OT Prophets and NT Apostles

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. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is

Mike Abendroth, and we are a daily radio show, I think going on for 11 or 12 years.

Daily, come on. What's going on with daily? How can we do daily? Maybe we should do like, follow the lead of Pat Abendroth and Mike Grimes on The Pactum once a week.

But I bet even once a week for my brother Patrick, the weeks roll around pretty fast.

Anyway, I try to do three to four shows new a week. Mondays are sermons in 2

Peter these days. Tuesdays, Tuesday guy, Wednesday, I try to interview people, haven't been interviewing a lot of folks these days, and I think that's about it.

Thursday, Friday, who knows what you get. Oh, Friday's a repeat. There's a lot of shows. By the way, the non -Calvinistic ones where I'm a little less reformed, those are

Friday repeats. Those are the ones

I don't want Scott Clark listening to. There's plenty of room for deprovement though in everybody, so I'm thankful that I can learn and grow.

I am kind of, as I think back in my theological growth,

I think, boy, Bethlehem Bible Church, the saints here were very, very patient, very, very kind.

Oh, if I could only go back, but I guess that's for all of us, right? We learn, we grow. At the time, we think we're teaching the right thing, and I'm not talking about denying the deity of Christ or something, but just, you know, within the realm of Christian orthodoxy,

I guess I, you know, even though you believe the five points of Calvinism, maybe you're more

Wesleyan, Arminian than you would think, at least when it comes to sanctification. That's another topic.

That's not for today. No co -radio for today is Jesus is going to come back.

So what? Do I dare talk that way? How do you think in these last days?

What's your spiritual discernment, discernment, remember you used to be darkened in your understanding, and now we have an understanding that what 2

Peter wants in chapter 3, verse 1, is pure. Not adulterated, not worldly, not hedonistic, not materialistic, not uniformitarianistic.

That was a fun one. That just kind of came out of nowhere. You need to be thinking rightly if you're going to make it through these last days.

God wants your mind fortified. Remember people always say, put a hedge about them and give them traveling mercies.

What is the hedge? I know hedge rows, but what's that hedge about people? What kind of hedge are we putting around?

Put a hedge row around them. Let's talk about fortifications of the mind.

Keeping a sincere mind during the last day's craziness. How does

Peter the shepherd, who's been shepherded by Jesus, the great shepherd, the good shepherd, the chief shepherd, how do we respond to the grace of God in our lives?

We certainly affirm Jesus' eternal nature, the

Son's eternal nature. We affirm incarnation. The Son becomes flesh as humanity. We affirm that he is born of a woman, born under law, that he redeems us from the curse of the law, that he perfectly obeys the law in our place as a substitute.

He dies for us. He is raised from the dead. He ascended into heaven. He's seated at the right hand of the

Father, making intercession for us. That is his session, and we affirm all that.

The second coming, though, is a little harder for us. Most Christians, okay, we believe it. Will Jesus return?

Yes. When things are going really poorly in their life, Lord, please come back, right?

We want him to come back. And I get all that, but there's just something about Christians that, you know, when they think about judgment, and it's over, and everything they know, and every person they know that's not saved, judgment, fire, burning,

I mean, everything you own, gone, and that's for both Christians and, you know, unbelievers, but then just the judgment that comes with it.

We are thankful that even in 2 Peter, the comments about he knows how to rescue the godly.

We're thankful for that, because Jesus is coming back, and his second coming is a lot different than his first coming.

Jesus will return, and there's going to be fury, and your mind needs to be thinking rightly so you don't go off into emotion land, or panic land, or scoffer land.

You don't want to do that. He, Peter, says regularly, you need to remember.

I mean, Paul said it in chapter 2 of Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 11, chapter 2, verse 13, something like that.

Maybe one's just implied. Peter wants you to be reminded as well, so the fortification of the mind during these end -day craziness, he's going to go through what

I did for my outline here, five fortifiers, five boosters, five reminders that you need to process as a

Christian and think about when it comes to understanding so you can have a sincere mind that's not adulterated.

