Christian T-Shirts

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.

Opening Banter and Christian T-Shirts

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order, always. Steve Cooley on Tuesdays. Buenos dias, mis amigos. Now, you were sick for quite a while and then out of town, so I think there were a few Tuesdays you weren't on, but when you interviewed Tony for those 16 weeks, I wasn't on either, so I guess we're tied.

Yeah, it was 16, 17 weeks, maybe, I don't know, it was like, you know, he earned his spot on staff.

It was nice to talk to him at the Shepherds Conference, and I don't know, I just wanted to call him the rifleman or something, you know, I was glad he was on our side.

Well, yeah, I do like his boldness. He's an amusing guy. I like him.

Love him. All right. Steve, I know that you're wearing this Christian t-shirt today, so I'm sorry to blast you. The Lord's Gym. I used to wear that t-shirt, by the way. Did you? Yeah. Bench press this.

Yeah. Yeah. You know what? Why is the phone, like, just going off over and over and over today? I have no idea, but I should just turn it off.

Maybe our staff is not pulling their weight today, you know.

60 worst Christian t-shirts ever. If you type that in, you can see some of these, and it's going to be hard to explain on the radio, but we're going to do our best. And so the front of this particular shirt, Steve, tell me what's right or wrong about this and how many you would order if you had unlimited supply for the no-co budget.

Here's the front of the t-shirt. I am.

I am. Okay. Right away, I don't like it. I mean, it makes me feel like Steven Furtick. Oh!

And then on the back it says, Satan's worst nightmare. No possessive apostrophe, of course.

Yeah, of course not. But certainly no arrogance there. I'm Satan's worst nightmare.

Do you know, I know that God won't allow Satan to do anything except what God permits, ordains, decrees. Whatever language we would like, right with Job chapter 1. But still, I think it'd be foolish. I think Satan is powerful.

I think he is cunning. I think he is crafty. And I think, I don't know, I don't really want to taunt him with a t-shirt.

You know what? If I saw that t-shirt on somebody, I'd just go, well, there's somebody who's humble in spirit.

Well, on the front, just I am. I am. That's bad. Satan's worst nightmare.

I mean, why not? You know, the fine print. I'm a Bible reading prayer warrior who's filled with the spirit and, you know, I am, I am, I am. It's all about me and my spiritual strength.

Steve, I think you're reading this wrongly. I think it's a reader response theory instead of authorial intent. Maybe these people mean I am Yahweh. He's Satan's worst nightmare.

Oh, oh, nice. Save there.

Would it be fair to say that as you grow in the Christian faith, you put off childish things like Christian t-shirts that are really bad? I think that would be fair to say.

I mean, really bad ones. You know, like I said, you know, the Lord's Gym.

Is there any t-shirt that you would wear that had some Christian slogan on it besides No Compromise Radio? Oh, well, there goes that one.

There goes that one. Um, I, you know, right off the top of my head, I mean, maybe, maybe if I, if I thought there was one that had the whole gospel, you know, uh, you know, just the gospel that maybe I'd wear that around.

Okay.

How about this one? It's got a picture of a, of a man with a beard holding the globe in one hand, legs spread like Jordan, but he's got his shawl on and it says Air Jesus, the ultimate high. Okay.

And, and, and above that it says, oh, you just that one there, Air Jesus, the ultimate high. Yeah, that's bad. And, and you know what? Here's the real problem with it is it looks like either Darth Vader or, um, you know, you, you know, maybe the Grim Reaper with a basketball.

Uh, I, I don't know how you figure out that a silhouette is actually Jesus or not. I mean, there could be a lot of, uh, things going on there, but Air Jesus, no, no thanks.

I mean, that is just, that is just awful, isn't it? Yes, it is.

Steve. I, I think I have a, I think I speak on pretty solid terms here when I say that Jesus never played basketball.

You know what? I think so. Yeah. Steve, isn't there language though in the New Testament that talks about clothing and sanctification? So isn't, isn't that really what we're doing?

