Authenticating the Message

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroff. Welcome to the show. If you're listening, welcome.

If you're viewing, welcome. New format, hope you like it. You can email me and tell me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

Instead of me talking about one subject for 30 minutes, it's kind of a variety show.

Just think of me as a theological Ed Sullivan. My wife would say, why are you using these old fashioned references and none of the younger people will know what you're talking about.

No younger people watch the show. I'm 65. I'm shooting for people that are 65 years old on Medicare, Medicaid, male, balding, gray.

That's who watches the show. So I'm glad you do. Thank you for watching. Prayer segment,

Kooks and Barney's, book recommendation, message moment. Are you a Roman Catholic? And the main topic.

Off we go, on your mark, get set, go. Prayer segment. I've been talking about the

Lord's Prayer quite a bit, even in some older NOCO shows. And I think

I've had kind of a blind spot in the 4 ,500 shows that I've done. We've talked about prayer some, but I wanna make sure it's a focus.

And so the prayer focus today is in the Lord's Prayer where Jesus says, pray this way, your kingdom come.

Father, may your name be seen as set apart. May your name be hallowed. And the second prayer about God's glory before we get to our own prayer request,

I want your kingdom to come. What does it mean when Jesus tells us to pray, thy kingdom come to use the

King James language? Well, I want to remind you that, of course we move into this prayer with intimacy and knowing

God is a father who provides and protects and pities and chastens and trains.

He's a father. But if we're praying for a king, dumb, there's something about God being a king.

And ultimately, when you pray for Jesus to return, you're praying for his kingdom to come because the kingdom will come when the king comes.

There's an aspect to his kingdom here where one by one, people are getting saved, the elect are coming to faith, right?

The unregenerated elect, and we want to evangelize, and we want to be part of that. But ultimately, the ultimate kingdom that will come is when

Jesus returns. When you pray, thy kingdom come. Essentially, primarily, you're praying for Jesus to come back.

Here's a question for you. I don't know if Mario even knows this, but he probably does. You can be from Worcester and still be a good theologian.

The last prayer in the Bible, come Lord Jesus, right? In the book of Revelation chapter 22, that's it.

That's the ending. That's what Jesus is actually wanting us to pray. So I ask you the question, when's the last time you prayed?

Lord, our ultimate hope, Father, our comfort and our balm is gonna be when

Jesus comes back. Send him back today. Please send him back today.

Your kingdom come. You know, there's a kingdom on earth now, a satanic kingdom.

There's a father on earth now, Satan. And this is language that some theologians say is a battle cry.

It's war, thy kingdom come. I want this kingdom on earth, that Satan's, to be destroyed.

All the sinful little kingdoms to be attacked and vanquished. I want there to be utter destruction of anything that rises itself up against God.

That's what you pray when you say your kingdom come. You also pray that there would be more and more people getting saved, that more and more people would come to understand the

King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We don't start by praying, I need this and I need that.

We start off by praying, Father, I want your name to be set apart and I want your son to come back soon.

And in the meantime, destroy Satan's kingdom on earth and help me evangelize one by one by one, people will be coming out of darkness into marvelous light, out of Satan kingdom into your kingdom.

That's a good prayer to pray. You could probably pray it right now. I want your son to come back, your kingdom come.

Well, let's move on from something glorious to something humorous,

Kooks and Barney's award. Kooks and Barney's, bad surfers, don't know the right etiquette, don't know the right protocol, don't have the right standard operating procedure for surfing and so they mess it up for everybody else.

Well, you don't wanna be a theological Kook or Barney and some people still are, sadly.

So I'm gonna give them an award and the award today doesn't go to a person, sometimes

I name people by names, but this award is gonna go to people that use

Christian cliches that I don't like. So see how this is such a personal thing.

It's like subjective. I don't like something, I give the award out. It's my award to give after all. And I have plenty of these awards to give in the future.

I got a lot of them. We went to the Goodwill, just go to the award section. It's like Polaroid cameras.

Ever go to Goodwill section and go to Polaroid camera section? There's thousands of them. My friend, by the way,

Wayne, once for Halloween, you don't know this story, Mario. We didn't know what to dress up as. We're in college.

