used for sacrifices. Flawless, spotless animals were the right kind of sacrifices. And we have a flawless, spotless word of God. No blemishes, not lacking anything.

We can't say that about our hearts, can we? Spotted, full of blemishes. That's why Psalm 19 goes on to say, these words of instruction from God are more desirable than gold. Yes, than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them thy servant is warned. In keeping them, there is great reward. In keeping them, not going through doors and thinking about impressions and feelings. No, we have a sure, reliable word.

Mark 12, 24 gives us an interesting scud from Jesus. Jesus said to them, is this not the reason you are mistaken that you do not understand the scriptures or the power of God? You don't understand the scriptures, nor do you understand the power of God because they are linked.

And if you understand the scriptures, you understand the power of God. If you grasp the scriptures, you will grasp how God uses the scriptures through his mighty power. We need to make sure we're going to follow the advice of Jonathan Edwards when he said, don't leave the guidance of the polar star, the North Star, to follow a jack-o'-lantern.

If you've got to navigate in a ship and you have no compass, you ought not to get out your little pumpkin that you've got a candle in. You ought to look at the North Star. We are a sign-seeking group, and we ought not to seek signs in order to obey.

We should be looking at what the word says. One man said this, seeking after a sign, fallen man is actually setting his own sinful and corrupted reasoning up as the judge and jury. Fallen man, due to his sinful nature, would make an idol God of himself as the highest court of appeals and ultimate authority through which all information from outside world is processed.

This massive logical failure is in a direct contravention to God's commands for submission and obedience to his ultimate authority. You ought not to be a sign seeker, a wonder seeker, a private message seeker.

You don't want to have, well, God gives me an AOL instant messenger. We're kind of close. If you look back in biblical history, there are not very many people that God spoke to directly, few and far between.

You add up all the years and the decades that God spoke to people, and you will find that compressed to about 100 years of history, specifically in three different times, the time of Moses and Joshua, the time of Elijah and Elisha, and the time of Jesus and the prophets.

What's the theme in all three of those? The theme is this, that's when God was giving his word and the men were writing it down, the inscription of God's word. The Bible was being produced. And so you don't go around saying, God is speaking to me outside of the Bible when he's mainly spoke to people like Moses and Joshua, Elijah, Elisha and the prophets, Jesus and the apostles.

And you can't even show up to church on time and don't even use your spiritual gifts, but God is speaking to you. I think not. I think that's more pride than anything else. We have to remember that intuition is fallible and that revelation has its own category where God speaks to the apostles and they write it down.

If you take a look at church history and look back at those who focus on intuition and private messages, you are going to be find a superstitious bunch, a foolish bunch, a bunch that somehow got themselves into a lot of trouble.

We want to be careful that we are experts in knowing God's word. James 1 verse 25 says, but one who looks intently at the perfect law. Boy, that reminds me of Psalm 19, doesn't it to you? The law of liberty and abides in it, abides by it, not having become a forgetful here, but an effectual doer.

This man will be blessed in what he does. Would you like blessing in your life? Would you like God to bless you? Then get to know the Bible and do it. Don't sit around thinking that God's going to somehow speak to you.

Don't do that. Get the Bible, read it, ask God to help you live it, and then go obey it. The word look intently in James 1 verse 25 means to stoop down, to bend down. I'm old enough now, I'm 49 years old, when I stoop down and then stand up, I kind of get dizzy a little bit.

Stoop down to look at the word of God, bend down, it kind of costs. Get down low and look at it with a curious inspection with a desire to obey. It's the same language when Peter ran to the tomb of our Lord Jesus and he bent over and looked.

Get down low. Angels long to look into salvific things in 1 Peter 1 .12. You ought to long to look with a penetrating look, not some kind of snapshot, but with an x-ray to suck all the marrow out of the word of God.

There's a group of men hundreds of years ago called the marrow men. How'd you like to get the marrow sucked out of the word of God? George Duncan said, God does not reveal the deep things to the casual Christian who drops in for a chat.

No, we want to look at the word of God and we want to abide in it, to remain in it, to continue in it. That's the one who gets the blessing. This man will be blessed in what he does. Not even necessarily the blessing after, but the blessing while he's doing it.

Just like Psalm 19 that we just talked about. In keeping of them, there is great reward. Joshua 1 .8, do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.

Then, he says to Joshua and Israel, you will be prosperous and successful. That's exactly what James is telling the church in James 1. That's exactly what the psalmist said in the opening book of the Psalms.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of Yahweh and on his law he meditates day and night.

That's what we want to do. That's what I want you to do. If you've got a major decision to make, why don't you grab your Bible and begin to read? I suggest you start reading through 1 Kings. Why? You're not in 1 Kings, but you see God as he leads and he guides and he takes care of his people.

You begin to think about history from God's perspective. You begin to think that the world doesn't revolve around you and that you're here for God and for his glory and you want to please him and you should say things like, God, whatever you want me to do, I'll even go take a job to make less money if you're more glorified and if I can find a better Bible teaching church, money's not the issue.

All those kind of things. Begin to read your Bible and then begin to ask God for wisdom. What ought I to do? And then ask other people, elders, friends, those who disciple you, those older in the Lord than you are and ask them for wisdom.

But the issue really has to be at the bottom line. Do you get led from the external outside source called the Bible or do you get led by your inner feelings? Now you may say to me, well, the problem is God didn't tell me which job to take.

That is true. So don't say God told you via an impression. Why don't you say, Lord, since you have not told me what to do, I will make sure I'm spirit filled, I'm reading the Bible, I will ask for advice from other people and I will prayerfully make a decision.

That's what you ought to do. That's exactly what you should do. The Bible says in Psalm 19, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. And so you say, I'm simple, I'm a simpleton. I don't understand everything.

God make me wise. The scriptures do that. A simple means the open-doored. And so people say, I'm just gonna have an open mind. Simple means open door, open mind. And so if you have an open-doored mind, you let anything go in, anything go out.

Bible says you ought to have a closed mind. You have to have a narrow focus. You be careful what goes in there. You be careful what you let out. There are guidances to be had for sure, but don't turn into a mystic.

We don't wanna do that. The test always is truth. Personal experience is not the basis for reality at all. Paul, excuse me, Peter, James and John saw Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. And he said, I can't trust that as much as I can trust the word.

2 Peter 1, verse 16 and following. Well, today on No Compromise Radio, we did part two of how do we make decisions? What do we watch out for? In summary, watch out for ourselves and our own hearts and feelings, and make sure we watch the word of God as we read it.

Nocompromiseradio .com. We have the podcast there. We have an Israel trip coming up. We'd love to have you go to Israel with us in 2011. If you don't have a home church, we'd love to see you this Sunday at Bethlehem Bible Church just north of Worcester at 1015.

Nocompromiseradio .com. The church website is bbcchurch .org. How do you make decisions? Scripture, wisdom, desire, and not your own heart. God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us.

Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at 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.