You'll keep a pure mind as you do these things, and this is not a how -to sermon, you know, how to do such and such.

It is third use of the law sermon. This is what I want you to do as Christians.

I mean, not everything in here is a direct commandment, but I'm just saying as a pastoral exhortation. Third use pastoral exhortation is like third use of God's law, and that is you don't do this to get saved.

You don't do this to stay saved. You do this because it's a good guide. It's wise.

It's smart. You know, God's law is good, and it norms us, and it directs us, and it guides us.

That's what we're going to do today, is keeping a sincere mind, number one, by remembering the

Old Testament predictions about end times. What does Paul say in Ephesians?

Well, today is Peter, so it's 2 Peter 3, verse 2, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets.

The scoffers are scoffing, scoffers are saying all kinds of things. Chapter 2, remember all the false teachers, and they're just running their mouths, and it's just blabbermouths, big mouths, or for those of you who like the

Smiths, big mouth strikes again. That's what happens when it comes to the false teachers. And Peter wants us to remember their predictions of the holy prophets.

There are unholy prophets, I'm making unholy profit, F -I -T, but here these are holy prophets, spokespeople, spokesmen for God, and they predicted certain things, and we ought to remember the

Old Testament predictions. Peter knows that Paul's writings, at least the inspired ones, were

God's word. He alludes to that, or directly talks about that in chapter 3. And he is talking here about the prophetic word.

He goes on to say, and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, and it's fascinating to me that he's putting apostolic writings on the same level as the

Old Testament prophets. These Old Testament prophets spoke before, they had utterances in the perfect tense, basically says these are permanent, they're abiding, they continue, they're not just kind of ephemeral, ethereal, coming and going, and only good for those people back then, but having no lasting importance for us.

He wants you to recall, he wants you to remember, pull it up, you know, random access memory.

You need a lot of random access memory here. And when you think about predictions of the

Old Testament, the Old Testament predicted that Jesus would come a second time in triumph, and he,

Peter, wants you to know that the Old Testament predicted that there's judgment, even though there's a bunch of scoffers to that judgment.

Did you get that? There's an Old Testament prediction, or many Old Testament predictions, of the second coming and Old Testament predictions, that there's going to be people running their mouths in the end days regarding judgment, that it's not going to happen.

Both the return of Christ and judgment were prophesied, predicted in the Old Testament by holy prophets.

Zechariah 9, and the Lord will appear over them and his arrow will go forth like lightning.

The Lord God will sound the trumpet and will march forth in the whirlwinds of the south. The Lord of hosts will protect them and they shall devour and tread down the sling stones and they shall drink and roar as if drunk with wine and be full like a bowl drenched like the corners of the altar.

The Lord is going to come back and he is going to protect his people and he's going to destroy his enemies.

Behold, the day of the Lord comes, then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations as when he fought in the day of battle and his feet shall stand in that day upon the

Mount of Olives which is before Jerusalem on the east and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west and there shall be a very great valley.

Half of the mountain shall remove toward the north and the half of it toward the south and the Lord my God shall come and all the saints with him.

This is going to be when the Lord shall be king over the earth and in that day there shall be one

Lord and his name one, Zechariah chapter 14. In general, you look at the

Old Testament and there are predictions of the Lord's coming. Now for us, it's easy to see the differences between his first coming and his second but when you are reading the

Bible back then, it would talk regularly about the coming of the

Messiah and sometimes we might not understand and it was misunderstood by people that the there was a difference between the first coming of the

Lord Jesus and the second, that is his first advent and the second advent where you'd see, you know, some verses there'd be kind of a combination of the two.

But it is true that the Lord Jesus is going to come and have dominion.

And you would realize very quickly that the first time he came, he didn't come in such a judgment.

I mean, he judged false teachers, he judged self -righteousness, yes, but this final day of the

Lord kind of judgment, he came to rescue the first time. He came to save the first time. He came to forgive the first time.

