The Great Commission and Kathy Keller

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 ministry.

Mike Abendroth here. Good to have you. We�re trying to record some new shows, some up-to-date things, not just sermons that I have rehashed, but those are good too, at least in my mind. I�ve got a little article here from the magazine called Outreach, and I want to talk to you a little bit about it today.

But first, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. You can also email me for Israel information, February 23rd next year, that is 2022. Still planning on going. I�m not a big COVID VAX passport guy, so we�re going to try to go without those.

We�ll see how that works. And what else do we have? My brother�s got a show called the Pactom podcast once a week on Wednesdays. You might want to go to thepactom .org. And of course, like usual, if you order Sexual Fidelity online, NoCompromiseRadio .com, you get a free copy of Things Who Go Bump in the Church.

Seasonal Church Ideas and the Problem With Christianizing Everything

I�d like to talk to you about some Christian seasonal ideas. It�s on page 28 of Outreach magazine. And you get these if you�re a pastor. You don�t even want to get them, but you get them anyway. I�d like some ideas seasonally as a pastor, what might I do in these days.

And so, it says, �Socially distanced fun. Would you like some socially distanced fun? Can you have fun being socially distanced? That�s another question, but today, here I�m just reading these seasonal ideas for Christians and Christian leaders especially.

Here�s the idea for socially distanced fun for a seasonal idea. I guess a season is spring, right? Quote, �Ride your bike. But it�s better than that. This is what all good Christians need to know from Outreach magazine.

�Since 1956, May has been recognized as National Bike Month, incorporating fun events like Bike to Work Week and Bike to School Day, both of which may be difficult or impossible this year due to COVID -19.

Nevertheless, your church can use the occasion to promote fun, pedal-powered exercise and to connect with neighbors. That candidate, Pete Budzicek or whatever his name is, Budzicek? I don�t know his name.

I�m not trying to purposely mispronounce it, but he had some armed escalades or something take him close to where he works near the White House and then they got his bike out and then he pretended like he was eco-friendly riding it halfway across the park.

What do we need now? We need special insight. Forget theology. Forget methodology. Forget doxology. We need some socially distanced fun for seasonal ideas for the church. Here�s what they said. By the way, I love bicycling, of course.

�Host a bike event in your church�s parking lot, tape off a course, turn on some music and invite kids to bring their bikes to ride in a big, open, safe area and have them ask their friends to come too.

Have bottled water available. You can also set up stations for kids to decorate their bikes with streamers and noisemakers. Yeah, but what do you do if you�re a roadie? Because the first thing you do if you�re a road bike cyclist is, you know, you can�t have things like reflectors, streamers, you know, that come out of the handlebars.

Remember those? Those were kind of cool when you�re a kid. You put some playing cards in your spokes. What else? I didn�t say this here, but I should tell you if you�re going to do this and there�s road bikers around, no spandex, please.

It�s inappropriate. It goes on to say, �If you are located near a bike trail, set up a water snack station for cyclists passing by. Have bottled water, bananas, and granola bars available. Oh, well, how often do you have special bike trails and churches nearby?

Somebody�s pulling up to the church and I don�t want to answer the door. Number three, offer free bike tune-ups in your parking lot. Have knowledgeable volunteers ready to check and fill tires, tighten nuts and bolts, apply oil, grease where needed, and do a basic cleaning.

How do I train the volunteers to do that? Here is a steam cleaner. Cycle stats, by the way. This is important for seasonal ideas. In 1817, a German inventor named Carl von Dreyes created a wooden two-wheeled vehicle that could be steered.

This early rendition of what is now the bike was initially called a Lauchmaschine, running machine, velocipede, or hobby horse. Although dependent on weight, speed, and time, the average person will burn between 450 to 750 calories per hour of biking.

That�s another stat. The final stat, and I end with this. Since the pandemic hit in March 2020, retail sales of bicycles have exploded. In June 2020, bicycle sales were up 63 compared to the same time the previous year and reached a total of almost $700 million.

I need that. Sometimes in ministry I don�t think of all the things that I could do, but it�s riding your bicycle. Actually, on a serious note, why does this need to be written? They�re just filling pages, right?

There�s nothing distinctively Christian about any of this. If you want to serve your community and you�re by a bike trail, or let�s say you�re by a long century ride that people are going to be riding and you want to hand out free water and Gatorade or Kool-Aid at the side of the road, fine.