And so he said, let's go to the Goodwill because maybe we can find something to do. So something to be.

So I couldn't find anything, but he did. He found a bunch of cameras that were obsolete Polaroid cameras.

And so he put some clothes on for Halloween and then he started taping cameras to himself.

He'd tape a camera to his forehead, on his neck, all around his chest, his legs, taping, taping, taping.

And I said, what are you? And he said, I'm the cameraman. Like, okay.

Anyway, that was Wayne. He's still alive. Christian phrases that I never want to hear again, but I still hear.

So here's the award to people that say things like, missional, I don't like that.

Broken, wounded, my journey, be in community, be authentic, do life together, be the church.

When God closes the door, he opens a window. God needed another angel in heaven.

So he called her home. I don't have religion. I have a relationship.

I hate the church, but I love Jesus. I found Jesus. Why can't you?

Let's pray for journey. I can't say it. I get the award. Journey in mercies, journey in mercies.

You know, I've kind of moved beyond doctrine. That's an interesting slogan. Make sure you pray for a hedge of protection.

Anyway, those are just some of those that I don't like. The one that I'll just talk about briefly,

I don't have a religion. I have a relationship. If you mean sterile, dry, external worship being religion, then okay, fine.

But if you look up the dictionary definition of religion, I think you're gonna be surprised. There is a

Christian religion. And we wanna make sure that even James talks about the right kind of religion.

And so I'm not even gonna give you the answer. I'm just gonna give you the award. You have to go look up the answer. And what does the dictionary say about religion?

Of course, if it means dry and sterile versus something personal with Jesus, who's with us,

God with us, I get that part. So I'm not really big on Christian phrases. So they get the award.

I know compared to last week's cow pie thing, it's a downer.

I know, I can't. So let me just give you another phrase then. That's a very colonial attitude you have.

See these things. Okay, book recommendation. Off we go to the book recommendation.

The last one wasn't too good. So I'm gonna recommend a book I can finally just like wholeheartedly agree with, right?

It's kind of like, you know, AW Pink. I don't quite agree with that. Wrath of God is not an essential attribute.

It's relational. Machen, you know, he said this about public schools.

John Murray, his kind of thing on covenant of redemption, covenant of works isn't quite right.

Finally, there's a book that I could recommend everything about, King by Mike Avendroth. That's the book recommendation for today.

How the sovereignty of God changes everything. I believe everything in here and I just redid it.

Actually, here's a funny story. I wrote this book probably in 2010 -ish or something like that.

And I got the publishing rights from the publisher day one in England. And so they're not printing anymore.

I asked for the rights. They said, yes, you have rights to your own material. And so I thought I would redo some of it and make it smaller so people could just read it faster and make it a little easier.

And the whole idea is since God is a King, what does it mean to have a King? We have a president.

We throw out every four years or whatever. King Charles, he's not even a real King in the Bible days kind of King.

He's a constitutional monarch. He's a paper tiger. What is a King like? And what they say goes, how do you approach the

King? What if you get on the King's bad side? How do you give adoration to a King and pay tithes and taxes and offering?

Who knows what? So I wrote the book, King, how to understand God as a King. But I'm joking that I agree with everything in this book because when

I reread what I wrote 15 years ago, I didn't agree with everything. I changed on some things and some nuances.

And I wanted to make sure this was a little more law gospel, a little more grace, guilt, grace, gratitude, motivation, stuff like that.

So I wonder in five years if I could do this show again and I can say, I believe everything in this book.

I do believe everything in this book, the Bible. First edition of this,

I don't recommend. This edition, I do. Oh, there's that music again.

The message moment, here we go. The message Bible translation. Why do

I do this? Well, I'm breaking it up. It's a variety show, et cetera. But I'm doing this because I want you to be thankful that you have a good translation.

If you're reading King James, New King James, CSB, ESV, New American Standard, even the old original

NIV, the newer NIV I don't care for, the 2011, it's got too much of the TNIV in it.