He came to have mercy the first time. He came to give joy. Think of the wedding at Cana the first time.

That's what he came to do the first time. And the second time, it's going to be a little different. And if you think of Daniel 7,

I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the

Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

And we have to remember that Jesus is coming back because it's true. The Old Testament teaches it. But also what was predicted in the

Old Testament was a judgment even though there's a bunch of scoffers, even though there's a bunch of people that say, ah, that's not true.

And then therefore we go, oh, well, this is all predicted and we can figure it out. Let me give you some verses. Isaiah chapter 5, woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with a cart ropes, who say, let him be quick, let him speed his work that we may see it.

Let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and let it come that we may know it. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

Jeremiah 5, they have spoken falsely of the Lord and said, he will do nothing, no disaster will come upon us, nor shall we see sword or famine.

The prophets have become wind, the word is not in them, thus it shall be done to them.

Mocking, scoffing. Malachi chapter 2, at that time I will search Jerusalem, oops, that's

Zephaniah 1, 12. At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and I will punish the men who are complacent.

Those who say in their hearts, the Lord will not do good, nor will he do ill. Malachi 2, 17, you have wearied the

Lord with your words, but you say scoffingly, how have we worried him? By saying, everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the

Lord and he delights in them or by asking, where is the God of? It should not surprise us that judgment is predicted, that scoffing is predicted.

We have to be students of the Old Testament. Well, not only that, how can we keep a fortified mind even here on No Compromise Radio?

This chair doesn't really work properly, I need a new one. It doesn't stay up, it just slowly sinks down.

I think I've told you that over the years. When I was sinking down, I was sinking down.

Luke is continuing to try to calm me here and we will just keep going.

Second Peter chapter 3, the second way to keep a sincere mind and keep it fortified against all these crazy people is remember the

New Testament commandments about the end times or regarding the end times. We can look at verse 2 again, remember the predictions of the

Holy Prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. Well, you want to think about unity of Scripture, a

Christian way of reading Scripture, we certainly get those inferences here. You want to think about Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles having the authority of God writing

Scripture. We could talk about that here. You could look at this double designation of Lord and Savior.

Jesus is Lord and Savior, He's God incarnate. But what's interesting here is

Jesus speaks, but He's speaking through His apostolic messengers. Hebrews 1, in these last days,

God has spoken to us in His Son and obviously through His apostolic messengers.

How does God speak? Well, sometimes Jesus, you know, on earth He'd talk and then now that He is gone, right,

He's ascended, but He left another one just like Him that is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is helping men, and I don't mean helping small age, but inspiring men, men moved by God as it were, as it was stated rather in 2

Peter 1, verse 20 and 21. This is an authority equal to the

Old Testament because it is Jesus saying it through the apostles.

He understands that. Now you might want to say, did Jesus predict the

Old Testament? That's wrong, I need to edit that. Did Jesus predict that He was going to come back with authority and power and judgment?

Well, yes, right, we could look at Matthew. But here it says the commandment.

What's the commandment talking about? What commandment do you need to remember in these last days where everybody's scoffing?

These apostles pass on a command. It's a command given by the Lord and Savior Jesus, and Lord, Savior, He's sovereign,

He's the Savior, it's not Caesar, and He gives us a command. And the command here is not, oh,

Jesus is coming back, I guess you could say you should be reminded of that, that's the command, remember that He's going to return.

But there are certain ways that you're to live knowing that Jesus is going to come back, that you're going to be watchful and waiting.

That's the idea. You need to be reminded of the command to watch, to wait, to be eager with anticipation of the

Lord's return. You must be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

That's the command, to be ready. That's Luke 12. Mark 13,

Jesus said, but concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven or the Son, but only the

Father. Be on guard, that's the idea, that's the command. Keep awake. Do you not know?

For you to not know when the time will come. It's like a man going on a journey, and when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake, therefore, stay awake.

For you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight or when the rooster crows or in the morning, lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.