I don�t have any problem with that as a personal choice to do that or as some people at church want to do it. I guess you can. But did you know John Murray, who was the professor at Westminster Seminary, also Princeton, then went to Westminster, and he was the one that received the letter from Machen, the telegram rather, when Machen was dying, I believe on New Year�s Day.

Machen said, �So thankful for the act of obedience of Christ. No hope without it. That telegram was sent to John Murray. And while John Murray didn�t really have a good covenant of works and I think opened up the door for Norman Shepard, all that to say John Murray would ride his bicycle in the summer in New England evangelizing.

Now if we wanted a cycling evangelist stuff, I think that�d be a good way to go about it. And I think basically what happens is we try to Christianize all these things. If you want to cycle, then go cycle, and then when opportunities arise, evangelize your cycle friends.

That�s kind of true contextualization. You say, �I�m an MMA fighter, and I want to learn jujitsu as well. And so you go to the gym, and you go to the ring, the mat, whatever, the arena, the cage, the octagon.

And as you get to know people, and you�re out having a bite to eat, and you�re having some food, then you�ll talk about those very issues as you have opportunity to do so. I don�t need to have specific ministries for those.

I want to train up people here at the church to understand the gospel, to understand how to articulate the gospel. We gather to be edified, and we scatter. We go out into the mission field individually without all these programs.

What�s your evangelism program? Well, that�s not a good question unless you�d like to know how we train people to be better evangelists outside of the pulpit ministry that strives to show forth and demonstrate and articulate how important it is to preach the gospel to unbelievers.

That�s our evangelism program. We don�t have a particular program where we say, �We�re going to do this, and we�re going to do that. Anyway, I just thought that was kind of interesting that we get this magazine on outreach, and it�s basically, you know, clean bicycles.

And since I�ve got this in front of me, I might as well discuss it. There�s an article that came out in the gospelinlife .com quarterly, and so therefore it must be, you know, four times a year. I printed this on April 1st, 2021, and it says, �The Great Commission must be our guide in these polarizing times.

Okay? Great Commission is our guide. And the article is written by someone that I�ll tell you at the end of the show, because if I tell you at the front of the show and then make fun of it, you�re going to go, �Oh, see?

You just don�t like these people. It has nothing to do with any of that. Let me read you a little bit from this article called, �The Great Commission Must Be Our Guide in Polarizing Times. �You tell me if you like this or not.

The Great Commission, Public Square Engagement, and a Competing Agenda

In the past, leaders expected the Christian church as a gathered community to bridge human political differences, to preach the gospel, and to help people come to faith in Christ, but to also set before the world a vision for a human community based on love� and here we go.

Ready for the word? What would the word be? �Justice, rather than a quest for human glory and power. Then the church was to send Christians, as disciple-believers, to be involved in� Are you ready for it?

�To be involved in the public square. Are you ready for it? �In the arts. Are you ready for it? �Media. By the way, when I say, �Are you ready for it that�s not in the original. That's my little comment.

�In the arts, media, politics, business� being faithfully present within culture. You could be unfaithfully present if you're not into arts, media, politics, and being involved in the public square by default here.

�The degree in which this changed the culture depended on both the growth of the church and on the number of believers serving as salt and light in society and the receptivity of the populace, all under the providence of God.

As we say in the Midwest, interesting. Is that what we're after? Public square involvement as a church. Obviously, as I said before with the whole bicycle deal, you want to be involved in the public square as an individual Christian.

Probably better things to do with your time, but that's just my opinion. You do whatever you want. You're free in Christ to do whatever you'd like, and if that's what you think you like to do, and you meet a lot of unbelievers there, and you can, in the arts and politics, media and business, you can evangelize, etc.

You can do whatever you want when it comes to that. But you want to tell me what the church's Great Commission is, and all of a sudden the article is, �The Great Commission must be our guide. The church can't have two Great Commissions.

It can't be, you know what, evangelism and societal public square, politics, media, arts, business, justice, etc. There's only one Great Commission. So the title, I think, betrays the person who's writing it, who's into this kind of cultural change dependent on church growth and the providence of God.

Here's another quote from this article. �Many of these individuals and churches started off with good motivations but got pulled into the vortex of current events. The sermons from these church pulpits are barely different from op-ed columns, scolding those who they fear are less committed to whatever causes their particular church leadership holds most dear.

