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No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.
Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with no compromise.
Be resolved to believe what is in the scriptures, even if you can't tie things up in a nice tidy way. It is a, maybe this will be the most important thing I say today, regarding this topic, maturity as a Christian will allow untied things untied.
You can know when you're beginning to grow in Christ when you say, I know God's sovereign, I know man is responsible. How can those things come together? They can't on earth with our finite sinful minds, but both are taught.
The same thing is true. Who wrote Romans? Paul wrote Romans, the Holy Spirit wrote Romans. They switched off on verses. I get the odd, I get the even, you know, back and forth. Jesus is fully God and fully man.
How can Jesus grow in wisdom and stature and pleasure with God if he's already the king of the universe? But when Jesus was 29, he had less wisdom than when he was 30, according to Luke. How can you get your mind wrapped around that?
You can't. So when it comes to the sheer sovereignty of God, I believe last week and this week, I've given you enough verses for you to say, I know the Bible teaches that. God help my heart to believe it and quiet me down.
The Bible teaches other things about God's sovereignty, but this is true. Let me rest in you. I don't have to force mental closure. Number three, you should marvel at God because God's effectual call will not let sin stop God from saving sinners.
These are all related, but I'm making this now explicit what was implicit. Marvel at God because God's effectual call will not let sin stop God from saving sinners. By the way, if you have a loved one who's not saved, you should be very, very thankful.
This is true. If you have a loved one and you'd like them to be saved, sin cannot stop God's effectual call. How about that? Seems like everything's going to stop it. And when God intervenes, something happens.
Turn with me if you would to Romans chapter eight. I want you to see that if it isn't for God's effectual call, there's no hope. If you have a hard time believing in the sovereignty of God and salvation, your number one problem is I need to submit to scripture.
Your number two problem is you underestimate man's depravity. You think man's a little bit better than what he is because if you realize man is sinful and can't do anything spiritually to say yes to God, oh, he can pick the Red Sox or the Yankees to root for, but he can't say, God, I think I, I've hated you my whole life, but I'll begin to love you now.
I've hated righteousness my whole life, but now I want to love it. I've loved sin my whole life and now I want to hate it. You can't change your nature. So we need the rescuer God. And so take a look at Romans chapter eight.
Let me just make this bold statement. Man will not initiate anything toward God but hatred. This is the unbelieving man. They can walk people across the streets and pay their taxes, but in terms of initiating something to God, they don't have it in them.
Look at Romans chapter eight, verse seven, oh, that God would save such sinners as these is wonderful. It's marvelous because the mindset on the flesh is hostile toward God. Here we have this great chapter about no condemnation in Christ, but he goes back to show what an unbeliever thinks and does.
These are the people, by the way, we're leaving to themselves to save themselves. These are the people that were leaving to themselves because God's done all he could do and now it's up to you to make the next step.
God's made provision and now you've got to fill in the blank. God votes yes, Satan votes no. You cast a dividing vote. Here's how they're going to vote right here. It's hostile toward God for it does not subject itself to the law of God for it is not even what able to do so.
Those who are in the flesh, they're not saved, they're not spiritual, cannot please God. The word there for subject in verse seven, they don't subject themselves. They say this, you are my commander. The Greek idea has a military term.
You are my commander. You are my officer and I refuse to follow your orders. You tell me to take that hill. I tell you to take a hike. I'm not going to do what you say, how you say it. I will not have you rule over me.
That's what an unbeliever says to God. They're not able to respond. They cannot. Do you see the text? They cannot keep the law of God. They have no moral ability to do it. They can't please God. Why? Because they're united to Adam.
Straight jacket of sin, shackle to sin, bondage to sin. Brake will ask this question. Does man have some internal disposition, propensity, ability, or power to believe in Christ and to truly repent upon the external presentation of the gospel?
Answer, no. John 5, Jesus said, and you will not come to me that you might have life. But the effectual call, when God says, I'm calling you to myself, it works every single time. Did you know depravity will not keep your loved ones from getting saved when God calls him?
That is so good. Did you know a person's stony heart does not stop God's salvation? Because the text says in Ezekiel, I shall give them a new heart. Did you know the people that hate Jesus and say, we don't want him to reign over us, cannot stop the effectual call of God?
