Who Caused Your Salvation?

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Who Caused Your Salvation?

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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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
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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.�
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.
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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
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Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
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Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Mike Abendroth here, Michael Lee Abendroth, that�s
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M -I -C -H -E -L without an A. How did I get that? Well, Mom saw a movie. I don�t know if she liked the movie or not, but it had a
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French director named M -I -C -H -E -L, but she always called me Michael, so it�s not Michelle, although when
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I was in fourth grade, �I know that I�m not very good at pronouncing names, but please say present when
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I announce your name, Michelle Haferhoff.� Oh, my buddies love that. My guy friends, they love that.
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And pretty much had to run from that. I was emotionally scarred my whole life, so I got to college and then
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I had a season pass for the Nebraska Cornhuskers, and I went to most games, but once in a while I couldn�t go to a game.
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And they had, I think, something like blue tickets for men, they didn�t have your picture on there, and red for ladies.
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If you were a student, a lady student, you had the red.
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Well, I could now sell my ticket, it said M -I -C -H -E -L. I could sell it to either men or women, so that kind of made it nice, but I ended up going to most games.
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My daughter recently said, �Mike�, she didn�t say Mike, she said Michelle. She said, �Dad, did you like going to the football games?
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Wasn�t it fun to be at the University of Nebraska to go to the games ?� I said, �You know what, honey? It was great fun.�
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Sadly, I was an unbeliever, and sadly that was like the only fun I had at the school. Now you go to dorms, besides co -ed everything crazy, sex parties, weird things, now they try to make them really nice, you know, to try to get your 50 grand a year, or 40 grand a year, or whatever, and lounges, and the union, and everything else, and campuses, and the slop we got for food, it was crazy, crazy, forget you.
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Well, if you ever hear the word �henno�, it just means Grandma Nona, 5533836, area code 402.
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I wonder if I called that number, who I would get now, she would answer the phone, �henno.� So now when I think about theological �hello ,� it�s a theological �henno.�
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If you want to write me, info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. We don�t really have any announcements.
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I�m really trying to slash the prices. More than half price on the books if you buy a bunch.
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Sexual fidelity and things that go bump in the church, if you want those.
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Sexual fidelity is great for men�s group, great for dads. What do you do with kids, you know, 12, 13 years old, as you get ready to have the talk with them, or whatever age you think is appropriate.
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Usually younger is better these days in the digital age, and then things that go bump in the church, great book for new members� classes.
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You just hand out. What we do at our church is we�ll pick a book, and then when they become a new member, we give them a free book.
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Anyway, that might be an option. Actually, our college group here, run by Linton Vadakadathu, he is going over the book, �Things
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Who Go Bump in the Church.� You can order them online. I think they�re $7 .99, but if you order five or more,
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I can do a lot better than that. So, anyway, that�s that. We�re talking about Jesus and how
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He is the source of salvation. Hebrews 5, verse 9.
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And this is June 7th today in real time in our studios in beautiful downtown
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Burbank. And yesterday was my 29th anniversary. I asked
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Kim to marry me May 6th, 1989, and we got married on June 6th,
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D -Day, 1989. One month we were engaged.
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That's a veritable tornado, tsunami. Trying to get the dress, trying to get the ring.
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I think I got the ring the day before we finally came in after it was set and everything else. Got the dress,
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I think, the day before Kim did. And then we drove from L .A. She was living in Brentwood.
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I was living in North Hollywood, just bought a new house there. And then we drove up to Santa Cruz and got married at what used to be
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First Baptist Scotts Valley. That's just north of Santa Cruz there.
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And now it's called Gateway. My foster father -in -law, Glennon Colwell, who died last year, he officiated, and there was about six people there.
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I was super nervous. If you've ever seen broadcast news, you'll know
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I'm just sweating like that. And we got married on June 6th.
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And what'd we do? I don't know what we did. Twenty -nine years later, wow.
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She is definitely the brains behind the whole thing. I mean, it's so funny. I'll criticize egalitarians.
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I'll criticize that Dallas Seminary Kat Armstrong awful video.
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I will say things about Beth Moore and where's Beth Moore's husband. I'll say things about, you know, just this capitulation of men for egalitarian stance and feminism and women preachers and everything else.