Now that's in the context of some kind of right-wing priorities, left-wing priorities for the right-wingers. They want to end abortion. Left-wingers, they want to care for people who are already born, political power, etc.

It's interesting. �Scolding those they fear are less committed to whatever causes. I cannot help but think this is all a big push toward that the evangelicals who say, �Do you know what? We're not into this social stuff.

We're not going to do that. Social justice isn't the gospel. Social justice is more law. Do this. Be this. Be involved with that. These kind of quotas, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm wondering if this is a backhanded way of blasting pulpits that this person doesn't want to hear from.

�Scolding those they fear are less committed to whatever particular cause. Well, the article goes on, �Many of our friends and colleagues have agonizing conversations with members and leaders in sister churches who are ready to leave because nothing but social justice is preached and prayed about week after week.

Okay. That'd be a reason to leave a church. �These mature Christians who are deliberately joined multiracial congregations. By the way, how do you do that in Iceland and North Dakota or, I don't know, Newark?

How do you do that? �In order to advance the gospel, they deliberately join multiracial congregations in order to advance the gospel by demonstrating its ability to break down barriers, but now experience every kind of barrier against fellowship and conversation.

I totally reject that. If I understand this correctly, I totally reject it. I'm going to be a mature Christian. Does it say mature or did I misread this? Yeah, it says mature. I was looking to see if I missed two letters.

I am. �They join multiracial congregations to advance the gospel by demonstrating its ability to break down barriers. I say that is completely wrong. That is so wrong. That's not what this does. This is not what the gospel does, is breaking down barriers.

That's how we show its power. Is that how we show its power? Then it goes on to say in the same article, �Then we hear from pastors who are viciously attacked for even mentioning the need to work for a more just society or alternatively because they don't stop preaching about it enough.

We also hear from pastors who have lost members and even seen their churches split because they required face masks at meetings. You see where all this is going? This is just crazy. This is crazy. Just we're working for a more just society.

Is that the church's Great Commission? The flabbergasting thing with all this is the article is entitled, �The Great Commission must be our guide in these polarizing times. You can't have two Great Commissions.

This is total nonsense. This is the kind of stuff that I guess they send out for free in an outreach magazine, although it's not from that. It's from something called Gospel in Life. This article goes on to say, �So the church, the Christian church, must keep both its distinctiveness, not assimilating to the non-believing culture, and in capital letters, must, all caps, stay engaged and involved in that culture rather than separate from it.

Really? That's the Great Commission. We must keep our distinctives, capital M, but capital M, we must stay engaged and involved in that culture. Tell me how the church is to do that. If you want to say individual church members, they are going to be involved in culture because that's kind of the definition of the whole culture.

Okay, fine. I have culture. I'm in a culture. But I must stay engaged and be involved in that culture rather than separate from it? This particular writer is blasting and trying to put like fundamentalists or those that want to separate or actually there's a little bit of Republican Democrat thing going on here, a little anti-Trump kind of philosophy coming through in my opinion.

It sounds like this author says, like a mashup of conflicting commands, hating evil, check, living at peace with enemies, even to the point of blessing them, check, be zealous, but patient, check, share with those in need, wait, was Paul a Marxist?

Quoting from Romans 12, bless those who persecute you, don't curse them, associate with those of a different status than your own, live in harmony with one another, don't pay people back if they've offended or hurt you.

How can this be possible? Really? That's what we're after? Share with the Lord's people who are in need is the quote that they gave from Romans 12. I don't know what translation they're quoting from, but now they've said, share with those in need, Paul a Marxist?

Essentially, this article is saying, you better do this the way we want to do it, because by the way, we're the think tank. We're Redeemer Church, New York City, and I am Kathy Keller, and this is what we do.

And that's who wrote it, it was Kathy Keller. I couldn't be more in disagreement with this whole, it's this subtle thing. Oh, there are some things in here that Jesus lived a perfect life, exchanged with us in order to die our death, the sin required, he rose making all things new, and interesting.

By the way, has he made New York City, if he makes all things new, how's New York City going? I was just there not long ago, it doesn't look redeemed to me. You can pour $82 million in it and more, and I don't think you're redeeming it at all.

Are the arts there redeemed? Is the media redeemed? Politics redeemed? Is the governor redeemed? How much do we need to redeem the city? This is all this subtle, ongoing barrage of liberalism that in my mind, her husband was the one who put this into evangelical mainstream more than anybody else.