I thought you were going to say, isn't there language that talks about crossover dribble? And I was gonna, I was gonna say, I don't think so.

Now it says, uh, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

Romans 13, 14. Oh, so therefore we should wear Christian t-shirts, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, it's the whole put on, put off thing. And so as you do that in a way of sanctification, you can do that with your Christian t-shirts too, because you want to represent. I don't think so. All right.

Air Jesus one. That's awful. How about the one that says heavy drinker on the front in big letters? And then it says, John 7, 37, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. And then Jesus says that just in case you don't know.

So you wear a t-shirt that says, I'm a heavy drinker. Yeah, that's bad.

I mean, because, because you know what, here's what you don't want. And this is so often what a Christian t-shirts do. They, you know, they want to kind of do the little flip, the little reversal deal.

And so, you know, you have something that would be obvious sin. That's the headline. And then you want them to read the fine print. But suppose you're walking one way and the other person is walking the other and all they do is just look and go heavy drinker.

That person is walking by you and just going, what a bonehead, you know, he's walking around bragging about the fact that he's a drunkard, you know, and that's, that's all they're going to see. So I don't really like that.

I mean, if I was going to wear a t-shirt and I don't really remember the last time I wore a Christian t-shirt other than No Compromised Radio, I would want one where people just kind of roll their eyes and go, oh, he's one of those guys, you know, rather than think, oh, cool, man.

That guy likes to party. Heavy drinker.

Sweet. What do you like to drink, bra? Steve, I will say that I guess I have more exceptions than I have rules because I have a wretched radio t-shirt and I wear that. It says wretched.

So now what am I going to do? I don't know. I, you know, those are kind of, those are shaky in my book.

All right. How about the one that says under the influence? Those are the large letters and then smaller letters of the spirit. I think the, the people in, in California there, those folks up by Sacramento, Redding.

Yeah. Right. They would love this shirt. Toronto blessing. Right. Brownsville revival.

It's so cool, man. I'm under the influence. It's so cool. I hope people would love it. I mean, we used to take people to jail for 11558 of the health and safety code, which is under the influence of, you know, controlled substance.

It'd be perfect.

Yeah. Well, then we can segue right into this Christian t-shirt. Join me for happy hour. Every, every Sunday morning.

Oh, that's just, that's grievous. And you know what? If I went to a church that advertised itself as, you know, come to our happy hour service on Sunday morning, I wouldn't be back a second week.

How about Satan got punked? No. Would you wear that? No, I would not. You know what we should do? I think we should, I think we should punk you. Satan, Satan got punked. We're going to put you on Facebook, Pastor Steve's face in a t-shirt that says Satan got punked.

That's, I really hope you don't do that. Yeah. These are really, these are really dumb. I mean, who, I, you know, sometimes I think that like 11 and 12 year olds must have come up with a lot of these Christian t-shirts because nobody with any maturity would have done them.

Steve, what is the livery of a Christian? What is the, what is the clothing of a Christian? The livery. Yes. Holy haberdashery. Holy haberdashery. Well, what do you mean? Like, what should we put on? Yeah, that's right.

I'm looking at Ephesians chapter four. The full armor of God. Well, that too. You put on the full armor of God. Perfect. How about this? Put on the new self created after the likeness of God and true righteousness in holiness.

And so there is this great metaphor in Scripture where you, you've got dirty clothes and then you want to take them off and you want to put clean clothes on. You want to put on the new clothes. And so we have, we have descriptions like that in the New Testament.

I think it's a great figure. You know, just imagine you run through the woods and you've got a bunch of ticks and poison ivy all over your clothes and you get home. I mean, the first thing you want to do is you want to get those clothes off.

And that's nasty. And put on some nice new clothes instead. And so why walk around in those old clothes of the deeds of the flesh?

You know, I think I can because I think I maybe used to be this guy. I think I can come up with a scenario where wearing those t-shirts might be where I would go. You know what? Okay. And that would be this.

