Don Green Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and we try to be pioneers here at the show and try to do things

we've never done before, and we are breaking new ground, treading new ground today.

We have our first ever, well, if he does well, I guess he'll be our quarterly guest,

our regular guest, our first ongoing regular guest, Pastor Don Green.

Welcome back to No Compromise.

Radio.

Well thanks, Mike.

With that introduction, I feel a lot of pressure to.

Well, I'm thankful for all those systematic theologies in Latin you've sent to me, so

that you could buy your way onto the show.

Yeah, there's more to.

Come, if I can get more invitations.

Well, Don, I wanted to have you on a.

Regular basis, because I think we're kindred spirits in lots of ways, and you are in the

Midwest, Bible -teaching pastor, expositor, wanting to talk about the Gospel, and

I regularly receive emails from people who listen to the show, and they say, you know what, we're super thankful

that God has placed, at His good pleasure, men across the globe, across America,

to preach the Gospel.

So often we're discouraged, but now we're encouraged when we hear about men like.

Don Green preaching, so I'm thankful for your ministry.

Well, and the feeling's very mutual, Mike.

You've gone before me in many years and experience, and you're a guy that brings a lot of

encouragement to my heart with your own.

Faithfulness.

Don, I went to your website again today to just check a few things, and you probably know one of my

ultimate pet peeves, and I think we've talked about it before, when we have a website and

we're trying to get people to learn about the Church, there's of course nothing wrong with that, and here's who we are,

education, sermons, statement of faith, but the welcome pages usually bother

me, because they say something like, dress casually, we don't care what your kids do,

they try to, it's this kind of sappy, seeker -sensitive, postmodern nasal

kind of drain thing.

So when I went to your website and it said, welcome to Truth Community Church, and it said, we are a group of believers

committed to clear, uncompromising Bible exposition and the proclamation of the Gospel.

And you said a few other things, but basically it was, take it or leave it,.

We're about the Bible and the Gospel.

Well, you know, Mike, my approach on these things is, let's just be who we are, let's not try to

pretend to be somebody we don't, to attract people who really wouldn't be sympathetic to what we're trying to do.

We're not concerned about dress one way or the other, we just teach the Bible.

And if that attracts people, great, they're probably going to like our Church.

If they're not interested in the Bible, they're not going to stick around too long.

So it just helps everybody, both friend and foe, to get to cut to the chase and find out, you know,

whether we're a match for.

Each other or not.

See, I'm just laughing and smiling at the same time, because that is why I think we get along.

It has nothing to do with pride or arrogance, it's, this is what we are about, and we'd

love to have you, we'll be nice to you and kind, but why do the switch in advertising and kind of

duck and jive stuff, and all of a sudden we promote ourselves one way, and then they get here, and then it's like,

oh yeah, they teach the Bible, we're looking for.

Entertainment.

So let's be honest.

Yeah, you know, Mike, it reminds me of something that I've heard many times, I don't know who originally said it,

but what you win them with is what you win them to.

And if we want to win them to Bible teaching, let's just make that obvious that that's what we do up front.

And I know that's what you do, and it is why you and I get along so well, I think.

Now, speaking of your website, tell me a little bit about the 1689 and why you hold to that Baptist

Confession of Faith.

I know your background at Grace Church, and they have at the Master's Seminary, Master's College, Grace Church, kind of their

own statement of faith.

What made you say, at least loosely, we hold to the London Baptist

Confession of 1689?

Well, Mike, it was something that I wrestled

with before we kind of adopted that as a guiding confession.

We, and you have to remember the the origins of our church, we started as a brand

-new church plant in an area that had, you know, that wasn't known for

expositional teaching.

And so what we wanted to do was to identify historically and say that even though we're a

new church, our teaching is not new, and to identify with a stream of teaching that

preceded, you know, us by centuries, and to kind of step into a line of

historical theology and not simply be

identified with something from the 21st century.

We thought that was important as a statement that we're trying to identify with historic Christianity, not

simply be, you know, another new brand of something here.

There were also theological reasons.

I love the emphasis on the sovereignty of God and the clarity of the Gospel in

the 1689.

There were polemic reasons.

1689 makes definitive statements about Catholicism and

rejecting the Pope and Catholicism, and in our area where there's a heavy Catholic influence,

that was important as well.

And the other thing about it is that there's a real pastoral dimension to 1689

that speaks well to people struggling with assurance and helps them to find a way to know

whether they're saved or not, and so there were just, there were multiple reasons that fed into

that.