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Women deaconess deal with Kathy Keller, GA, you know,
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Presbyterian General Assembly, and the nuances there and the overtures and where I think it's going.
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And I'll make, you know, criticisms about that. And people, I'm sure, think
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I'm mean. They think I'm, you know, male fragility, like there's white fragility.
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You know, male frailty, like there's white frailty. And they think that I'm a misogynist, that I'm patriarchal, that I'm, you know, slamming ladies.
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And the funny thing is, they never have met my wife. Well, funny thing is, they've never met me either.
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I probably even listened to a sermon. If you only know me through NOCO, you don't really know me. Listen to the sermons.
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That's the bulk of the ministry is proclaiming Christ Jesus, Him we proclaim. That's what we're all about here.
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This is just an avenue for me to talk and get these things off my proverbial chest so I don't have to do it on Sundays, every
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Sunday, like probably I used to. But anyway, they've never met
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Kim. And I will have Kim on. I'm still working on that. I know some folks have asked for Kim on.
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I said I'd do it. I'm still trying to finagle. I don't know the etymology for finagle. But I do know that if you met
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Kim, she would not tell you my faults. I mean, if forced at gunpoint, she would, but she would not say that I'm a misogynist and that I hate ladies or anything like that.
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I mean, my relationship with my mother was excellent, with her, essentially mother, grandmother who raised her was excellent.
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I have a wife, obviously Kim, three daughters, son.
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I don't hate women at all. And a lot of the ideas I get, like the name of the show, it's from Kim.
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Kim's the one. She's the one who egged me on. When it comes to certain books and other things and ideas and format of the show and everything, that's all
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Kim. And here's the thing, Kim has a biblical view of women's roles and who they are as image bearers and Galatians 3 and Christ and 1
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Timothy 2 and teaching everything else. She's a great Bible teacher, by the way. But if she said them and I said them, it's like, you know, today, if you have a white guy saying something, a black guy saying something, if Vodie Bachum and I say the same thing or Daryl Harrison and I say the same thing, well,
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I don't have the credibility, right? Because I'm not, I'm not black. It's the same thing when it comes to ladies.
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Anyway, that's that 29 years we've been married. That's crazy.
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I tell people all the time, why was it only one month engagement? Because if she really found out the real me, she wouldn't want to.
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But she did anyway, because she didn't find out. But the Lord knows all about me and He still loves me.
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That's amazing. So any problems you have with No Compromise Radio, you can blame Kim, basically.
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Oh, I'm sure she would say, honey, be nice when you critique the Dallas Seminary video.
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By the way, that was just so awful. It's still bugging me. It was bugging me all day to just see what they would put up there.
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What do chapel messages do? I've spoken at a lot of chapels, you know, this sounds bragging, but around the world.
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And I think, I'm going to give a charge to the men who are learning to be pastors and who maybe are part -time pastors now, are pastors and also going to school.
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I'll give them a charge from 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, something like that. Act like men, 1
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Corinthians 16, Him we proclaim, preach the word, show people
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Christ, faithfulness in ministry stems from the faithful one,
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Jesus, stewards are to be found faithful, Jesus is the author and finisher.
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I mean, something. I mean, there'll be a variety of things. I'll jet tour of Timothy, 1 Timothy, 2
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Timothy, Titus. And then now you've got Kat Armstrong at Dallas Seminary Chapel, and when they showed the video, mostly women in that chapel, and she's talking about Mary Magdalene.
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Mary Magdalene was the star, and she didn't have special, you know, undergarments, and she didn't have special shoes, and she didn't have any deodorant, and she was running, and she's given this great commission.
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And I just kept thinking of, like, ELO songs, Don't Bring Me Down, and Patriarchal.
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I think she's the wife of the lead pastor at Dallas Bible Church. Anyway, I'm sure there are some people there who are kind people.
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I know lots of people from Dallas Seminary, by the way. But in terms of an organization, an institution, a place you want to go send people to be trained, that's not the place.
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You're sending them to the wrong place. And from women professors, to the egalitarian push, to the ladies there in the seminary,
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I think you can even, correct me if I'm wrong, you can get your MDiv there if you're a lady. They just don't encourage you to go use that gift.