And what I say to you, I shall say to all, stay awake.

That's what Jesus said, that's the command, and now the apostles, they say the same thing.

They've learned from what Jesus said. First Thessalonians, chapter 5, now concerning the times and seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you, for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the

Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, there's peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are children of light, children of the day.

We're not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.

For those who sleep, sleep at night. Those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet, the hope of salvation.

For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with Him.

Therefore, encourage one another, build one another up, just as you are doing." Yes, Jesus said, see that no one leads you astray, for many will come in my name saying,

I am the Christ, and they will mislead many. That's Matthew 24. And then it doesn't surprise us that Jesus, through His apostles, give the same thing.

Paul, pay careful attention to yourselves and all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which

He obtained with His own blood. I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

There's a command, and that command is, don't be messed up by these false teachers, but watch and wait and be eager.

That's what's happening here. And for both of these, we have to be men and women of the Bible. I know that's why you listen to the show.

I can't think of probably anybody who likes No Compromise Radio who doesn't want to read their Bible, or knows they should read their

Bible, or enjoys reading their Bible, or wants to enjoy reading their Bible. I mean, who else would listen to me?

It's like the crazy machinations of a man in a town of 6 ,000 people in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Where? But for those of you that want to read your Bibles, I want to commend you to keep reading your

Bibles, because as you do, you'll be thinking, oh, I know what's going to happen in the future, and this is going to protect me from getting involved with all this craziness and buying into it.

This is only tangentially related. Somebody came to me the other day, and there was a bunch of people in the hallway at the church building, and this particular person said to me, what are we going to do about the vaccinations?

There's all kinds of vaccination issues, and it's not a real vaccination, it's causing all kinds of problems.

And I said to this lady in front of the group, and I was nice about it, but I said, what do you mean by we? I said, if you're asking what do we do about it as a church, as leadership, as a pastor, what we do about it is we preach the gospel.

That's what we do. I have a great commission, and the commission is not to figure out

HIPAA laws, are things really vaccinations or not, what's happening to the placenta, what about fertility, what about this, what about that, what about that Idaho doctor, what about front -inch doctors?

What we, the church, is going to do is continue to preach Christ Jesus, because you can get the vax or not vax and still go to hell.

You can say I'm anti -vax and still go to hell. You can say I'm vax and go to hell. I have a different agenda.

But what are we going to do about it as individual citizens living in this kingdom of America, small

K? Well, you can vote, you can protest, you could not take the vaccination, you can sign ballots, you can do whatever you want.

What are we going to do? Well, what I'm going to do from the pulpit is to preach the gospel. What you'd like to do behind the scenes, because you live in two kingdoms, you can do whatever you'd like.

It's fine by me. And I think if you do read the Bible regularly, you'll remember that the commission of the church is the great commission given to us by the

Savior before He's ascended into heaven, and I want to stay on that track.

And I mean, I don't think vax, anti -vax issues are going to be coming up. When this earth is going to be torched,

I guess all the vaccinations will be gone, including all those who are vaccinated. Like others,

I'm not anti -vax, I received several vaccinations, but I reserve the right to say, you know what,

I'd like to have a few things tested before I get jabbed. That's all I'm saying. But whatever.

I mean, your body, your choice. You can do whatever you want. How'd I get into this?

Let me just say this last thing. You know, there's scoffers out there saying Jesus isn't going to come back, and sometimes that scoffer lives inside of me.

That's the bad news. So I need to have my mind trained, a pure mind, a sincere mind, without wax mind, a sun -tested mind.

That's what sincere is. So that I don't fall prey to my own heart, of who will trust his own heart.

And I need to long for the Lord's return for lots of reasons, but one is because it will demonstrate the just, righteous, powerful, faithful God who keeps his promises.

I like those kind of demonstrations, don't you? That'll be a good day. And if you're trusting in Christ, you're safe.

If you're not, today's a day to believe on the Lord Jesus, his life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, session, and soon return.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 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.