That's my opinion. You say, well, he's sick, and you can't criticize somebody who's sick. Well, I've had cancer, people have criticized me, I don't want anything bad to happen to Tim Keller, has nothing to do with cancer or anything else, I hope he gets treatment.

I went to New York City to get treated for cancer, and I hope he gets the best doctors, and people come alongside of him to make sure he has all the care he needs. That is irrelevant to this point, though.

The point right now is, when you read this and listen to it, it's this slow chipping away week after week after week in terms of this whole culture and arts and how the church is supposed to do things.

And my point today on No Compromise Radio is, it goes against the Great Commission. The Great Commission must be our guide in these polarizing times. Like from those who say, you better not vote Republican, you better vote for Joe Biden.

I have a question for Kathy Keller. Did you vote for Joe Biden? Did you tell other people to vote for Joe Biden? I have a question for Tim Keller. Did you vote for Joe Biden? Did you vote and tell other people to vote for Joe Biden?

It's an honest question. If they ask me the question, did I vote for Donald Trump, I'll give them the answer. Did you vote for Joe Biden? I'll give them the answer. I have no problem with doing that. But I do have a problem with adding law to the gospel.

And social justice is a law, and it is being pushed from the highest heights of evangelicalism. It's called the Gospel Coalition. It's called Redeemer New York. I actually think Bethlehem Bible Church is more Presbyterian than Redeemer Presbyterian, but that's another story, is it not?

And we could argue about that. Was Paul a Marxist? That thing just drives me crazy. It rubs me the wrong way. I don't know why we're talking about this. You know, mature Christians, how do you know they're mature?

Well, these particular mature Christians, they join multiracial congregations to show, you know what, the gospel breaks down barriers. Really? Well, just let's just talk about Galatians 3 for a minute, verse 28.

Let's just talk about that. How's that all working out? Jew, Gentile, male, female, rich, poor, slave, free. What kind of barriers do we need to break down? When we're talking about actual barriers in Ephesians 2, let's be as biblical as possible.

The barriers of Ephesians 2 have to do with things that separate Jews and Gentiles. Last time I checked, this whole racial thing, pretty much is between Gentiles. We've got Gentiles, and some Gentiles obviously are racist.

Some Jews are racist, obviously. This is the human condition. Sin affects people, and not all affected the same way. And that's the other thing that bugs me about all the social justice race malarkey, white privilege stuff, critical race theory.

What bugs me with all that, I mean, the list could go on and on and on. What about forgiveness? What about different people struggle with different lusts and different temptations and different sins? Not everybody struggles the same with sexual temptation.

Not everybody struggles the same with, I'm better than other person based on my socioeconomic pigment, etc. And it doesn't deal with, people can be really forgiven. I'm adamant about this, because when we say, you know what, we're going to show how the gospel breaks down barriers, because white and black are together.

You don't need the gospel to have white and black together. I've been to many places where white and black are together. What about, why aren't these people talking about the poor in the Appalachian Mountains?

Why aren't they talking about the poor in Mississippi? Why don't they do that? I mean, if you want to see scores for SATs and poverty levels and all that stuff and people kind of on the short end of the economic social ladder stick, let's go to some of these places like in Appalachia, kind of the backwoods that nobody wants to talk about in Kentucky or Tennessee or some of those places.

Then we'll find out about it. The Great Commission is the Great Commission and we've been given it by the Lord of the church and he's going to build the church and we don't need anything else, including this theological gobbledygook.

I hope the best for the PCA, but if General Assembly meets together and they hear these study committees where a theologians like this person is on the committee, well, there's not much hope for them.

This is a total tank job and I'll say it again in my opinion. So anyway, this is No Compromise Radio. I've turned to be a softer No Compromise person in the day, but this one bugs me to no end. I would much rather say, you want a Great Commission to be our guide, go ride your bicycle and preach the gospel.

If they're white, preach. If they're black, preach. If they're albino, preach. If they're hermaphrodite, preach. What do I care what they are? They are image bearers and therefore I am to preach the gospel to them about the Jew, Jesus Christ, the God-man.

This is beyond the pale and if you sign up for this dual Great Commission, the one Social Justice Commission will totally eclipse the Great Commission found in Luke 24 and in Matthew 28. My name is Mike Abendroth.

This is No Compromise Radio. 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.