Top lady said, the person with power to accept or reject as he pleases must say this. If you think I'm wrong and you say no, but it is up to the person, apart from God. God's done all he can, and this is not him granting faith or giving repentance, but of the person's own volition, his first step forward.
He says, this is what you say, top lady says, this is what you're trying to say. No, thou does not finish the work of redemption, Jesus, which has given thee to do. Thou did indeed do part of it, but I myself must add something to it, or the whole of thy performance will stand for not.
Jesus, what you did on the cross doesn't count until I help finish the deal. Why do you think some people would say the manifesto of the reformation was not justification by faith alone, but it was what the bondage of the will?
Did you know the effectual call overcomes people being enslaved, having an enslaved will? 2 Peter 2 and Romans 6. Did you know that if man loves his sin, effectual call can overcome that? Listen to what Hep said, the will of man then is only free for evil, which he does freely and with pleasure.
So, the unbeliever freely and with pleasure sins until God calls. Paul's saying to the church of Corinth, you guys are acting fleshly, carnally, sinfully, you're called. God has called you. You used to be wallowing in sin and God said, now you're my children, you're my sons, you're my daughters.
You have been called out of that sin. Why run back to it? Did you know the effectual call overcomes the world's influence? Did you know the effectual call overcomes Satan's will? Why don't you turn to 2 Timothy chapter 2 with me just for a moment.
2 Timothy chapter 2, and we need to move on probably to the next point. 2 Timothy chapter 2, here's what I want you to know about every unbeliever that you've ever met, and this is what I want you to know about you before God saved you, if you're a Christian.
God has to have a sovereign, powerful, free love that finds itself effectually calling you or else you will permanently be stuck. 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 25, this is what we know about the unbeliever.
And Paul is writing to Timothy pastorally and he wants to make sure that Timothy is kind and gentle and always the teacher when it comes to the unbeliever. And so he says in verse 25, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.
Correct people who are unbelievers because maybe God will save them and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil. What kind of snare is on the devil, from the devil around people?
Excuse me, how does he catch people? Having been held captive by Satan to do his will. How do you take a person who runs around, who thinks he has free will, who's actually doing Satan's will, and then convince him by the showing of the cross, hey person, you're doing Satan's will, you're a slave to him, he's got a snare around you, and here's Jesus the Messiah, he can't really save himself but he died on the cross for sinners like you, he was raised from the dead, this is the only God, if you don't believe in him, you're not going to go to heaven, he's the only sin bearer.
What takes that person who's enslaved by Satan's will? Satan's will is going to say what? I hate Jesus, I reject Jesus, I don't care about Jesus, there's other ways. How do you make that change? The only way you make that change is when the triune God says, you have your eyes opened by me.
Think about it, when God finds people in the Bible, he finds them sinning. Paul, ravaging the church, Matthew, taxes from his own people, Zacchaeus, extorting. Number four, you should marvel at God because God's effectual call makes people Christians, not puppets or robots.
God changes the heart of someone, they had the stony heart, he gives them a new fleshly heart and that new heart says what? As I've said hundreds of times, that heart that used to say, I hate God and love myself, now says, I love God and hate my own sin.
How does that happen? Because God makes the person willing. I think too many people believe this with the sovereignty of God, that when God saves someone, he somehow drags you. I don't know if cavemen ever did this or not, but do you imagine a caveman and a cavewoman, Mrs. Cavewoman, and the hair is here, dragging.
Somehow you know, I don't want to go and God's like, you're going with me and I'm dragging you. What's wrong with that illustration? Besides, you know, some kind of evolutionary rabbit trail. Here's what's wrong with that illustration.
The person who says, God, I hate you, now is given a new heart and if you've got a new heart given by the Spirit of God and you have a new nature and you're a new creature in Christ Jesus, what do you do?
I'm not going to follow you, you're going to have to pull my hair to make me go after you. What does that new person do? Saul, why are you persecuting me? He's slain in the Spirit. At least there's one person slain in the Spirit in the Bible.
Saul is slain by Jesus Christ himself and now Paul says, you know what, I'm going to follow you. I'm going to follow after you. We don't say to ourselves, when God saves a sinner, he drags them against their will.
God changes the will and then the people come freely, normally, naturally, and willingly. He makes the unwilling, willing. Ernest Reisinger said, God's sovereign grace does not annihilate man's will, it overcomes his unwillingness.