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But it is crazyville. We are gone, and all the big organizations from T4G to TGC to Nine Marks, Southern Baptist Convention, this gonzo,
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I mean, this is beloved, pour yourself into the local church.
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If you give money to any of these other places, I would just encourage you not to.
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I would be a friendly reminder to give them to your local church. If you've got money for Above and Beyond, and you're sending them to the
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Gospel Coalition or Together for the Gospel or Dallas Seminary or Southern Baptist Convention or something like that, you ought to just pour that into your own local church.
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And I know, of course, it's complicated with Southern Baptist, and you've got Mrs. Board and Lottie Moon, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but anyway, just dive into the local church and serve the
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Lord there. Jesus purchased the church with His own blood. The text there even enacts as God did, and of course, we know we're talking about the
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Incarnate Son, and He will build His church, Matthew 16, and nothing's going to stop it.
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The parachurch organizations, they come and go, and typically, they get liberal, and this show will air after the
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Southern Baptist Convention, and if it doesn't go liberal, this convention, it's just on its way, that's just the cycle of life,
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Simba, is Simba in the Lion King? Or is that Isimbra, that's the donkey name.
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And Fred, if I had a Joy Division reference, I'd give that to you right now, shadow play.
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We're talking today about me. My anniversary.
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We're talking about the doctrine every Christian believes, but pride gets in the way. That's the point.
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That is the point. Doctrine every
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Christian believes. What is that? That God causes your salvation. When you're on your knees praying for somebody's salvation, you really know it's true, monergistic, alone work, the alone working of God, mono, erg, but it's hard because we're prideful, and we like to contribute, and we like to think we let
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God, and we permitted God, and everything else. Hebrews 5 says that Jesus became the source of eternal salvation.
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What are the options? When it comes to how people think about evangelicalism, they think the first source is
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God. He is the one who saves. Or the second option is you did it, you saved yourself, and most people don't really think that.
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But the big one is the mixture. People love the mixtures. Now when it comes to mixtures, let's say psychology, there's psychology, there's the
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Bible, and then there's an integration of the two, which usually means we throw in a couple verses for fun and then get back to a humanistic, man -centered,
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Maslow, Floyd, Floyd, Pink Floyd, Maslow, Maslow, Freud, Skinner, Adler, Freud.
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Oh, where is my hairbrush? Watch that Beth Moore video. God's telling her to get the hairbrush out to go comb the guy's hair, right, at the airport, allegedly.
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I just kept thinking about that. Oh, where is my hairbrush? Oh, where is my hairbrush? Oh, where, where is my hairbrush?
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God saves, you save, or we have the mixture, together you do it, cooperation.
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And that's where most people end up in modern evangelicalism is the mixture.
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Now let's just think about this a little bit. Peter is writing to some persecuted Christians, and he says in 1
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Peter 1, verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy,
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He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
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He just fires up the praise. He fires up this blessing, blessed be
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God. And he is so excited, he wants to just celebrate
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God. This is kind of a, what we call a barakah in Hebrew.
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This is a Jewish type of blessing, and you're really speaking well of God's intrinsic character, as this one writer says, in His unchanging blessedness.
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Here's what God does, and He is worthy to be praised for who He is and what
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He's done, the Blessed One. And it is a God who is the
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Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy, not just mercy, but great mercy.
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He's got so much mercy, it's great. There's an infinite supply of mercy. How many sins does
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His infinite mercy cover? To ask the question is to answer it when you know how great God is and how
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He is to be praised. We need pity, we need mercy, and God's mercy covers all of our sins because of Christ's perfect work, kindness, good will.
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That's the Lord. Marvin Vincent said, this word mercy in the
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Greek emphasizes the misery with which grace deals, particularly the sense of human wretchedness coupled with the impulse to relieve it.
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The misery that we have and God's mercy that He has. And because of that, then
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He has caused us to be born again. Mono, sin, monergistic, synergistic,
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God alone, together we are born into this world as sinners, and God as a great
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Savior causes us to be born again spiritually through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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There's a connection there. Caused to be born again. Right, and that is through the seed, the
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Word, the living and abiding Word, according to chapter 1 verse 23. There's no such thing as a non -born -again
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Christian. The born -agains and the non -born -agains, no. And if you're in the family and you're born, you get an inheritance and it doesn't perish, it doesn't get defiled, and it doesn't fade away.