And, you know, we don't agree with absolutely every point of 1689, but it's

the direction of 1689 that we really want to identify with.

The authority of Scripture, the sovereignty of God and salvation, and that pastoral dimension

that I.

Alluded to.

Talking to Don Green today,.

Truthcommunitychurch .org.

If you would like straightforward, simple Bible teaching—I don't mean simplistic, but

simple—this is what the text says and means, and here is how it is relevant to our lives, because it is

relevant, it's God's Word.

Truthcommunitychurch .org.

Don, I'm going to start something new here in No Compromise Radio.

You know, when you're on radio, you have to have these little kind of adverts and catches and stuff like that, and little

segments, and so I've developed a.

New one specifically for you.

You're making me nervous already.

And it's called.

Pastor Don's Craw.

And so, that means there's something probably stuck in your craw that you've been thinking about and you've been working through biblically, you

wish other people would see things like you do, that is, through the lens of Scripture,

and so something's stuck in your craw.

You have to explain.

That.

So today, on No Compromise Radio, Pastor Don's Craw.

Well, the thing that currently is stuck in my craw is, I came across

an article about Mark Driscoll, and it's titled, Mark Driscoll's Books in a Mars Hill Ballard

Graveyard.

And basically what it's saying is, is that when Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill Church

went out of business, they sold their campus to another upcoming church, and

left the contents of the old church in the building left behind.

And there's a picture here with cases upon cases of Mark

Driscoll's books in the dumpster, specifically his book titled The

Resurgence.

And it was just a terrible, to me, of all of the hype that went into his ministry, all of

the hype that goes into his books, and people like John Piper supporting him and

promoting him.

And where does it all end up?

It ends up in a dumpster after the Church fails.

And it's just a picture of how we as Christians should not follow after the

marketing and the hype and the mega -bucks, mega -name kind of guys in our ministry, and just

stick to the text and be faithful to Scripture, be faithful to a local church, whether it's big or

small, and let God bless us through the means He's appointed, rather than loving the

marketing that the world promotes and tries to inject into the Church.

Don, thank you for that, and at the risk of.

Patting myself on the back, I knew Pastor Don's craw would be a success.

Let's talk a little bit about books and reading, since that would be a good segue.

I tend to read books of men that probably are older.

I'm reading the Sinclair Ferguson book on the marrow controversy now, but I read a lot of classical books as

well, and it just seems like a lot of the new stuff, you know, there's nothing wrong with reading a new book.

I mean, I write new books, but tell our listeners the wisdom to at least pepper

their reading with some of the classics.

Yeah, that's.

Right, Mike.

And it kind of ties back into what I was saying about 1689.

You know, when you read the guys whose ministries have been established, they've gone on to be with

the Lord, but you see what the fruit of their ministry is, and these are guys who have stood the test of time,

that were speaking to eternal truth, and that's why it lasted, rather than speaking to

the coming and going issues of their age.

I think about this often in our modern, upcoming political climate, that

guys that I respect still want to talk so much about politics and Donald Trump and what's going to happen in

the election and all of that, and I just know that that's just going to fade and not even be

thought about in a year or two after the election is over with.

And so what we want to do in our preaching today and our reading of men who have gone before

us, we want to anchor ourselves in those guys who showed that they understood the eternal

perspective from God's Word and explained it to us in a way that is eternally relevant because it's

eternally true, not based on shifting.

Circumstances of today.

Amen.

Don, when I consider your background and your law degree, and as you were

practicing attorney in Chicago for years, does that help you, or how does it help you

when you consider topics of the day?

For instance, I've got Christianity Today's new magazine, March 2016,

big full -page color ad for Baylor Truett Seminary, and it's got a person there kind of

advertising the school, and it's this person graduated with an MDiv 2012,

they're a teaching pastor for Grace Baptist Church, and it happens to be a lady.

So many people to me want to then argue that, well, women can be pastors for feeling

-oriented, for practical reasons, for pragmatic reasons.

How has your lawyer background helped you just say, you know, it's not a matter of any.

Of those things.

What does 1 Timothy 2 say?

Well, exactly.

You just kind of analyze the issue for what it is.

My legal background makes me want to prosecute them for false

background.

But since I don't have that kind of jurisdiction, it just lets you, you know, and I don't

really even think about it unless somebody brings it to my attention, but you know, just kind of that analysis that there is a

standard, there is a law, as it were, God's Word, and that law is what we apply to

interpret the right or wrong of what's around us.