It does not destroy his will but frees it from sin. Now let's just push the envelope because I like to do that and I think you'll listen. People are like, well, if God makes me believe then I'm like a robot.
Well then friends, you never want to go to heaven. If your theology is, you know what, I'll let philosophy determine love, acceptance, puppets, robots, and I'll believe like the world does, then you will hate heaven.
You say, how can you say that? That's easy for you to say. In glory, you will only be free to choose righteously. In glory, you will not be allowed by God to choose any sin or unrighteousness. I can't believe God would make people robots in heaven.
I can't believe he makes them puppets in heaven. You mean to tell me they have no freedom of choice to sin in heaven? The answer is, hallelujah. We have this whole philosophy that comes from the world.
How can God love? Who can he love? And you know what? If God says, I'm going to give you, you sinful person, you depraved person, you ought to go to hell, but I'm going to freely love you, give you a brand new nature, and now that new nature will say, God, I love you.
I respect you. I want to honor you. I want to give you glory. Then they call that some kind of puppet love. Forget the idea then of going to heaven ever, because in heaven, no free will to sin. You have a nature in heaven, and that nature will be a glorified nature, and that glorified nature will make freely whatever decisions it would like to make according to its nature, but there'll be no sin in the nature, so there'll be no sinful actions or thoughts.
Isn't that a good thing? Grudem said, we are real persons. Puppets and robots do not have the power of personal choice or even individual thought. We, by contrast, think, decide, and choose. Again, the Arminian wrongly takes information from our situation as human beings and then uses that information to place limitations on what God can or cannot do.
There's no kind of robotic, mechanical thing. It's I'm going to give you a new nature, and that new nature says, hallelujah, real choices from a real nature. Now, to close, I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 22.
We looked at a similar passage a couple weeks ago. This is different. I want you to hear from Jesus, and here's what I'm after. If you're an unsaved person, I want to preach the gospel to you. If you're a Christian, I want you to be thankful.
If you're a Christian who's struggling with, if God's sovereign, how can man be responsible? I want you to see man's responsibility in this parable of Jesus. I want you to see Jesus always affirm that men and women are responsible.
They're just not able, and that's why we need the second Adam to come along, because the first Adam, and we in Adam, fallen. Basically, the context of Matthew chapter 22 is this. Some Jews are missing the kingdom.
I don't want to miss it. How can we not miss it? And he gives this parable, and Jesus answered and spoke to them again in parables, saying, the kingdom of heaven, Matthew 22, too, may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.
Would this be a huge production? This is the king. The king is going to have a wedding, and the wedding is for his son. It's a feast. He gave a wedding feast for his son, and he sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come.
P .S. It's the feast tonight. Make sure you all remember. Please come tonight. I don't want to come. We're unwilling. By the way, that was like a statement of war. They can't say, well, I didn't have enough notice.
They've been given plenty of time. And look at the generous, gracious patience of this king, and we know who the king is. It's all a story about God the Father and the Son, and he sent out other slaves, saying, tell those who have been invited, behold, I have prepared my dinner.
My oxen and my fatted livestock are all butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast. Come. Forgiveness. Kingdom. Jews, come. He overdoes it. He outdoes himself. They don't care. He takes it up a notch, and so their apathy increases.
His generosity that he has is even more manifoldly expressed. By the way, back in those days, no cable TV, no Twitter, no Facebook, no Red Sox. You sit around every day and eat gruel one day, and then gruel the next day, and a little more extra gruel the next day, and now the king is going to have a feast.
And you can just see the picture, the shackles of sin, and the hardships of sin, and the pain of sin, and the eternal condemnation of sin. God says, here's my wedding feast, forgiveness found in Christ Jesus.
Come. Verse 5, just to show you how hard-hearted sin is, and how they're going to be responsible for what they do. But they paid no attention and went their way. One to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed them.
Well, God is not just generous and gracious and having forbearance and patience. He is also holy, righteous, and he has indignation every day. And the Jews that Jesus was talking to would get the picture because they knew Deuteronomy 4.
The Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. They killed his slaves, but the king was enraged, verse 7, and sent his armies and destroyed those murders and set their city on fire. Here's my free love for you.
And then now you do that? He didn't say, oh, you're not responsible. You weren't able. Then he said to his slaves, verse 8, the wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go, therefore, to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.
Look at the mercy of God and the love of God. Go get all walks of life. Forget just the Jews, just go get everybody. Open to all. And those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good, and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.