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That's pretty amazing. That's mercy. That's grace. That is joy. And since God alone saves, right, this is something that's done to you, then
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He gets all the praise. What if it's like 95 -5, you contributed 5, then you're going to pat yourself on the back?
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No. We did it? No. This is the same terminology you see in Ephesians 1, blessed be the
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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.
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In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, here's the response, to the praise of His glorious grace with which
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He has blessed us in the Beloved. Those exaltations do not say our free will caused our salvation, our faith caused our salvation.
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No. He's the one who causes salvation. He's God. Salvation is based on God's work, not man's.
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Not even your faith, but on God's work. Think about God's election, if it was based on something in salvation, if it was based on something good found in you, well then nobody would ever be saved.
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For by grace you've been saved through faith and that not of yourself is the gift of God. Not even if your faith is meritorious, that is even a gift.
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The focus even with our testimonies should be, I decided, I received, I believed, I repented,
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I did that. No. Put the focus on God. God saved. He was the source. What explains your salvation?
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Who explains your salvation? God saved you. God made you alive. God chose you.
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God predestined you. God willed you to be saved. Salvation is from the
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Lord, Jonah chapter 2. God saves by Himself, for Himself, to please only Himself.
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In other words, God isn't a deist when it comes to salvation. He just winds everything up and kind of lets you go.
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You respond. Back in the old days, they would stop a video on TV during a basketball game, kind of a
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Saturday before the game. They'd have a crazy foul or a crazy ruling, officiating controversy, and they would stop it, and they'd say, okay, now what's the call?
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You make the call. And then they would talk about it a little bit, they'd have the ref come out, he'd explain it, they'd finish the rest of the play, slow motion, and they'd say, now, see, did you make the call the right way?
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God chooses for Himself. When you see that word in Ephesians 1, it's the middle.
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He chooses for Himself. Right? And you go, well, I know. It's all about foreknowledge.
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God knows because He chose us. Really? Does that just mean foresight?
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That's what you're trying to tell me? Hmm? Calvin said, how should
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God foresee that which could not be? For we know that all Adam's offspring is corrupted, and that we do not have the skill to think one good thought of doing well, and much less therefore we are able to commence to do good.
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Although God should wait a hundred thousand years for us, yet it is certain that we should never come to Him, nor do anything else, but increase the mischief continually to our own condemnation.
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If God chooses based on what you do, that's not pre -determination.
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That is not pre -election.
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That's post -determination. That's not pre -destination.
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That's post -destination. He ordains you because you actually ordain yourself.
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That's not right. Foreknowledge, what's the Greek word? To know.
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It is to know ahead of time, to love ahead of time. When God sets
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His love on Israel, it says He foreknows them. This is synonymous with love.
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It doesn't mean just to know in advance, to choose beforehand. I knew you before I formed you,
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God said of Jeremiah. God gives faith. So how could
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God elect them on the foreside of their faith when God has to give it? That doesn't make any sense at all. Three votes count, the
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Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and they always vote the same. That's why it is not your hold on Christ that saves you, it's
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Christ. It's not joy in Christ that saves you, it's Christ. It's not even your faith, though that be the instrument, it's
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Christ's blood and merit. That's Spurgeon. And why did He choose you? According to the kind intention of His will, it pleased
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God. It's all of grace. God has to change the sinner's heart.
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The average evangelical pulpit makes it seem like it's all up to you and you have the power to do it.
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Yes, you are responsible, but you don't have the power. That's why you cry out, have mercy upon me, the sinner.
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That's the Luke 18. That's the real response. When you hear this sound, that means I'm putting the cover on my iPad mini, my iPad mini 4.
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If you're a Christian, there's only one reason you're a Christian, God made you one, and therefore you ought to praise Him and thank
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Him, and He knew all your sins, He paid for them anyway. Kim did not know how many times
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I would sin against her, yet she said yes, because ignorance is bliss. What if she knew?
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I wonder if she would have said yes, but God knows, and He said yes. Why? Because of His great love with which
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He loved me and all who would believe. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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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.
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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.
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You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.