If it helped you to avoid sin, in other words, if putting those t-shirts on would stop you from going to places that you ought not to go to or doing things that you ought, just by virtue of wearing that t-shirt, you would be ashamed to do different things.

Then I'd go, you know what? Wear the shirt. If you need that crutch for a while, wear the shirt. So.

Christian Bumper Stickers, Clothing Metaphors, and Hermeneutics

Well, Steve, when I think of that, I think of bumper stickers, Christian bumper stickers. And I want to put Christian bumper stickers on when I first got saved. I wanted to. But then if I cut somebody off when I had a fish symbol or something on the back or I know people have one of those, you know, the afterlife smoking or non-smoking.

But then if I cut them off, they just get mad at Christianity. But when I was a dope. But then that just leads me into don't many people say, you know, these Christians sin. Therefore, I don't want to have anything to do with Christianity.

That's just an excuse for people.

Well, you know, we're in Florida and we had the opportunity of being cut off by some people with fish and bumper stickers and whatnot. And it makes you want to just kind of catch up to them and go roll down your window and go, hey, brother, that was some really horrific driving back there.

You know, can we talk about that? But then you realize, you know, maybe the previous owner was a Christian. This guy's not. And yeah, maybe he stole the car. Yeah. And maybe he's armed. So, you know, guns for Jesus.

Yeah.

It's just like, let it go. Steve, I was looking for a verse this whole time. And then I just got driving. Know about Christians and guns. OK. And I couldn't find it. And the reason is because the ESV mangled it some.

And so it says in 1 Peter 1, thinking about clothing as well. And so we've got a couple of participles there, all modifying, set your hope fully on this grace brought by Christ Jesus. And one of these participles, preparing your minds for action.

That is the idea, Steve. But really, it's girding up the loins of your mind. Yeah, I remember that. Gird. Yeah. And so I like that, though, even though I wouldn't know what girding was in terms of the big robe and how they would have to cinch it up and pull it up before they'd run.

And, you know, you wouldn't want to fall on it. I just want to stick a little closer to the authorial intent. And I just, for radio shows like this, I need those clothing references. Well, prepare.

You know, that really is an NIVism there. I mean, they just went a little bit too far, I would argue, because you don't want to so take out. It really helps you think about what the original language was and helps you kind of walk through that whole thing.

And even by taking the word gird out of there, what it does is it allows people to think that it's all about mental preparation. And the initial imagery, as you said, was physical. And so it should point that way.

So, yeah, I don't like that either.

Steve, I was studying Genesis chapter 3 this week about the fall and Adam and Eve cloaking themselves with fig leaves after the fall. And there's a Hebrew word there for girdle. It's the first time girdle is used in the Bible.

I like that. Gird. Girdle. Griddle. You know, it all comes back to food. Tell me about what you ate down there in Florida. Did you do Waffle House and IHOP and all those kind of things? Oh, no. Well, you know what?

Actually, we did do IHOP.

Actually, I'm thinking about it. I was going to say, no, we didn't do IHOP. We did IHOP twice. And then I just decided it was too expensive. Went to the Waffle House. I like Waffle House more anyway. You know, you get those waffles.

Mm-mm-mm. Good. Two waffles for like, I think, $4 .25 or something like that. Come on.

I love waffles. I think my favorite all-time waffle was when we were in, let's see, what's this? Brussels.

My favorite waffle of all time was Joel Osteen, but that's another story.

It was in Brussels, and I had some real Belgium dark chocolate melted down, drizzled over this waffle, and it was tasty. It was only 19 euros. So good and so good for you.

Sounds very healthy. Steve. And it washed it down with a, you know, I don't know, a milkshake. Yeah, it was just drizzled.

Steve, I'm looking at some hermeneutics in everyday life, and, you know, we never do comedy or anything on Tuesday because it's the loud screeching music that gets the people.