That's a long story. But I just want you to be glad you have a real Bible and that you can trust the word because the word is inerrant, it's infallible, it's sufficient, it's authoritative, it's life changing.

And so I want you to be able to trust your Bible and I want you to be able to read it with confidence.

And if you read a paraphrase, you're shortchanging yourself because it's the

Bible through the man, Eugene Peterson. You wouldn't want my paraphrase either because I would mess things up.

That's why we have committees. Some people are great with Hebrew poetry. Some people are better with Greek apocalyptic literature.

And so you have all these people together on these translation committees. That's what we want. Even if Eugene Peterson said, here's my word for word translation of the

Bible, I would still go, you know what? No, no. There's a reason why we have over 200 men who were together over a long period of time to come up with the

Westminster Confession of Faith. And if it's that important to get all these different men for that, how much more when it comes to people together for a good translation?

So what happens if you have a paraphrase, if you have just one person, their bents come out.

So as I said before, my bents would be high view of God, Calvinistic, et cetera, et cetera. What if you had a bent where you thought, well, you know what?

I need to water down homosexuality as a sin. What if I need to do that? Well, what if I need to water down adultery as a sin, a fornication, sex outside of marriage as a sin?

If that was in my heart, that would come out in my paraphrase. Let's see if it happens here. 1

Corinthians 6, verses nine and following the message. Don't you realize that this is not the way to live?

Unjust people who don't care about God will not be joining in his kingdom.

Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don't qualify as citizens in God's kingdom.

That is awful. That is horrible. Use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth.

Let me read to you what the ESV says. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor the idolaters, nor the adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And by the way, I didn't quote the paraphrase of this part, but I want to quote the real part because it's wonderful.

And such were some of you, but you were washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6. So you see what happens?

Those that use and abuse sex. What does that mean? That means as long as you're not using and abusing it, it's okay in any format.

No, no. Sex is designed by God to be good and wonderful and worshipful, whatever words you want to use in the context of marriage.

Covenant vows, marriage, man, woman, that's it. Everything else off limits.

Everything else is abuse if you want to use that word that he uses. I wouldn't want to use it, but just for the sake of argument.

And so you want to make sure you have a good translation. And matter of fact, I think 1 Corinthians 6 in the

ESV is not great here because there's actually two words that are used for homosexuality, not just one.

And so you can study that on your own. Are you a Roman Catholic posing as a

Protestant? Are you a Protestant posing as a Roman Catholic? Which one are you? Well, in this next segment,

I've called, are you a Roman Catholic or Protestant? We're gonna look at two statements and you have to pick which one is

Protestant, which one's Roman Catholic. Lines are blurred often, justification, sanctification.

I don't want that to happen to you. I just got a deja vu moment, Mario. Haven't we done this like three times today already?

I'm gonna read two statements. They're gonna be similar. Which one's right? Which one's wrong? If a sinner becomes transformed, he will achieve right standing with God.

If a sinner becomes transformed, he will receive a right standing before God. Do I need to read the second one?

That's the Roman Catholic one, isn't it? Well, let's read the second one. If the sinner is granted right standing with God through faith, he will then experience transformation of character.

You know, next time I'm gonna ask Mario and see if I can flush out any latent

Roman Catholic stuff that might be dwelling in his works righteousness heart. Testing one, two.

If the sinner becomes transformed, he will achieve right standing with God. No, no, that's not the way it works.

If the sinner is granted right standing, justified, not guilty, paid in full.

How do we receive that? Through faith and through faith alone. He will then experience transformation of character.

Christ for us, judicial, standing, Christ in us, transformation, holiness, et cetera.

Christ for pardon, Christ for power to say no to sin and yes to righteousness. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. We believe in something called duplex gratia. That is

Christ for us, then Christ in us. Justification, category, sanctification, category.

One will lead to the other. They are coupled, but they are not commingled. They are not mixed because once you start mixing the two, then you get away from judicial standing.

And we are Protestants. We believe in sola fide, faith alone.

Faithfulness is not involved in justification language unless it's the faithfulness of Jesus and Jesus alone.

Well, we come to our main topic today. And that is the topic of miracles. Miracles.