It's not based on the feelings of men or what we think is right or what our culture is doing.

We just have to go back to God's Word again and again, and you start to feel a little bit like a broken

record, I guess, because you're just continually making that same point, but

that's what we're told to do.

We just need to stand firm on God's Word and trust Him for the results of that.

Well, if I had a Pastor Mike's craw, it.

Would lead into Andy Stanley's new sermon about how

small churches are.

Selfish.

You got to go for the big churches.

Don't even get me started.

I haven't seen that one yet, but

yeah.

What can you say to that?

What would you say to that, Mike?

Let me turn the table for the interview.

What can you say to that?

Well, I would say to myself, I guess maybe the most selfish people that we

could ever meet then are on the pages of Scripture named people like Jeremiah or Isaiah.

While it wasn't the Church for them, their ministries were super small, and shame on them for being so selfish.

I mean, that God would give them the.

Ministry of hardening, how bad.

Yeah, and really, Luke is with me.

He said at the end of his life, when Christ died alone on the cross, you know, that's just,

it's just so wrong that you start to lose words to express your outrage at it.

Don, I've been working through a few things in my mind for messages and radio shows and things like that, and I was trying to

figure out why people love C .S. Lewis so much, even though he denied

inerrancy, he believed in purgatory, he wouldn't have called himself an evangelical.

Lloyd -Jones knew that, and other people did.

C .S. Lewis denied substitutionary penalty at atonement.

Tell me if you think this is right or wrong.

We value style over substance in our culture.

It's the aesthetics that we go for, and we would rather, it seems to me, listen to someone

write things well than write things precisely.

So if we have to pick, of course people would pick both, but it seems to me people pick C .S. Lewis because he was an

excellent writer.

They pick him because he writes things well, even though he denies things that we would want him to affirm, and we'd rather

pick him versus somebody who's dry and precise.

What do you think of that.

Analysis?

Well, I think that's true, and I think it's reflected in what people gravitate toward in their preaching

today.

You know, it's all about style rather than substance, and I was reading an article

on a more mainstream leadership church leadership website

that was about preaching, and the guy was describing what changes he had made in his preaching, and it was all so

superficial.

I thought, this guy shouldn't even be in a pulpit, and yet here he is publishing writings, because it was all based on style

rather than substance of communicating the intent of the text.

That wasn't important to him, it was just about how he was going to rhyme or alliterate his

points, or stylistic things that had nothing to do about communicating the meat of Scripture.

And that fits right in with what you're saying about C .S. Lewis's writings.

You know, he was such a clever writer, and very winsome in his appeal, but

you have to peel below that to look at the substance, and as you pointed out so well, the substance was

not what the style would suggest.

I think.

Of Paul as he writes to the Corinthian church, and when he says in 1 Corinthians 2, I decided to know nothing among

you except Jesus Christ, and I think there's a kai there, and most times it's translated, and him

crucified.

But I think what Paul is trying to do is, he's showing that the word of the

cross is folly to those who are perishing, they think it's foolish, they think it's dumb, and Paul

is saying, listen, I'm gonna preach to you Jesus Christ, even the crucified one.

That's what you don't want.

There's no aesthetics to the cross.

This is a stick in your eye.

You don't want to talk about the crucified Messiah.

It makes you stumble.

You want signs and wonders and all these other things, and I just think, how can we

overvalue style, and then we look at the cross, and what kind of style is there?

There's no style at the cross.

That's right.

The cross was a symbol of shame and defeat in the first century.

It wasn't a piece of jewelry that people would wear.

It was where condemned criminals and traitors to the Roman government and vanquished

military people were...military foes were crucified, and so it was a symbol of

defeat and shame and ostracization, if I can multiply syllables

beyond what one word contains.

And Paul says, yes, Christ crucified, Christ rejected

by the world.

That's what I proclaim to you, and you know, Mike, I'm just...the longer I go in ministry, the more

content I am to be alienated from the world, to be rejected by the world, to be

overlooked by the world.

I would rather be identified with Christ and be alone in ministry than to

identify with the seeker -sensitive group that

draws a lot of crowds around them that are not faithful to the gospel.

Give me Christ, and let me be alone with Him over identifying with the world and its masses that reject

it.

Talking to Pastor Don Green today, Don, I.

Have in front of me that Christianity Today, they have a gleanings section and how teens read the

Bible with a survey put together by the American Bible Society and Barna, or as we say

here in New England, Barner.

And by the way, I was offended the other day, someone, when I was at the Naval Academy speaking, someone said, yeah, you kind of picked up the New

England accent.