We like to be calm, sparse in our humor, very austere in our thinking. Like good Reformed Baptists.

Yes. There's no laughing. None. You can't do anything to break the Sabbath laws except overeat.

Yeah, not even on Tuesday. That's right. It's not the Sabbath. Well, every day is the Sabbath, you know, if you think rightly about it. All right.

But we'll have no jocularity. William Sulick writes, suppose you're traveling to work and you see a stop sign. What do you do? And he said, it's all on how you interpret the stop sign. It's about exegesis and hermeneutics.

Doesn't everything come back to life through exegesis and hermeneutics? Absolutely.

But I have some worse signs, like the ones that say blind drive. And then I always go, what if you start at the bottom that says drive blind? What do you have to do? Close your eyes and, you know. Yeah, let's eat, kids.

Yeah, let's eat, kids, or let's eat, comma, kids.

A postmodernist deconstructs the sign, knocks it over with his car, ending forever the tyranny of the north-south traffic over the east-west traffic. Victory is ours. All right. I'll let you read the next one, since you're a good reader.

Similarly, a Marxist refuses to stop because he sees the stop sign as an instrument of class conflict. Power to the people! He concludes that the bourgeois use of the north-south road and, oh, he, wait.

He concludes that the bourgeois use the north-south road and obstruct the progress of the workers in the east-west road.

See, I had Steve read that because I can't pronounce bourgeois.

Well, and if you're going to say it appropriately, I didn't quite nail it because you need to almost choke at the end. Bourgeois.

Oh, see? Yeah, now tell me when it's Nietzsche, Nietzsche. You have your own certain thoughts about that, too. Why is that? What would Ted say?

Where's Ted when we need him? Because I took German and, you know, I had my German prof who lived in Austria for a long time say Nietzsche.

Oh, yeah, but he's Austrian, not real German. Right, right, right.

This is before the annexation. But he was instructing us in genuine, you know, German. So he was like, okay, because he understood the new, he was actually American who went to live in Austria and then came back and taught German.

So he is very knowledgeable in all the dialects and everything like that.

You see a stop sign and you're a serious and educated Catholic. What do you do? You roll through the intersection because you believe you cannot understand the sign apart from its interpretive community and tradition.

Well, I think the other thing is you could just blow it and say, I'll say 10 Hail Marys later.

Steve, what is that ash doing on your forehead? It's only a stop sign. I'll confess it this Saturday. You know, what's the problem? Fundamentalist taking the text very literally stops at the stop sign and waits for it to tell him to go.

Sure. I mean, that's a continuationist fundamentalist. Well, if you're wrong, I don't think Williams got it right.

It's a literalist, you know, it's just like stop. There's no other instruction, right? Yeah.

So you just stay there. Yeah. All right. All right. Now I get it. Seminary educated evangelical might look up stop in his lexicons of English and discover that it can mean one, something which prevents motion, such as a plug for a drain to a location where a train or bus lets off passengers.

The main point of his sermon the following Sunday in this text is when you see a stop sign is a place where traffic is naturally clogged. So it's a good place to let off passengers from. What does that mean?

All right. Pick another one. Make it funny. Put some Steve levity into it. Brevity. Some levity and brevity.

It's funny and quick. All right. Well, except for I could get in trouble here. An Orthodox Jew does one of two things. A, take another route to work that doesn't have a stop sign so that he doesn't run the risk of disobeying the law.

And you know what? That would be, for example, when they read the Old Testament in the Hebrew, they don't say Yahweh. Even though the text says Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, they say Adonai. You know, they substitute that in there because they don't want to risk taking the Lord's name in vain.

I think they say Hashem, though, the name. Oh, do they? Hashem.

Well, we didn't. When we were reading in our Hebrew class and that's where our Hebrew professor told us. Wow.

Okay. Well, modest Yahuah says Hashem when he gets down. Well, modest Yahuah is a poser. So I say that with all the love. You know, what I like about Steve is, you know, I have my authorities and he always has more credible authorities.