Now you're going to just be shocked. If you're listening to Jesus and you're thinking about what's happening, the next several verses are a shock, partly because Jesus is a master storyteller. The other part of the reason is we don't understand the culture of the day where if you invite people to a feast, they only have one set of clothes, and those clothes, frankly, are dirty and smelly.
And if you're the king, you have a feast, you know what you would do back in those days? You'd provide an extra thing of clothes, because you don't want to have people around you with all kinds of smell.
And so it was very typical of the king back in those days to have a feast, and then to have these day laborers who had one set of clothes, maybe two, here's the garments for you. Now let's read it. Verse 11.
But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw there was a man not dressed in the wedding clothes. He's conspicuous. He's smelly. He's dirty. I don't need the wedding clothes you provide.
I don't need Jesus Christ's righteousness. I don't need imputed righteousness of Christ. I don't need a wonderful clothes of righteousness by you. I'll come in with my own clothes, quite. Thank you. You provided it.
I say no. My own good, my clothes of good works, my clothes of merits, my clothes of baptism, I'll come in the way I want to come in. I reject you providing me some kind of clothes. Doesn't this sound like Romans chapter 10, where the Jews sought to establish a righteousness that wasn't their own, that was of themselves, rather?
And he said to him, look, pal, this isn't the kind of amorous kind of friend that you see elsewhere. He said to him, buddy, how did you come in here without wedding clothes? I provided everything. I provided the feast, the prophets, the people, the garments.
How'd you come in here without wedding clothes? And he was speechless. Just like Romans 3, every mouth shut. You come on the king's terms or you don't come at all. And the king's terms are Christ Jesus is the Messiah, and we can only approach the king through the perfect righteousness of Christ, the robes of Christ of forgiveness and repentance and righteousness.
He has no excuse. He's tongue-tied. What can he say? Now the same patient, loving God, generous, forbearing, says in verse 13. Then the king said to the servants, since you reject my son, Christ Jesus, since you reject his righteousness, since you want to come into my presence with your filthy sin, since you won't accept my free gift of Christ Jesus, you are responsible.
Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I wanted these sinners in my presence with my righteous son's righteousness cloaked over them, but they refused to come and they want to come with their sin.
So you find the place that's the farthest in my kingdom and banish them because I don't want to even see them. You force God's hand. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. You say, does this take God by surprise?
No. Verse 14. Now remember I said the call in the New Testament epistles is always the effectual call, but in the gospels it's the general call. And here we see that in Matthew 22, 14. For many are called, repent, believe, come to the kingdom, but few are what?
Chosen. God wasn't taken off guard. God's sovereign grace is free love. He knew the whole time and yet they were responsible. You can't say, well, God chooses and now how can he hold people responsible?
Because the answer is they're responsible in Adam and they're responsible to sin. Many are called and few are chosen. Israel, you rejected your Messiah, but not all of Israel was ever meant to go anyway.
Can you believe that kind of language from Jesus? Bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness. In that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I don't know if you saw Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Ever see that show, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Early 80s, I think. And what you have to do is you say to yourself, you know, it's an okay movie, except if you're going to take your younger kids, there's one spot or one bit of the movie that you don't really want them to see.
You remember that part? And you say, okay, kids, now would be a good time to close your eyes. And that high priestess was there and they rip open that guy's chest and the high priest reaches in with his hand.
It's been such a long time. I don't know if I have every detail right. Reaches in with his hand and pulls out the beating human heart. And you go, that's bad. It's horrible. I don't know if somebody read Hosea 13, but that's right from Hosea chapter 13 on how God, just like here in Matthew chapter 22, after providing the sacrifice, offering Israel, you won't believe me, you won't repent.
And then Hosea says, speaking for God, so I will be like a lion to them. Like a leopard, I will lie in wait by the wayside. I will encounter them like a bear robbed of her cubs and I will tear open their chests and devour them.
And so Paul says, Corinth, Jesus the Son has been devoured by the wrath of God and has been raised from the dead for your justification. Believe in Him. Look to Him. Follow Him. And to the rest today who aren't Christians, I have only one statement.
Consider your souls today because one day you'll stand before God and the provision has been given. The feast has been set. The loving, gracious God says, here's my son's death and life and resurrection.
Believe. Don't you think it's about time to stop kissing a cow?