I don't think I did, but I have no idea.

Here is one of these statements, and then I'll tell you what percentage of the teens agreed with it.

Here's the statement, and I like your comments, please.

The Bible's main message is the story of who God is and

His desire to have a relationship with the people He created.

So the Bible's main message is who God is, and He wants to have a relationship with people.

Seventy -five percent of teens said that would be true.

Well, that's what they're told in their youth ministry, isn't it?

See, that's exactly right.

Explain what you mean.

Well, you know, the youth ministry dynamic is all about, you know, trying to

entertain young people rather than teaching them the doctrines of God's Word, and if

I were given an opportunity to speak to a youth group anywhere, I would open up and I would start at Romans

118, for the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

And all of you that are in front of me, you are under the condemnation of that wrath.

Let's start there and talk about you coming to God in repentance, instead of expecting

God to come to you to give you whatever you want, to make you happy, and to entertain you as

you've been led to believe.

And, you know, that would turn off them and their parents, maybe, but at least they would hear the truth

about sin and judgment and wrath, so that they would actually be prepared to receive the good news of the

gospel that Christ died for sinners like you, and calls you to himself, to

allegiance to him as Lord, in order to save your soul.

Don, when I consider the landscape of New.

England in the 1600s and congregational meeting houses, Puritan meeting houses, trying to put the emphasis

on the church would be the people, not the building, so there would be a meeting house, and

there's no bathrooms, there are no Sunday school rooms, no, you know, pastor study or anything else,

it's just this big, square, rectangular building to try to keep you out of the New England snow.

And what did children do back then?

I'm not inherently against Sunday schools, I mean, we have them for adults and young people, why not have extra

education on the campus?

But what did those folks do back in those days, when there were no, I don't know, climbing walls in the gym for

the.

Junior high kids?

Well yeah, and you know, even just as I'm finishing preaching through Ephesians here, when Paul

wrote to the Ephesians, he said, children, obey your parents and fathers, raise your children in the

discipline and instruction of the Lord.

The very nature of what he wrote presupposed that the children would be there with the adults to hear his

instructions.

And so, you know, I look at that and say, they anticipated, Scripture expected that the children

would be present when God's Word was being taught.

And you know, I'm not a big fan, I'm not a fan of separating the children

out for their own kind of worship.

At our church, we like to have the children with us, so that they learn to respect God's Word when it is

preached, to sit with the people of God across generations and hear God's

Word as it's taught, and it's surprising what they're able to pick up even at the earliest of ages.

Yes, but.

Don, what does that do?

What does a crying child do to your TV show?

Doesn't that.

Make an interruption?

Well, when I get a TV show, I'll worry about that.

But you know, our parents have the sensitivity to say, you know what, my child's getting disruptive, I'll just

step out until he's able to settle down.

That's just a small...it doesn't even distract me in the pulpit, really.

And it's just, you know, that's just part of the overall dynamic that God's

Word is being taught to all of God's people.

Not that the little ones are covenant children, that's not what I'm saying at all, but just that, you know,

this is life, and God's Word addresses us in our lives.

Don, we've got about a minute or.

Two left.

Tell us what you're working on these days, anything with radio or blogging, or books, or

I know you're in Ephesians, what you'll be in next, just anything about your ministry as we kind of land the plane now.

Well, on.

Tuesday nights I just started a new series.

I don't often do topical series, but I'm doing a topical series titled A Refresher on Holiness.

It'll probably be three or four messages, and just designed to help people think biblically and

shape their affections.

Why is it that we should pursue holiness?

It's because of who Christ is and the purpose of our salvation, have

maintaining a pure conscience, the people of God, there's just so many things that make it critical for

every Christian, even those who have no leadership responsibility, to pursue Christ and

to honor Him and to love Him from their hearts, because our lives overflow and minister to the people of God that way.

Talking today to.

Don Green, truthcommunitychurch .org.

I know Don will not be offended when I say this, but if you would like blue -collar preaching,

that is, I can plod William Carey, we're gonna go through the text, and the star

of today is not the pastor, but it's the Lord Jesus Christ in His Word.

Blue -collar preaching, I call that.

It's truthcommunitychurch .org with Pastor Don Green.

Don, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio, I'm glad for your partnership in ministry and.

Encouragement as well as a friend.

Well Mike, it's the same way.

I often think about you and pray for you, and I'm just grateful for the ministry the Lord's given to you and

that you are faithfully discharging there in New England.

Thank you.