Well, my teacher in Vienna who studied Hebrew over at the Oxford University's extension class got his D-Min at Brandeis University. While traveling through Vietnam.

Or B, the other possibility here, other than risk disobeying the stop sign, is B, stop at the sign and say, Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has given us thy commandment to stop.

Wait three seconds according to his watch, then proceed.

Wow. That's kind of like when you go to Israel with us February 17th next year on the Sabbath, Shabbat, Saturday. All those buttons on the Shabbat elevator are pushed.

You don't want to do any work now, do you? No, there's nothing more annoying than stopping, you know, if you're on the 17th floor or something like that, and you have to go up or down and it stops at every single floor.

Steve, here's a question of the Sabbath. If it's, you know, most of the hotels there in Jerusalem have bomb shelters. And so if you're getting bombed by the Lebanese or the Syrians and you need to get down to the shelter, is it okay to take the non-Shabbat elevator?

I don't think so.

You don't want to be, you know, guilty of violating the Sabbath on the way down to, you know, the bomb shelter. It's better to die than violate the Sabbath.

When I first got saved, they had the Jesus seminar going on and the LA Times covered it regularly. You have a bunch of scholars getting together with marbles and every marble represented a different concept.

And so the marble that was red, you'd read a Bible verse and you'd say, red marble out, everybody at the same time, one, two, three, reveal red marble. Okay, that was said by Jesus. And of course, only about 13 of the stuff attributed to Jesus in the four Gospels was actually said by Jesus.

According to the Jesus seminar.

And then what happened was one day there was a particularly heavy earthquake. A gap opened the ground, swallowed all the marbles and they said, apparently we've lost our marble.

I could see where that was going. A scholar from the Jesus seminar concludes that the passage, stop, undoubtedly was never uttered by Jesus himself because being the progressive Jew that he was, he would never have wanted to stifle people's progress.

Therefore, stop must be a textual insertion belonging entirely to stage three of the gospel tradition when the church was first confronted by traffic in its parking lot. So lame.

You know, they took out, what did the Jesus seminar do? They took out all the miraculous, all the, you know, anything that had to do with holiness and they just left kind of the good sayings, what they thought were good, like love one another, you know, stuff like that.

I mean, they took the text and they did what all good liberals do. They ignored everything that was difficult or hard to understand or, you know.

Talked about sin or holiness or atonement. Yeah, any of that stuff.

And, you know, and then we're just left with all the kind of love your neighbor, hug everybody. Ruiz May Alcott-isms. Yeah, they love that stuff.

All right, here's a good one. This is our final one today, Steve. Okay, drum roll, please. Because of the difficulties in interpretation, another Old Testament scholar amends the text, changing the T in stop to H.

Mmm, shop is much easier to understand in context because of the multiplicity of stores in the area. The textual corruption probably occurs because shop is similar to stop on the sign several streets back.

That is a natural mistake for a scribe to make.

And you know what else occurs to me, too, is that since the sign is red, you're supposed to shop until you have, you're virtually on the edge of bankruptcy. You just keep, shop into the red.

And for those who live in New England who frequent Shaw's, Hannaford, Shab, Market Basket, Price Chapa, and then the last one, if this is true, it could indicate that both meanings are valid, thus making the thrust of the message.

Stop and shop.

Which is a grocery store nearby. Steve, if you and I were kind, we'd probably invite people who listen in the area, who don't have a good Bible teaching church, to come to Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston on Sundays at either 8 .30 or 11.

We'd love to have you, 307 Lancaster Street, Route 110. We're on the road to Clinton. Clinton? Clinton. Did you say we're on the rude?

We're on the rude. We are rude. Sometimes. But I'm glad we have somebody who wasn't rude.

Who perfectly obeyed and died in our place.

Mike Abendroth with Steve Cooley, No Compromise Radio. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com or Pastor Steve, Tuesday Guy, at nocompromiseradio .com.

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 10 .15 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.