Do you believe in miracles? Reminds me of some songs that I have heard in the past about miracles.

Or if you're from Nebraska, do you believe in miracles? Miracles. I just was traveling a while ago and it was kind of an interesting place and people would talk like that.

Instead of saying that, they'd say that. You talk like that. I don't know. I thought my

Nebraska was bad. You talk like that. Miracles.

I mean, who am I to say, right? I can't figure out the word how to say sit and sat and set.

I mix those up all the time. I say milk instead of milk. If I wanna say all that I'm trying to say,

I say all I'm trying to say, Lord, why did you have me grow up in Nebraska?

I could have grown up in Oxford, Cambridge. My mom and dad could have been from Harvard and Yale.

My dad could have spoke Greek and my mom could have spoken Hebrew. There's a way to create the perfect pastor.

Miracles. Where was I? Miracles. Do you believe in miracles? Here's a definition of miracle by Thiessen.

Do you like it? Miracle is a unique and extraordinary event, awakening wonder wrought by divine power, accomplishing some practical and benevolent work and authenticating a messenger and his message as from God.

Well, if you say enough big words, you're like, okay, I guess I buy it. What is a miracle?

Well, let me talk about miracles and healings for a little bit so that you can see what the

Bible teaches about them and then see when you're watching people on TV that do leg lengthening and gold dust coming down and gold fillings and bad backs healed and they're throwing away wheelchairs and other things, you can go, hmm,

I don't think that's right. So God is a great God and he has done miracles in the

Bible. What were those miracles like? And are those miracles being done today in the same type, same kind?

Number one, miracles in the Bible, healings in the Bible were spectacular.

The first thing I wanna remind you is they were spectacular. Peter heals a paralyzed man named

Anais in Acts 9 .32. Peter in Acts chapter nine raises

Dorcas from the dead. Paul in Acts 20 raises Eutychus from the dead.

Paul in Acts 28 is unharmed by a snake bite, a poisonous snake bite.

These are spectacular things. Peter heals the lame man outside the temple in Acts chapter three.

Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus come forth and Lazarus did and Jesus said, unbind them.

One of the things about healings in the Bible is they were spectacular. Not like the leg lengthening thing, spectacular.

More to say on that in a minute. Number two, they were undeniable. Miracles in the

Bible were undeniable. Here's what I mean by that. If miracles were happening today and somebody could do these miracles of healings that they say they can on TV, you could call

CNN, you could call Fox, you could call Reuters and say, please come and watch.

And you don't even have to be a believer. You don't have to be born again. Just turn on the cameras and you can watch them.

And they were undeniable in front of believers and unbelievers. But of course today, people doing these leg lengthening deals and other things, bad back, they don't care about CNN being there because they're not after them.

By the way, they're after your money. That's what they're after. Healings were undeniable.

Listen to John 11, 47. Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council and were saying, what are we doing?

For this man, Jesus is performing many signs. When Jesus did something, it was in front of a believer or an unbeliever.

It was undeniable. They had to say it was true. Now they didn't like it and they wanted to kill him and they did, but it was undeniable.

Act four, but when they had ordered them to go outside of the council, they began to confer with one another saying, what shall we do with these men, these apostles?

For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place through them is apparent to all who live in Jerusalem.

And we cannot deny it. Miracles and healings were spectacular and they were undeniable.

Third, miracles in the Bible, healings in the Bible were not an end in and of themselves, but they were a means to something greater.

They were a means to something greater. What do I mean by that? What's the most important thing in all the world?

What's the most important thing in the Bible? Everything in the Bible is important. What's the most important thing in the Bible? And Paul said,

I deliver to you as a first importance, the gospel that Jesus lived, died, buried, raised from the dead, is coming back.

It's all about the personal work of Jesus, our savior, our redeemer, our friend. You can be healed from your physical infirmities and still go to hell.

Whether it's by a doctor, hospital or herbal medicine, even if somebody like Peter healed you and you weren't trusting in Jesus, you would go to hell after that.

There's something more important than physical healing. That's my point. The word of God was central in the ministries of Jesus.

Of the apostles. Why is that so odd now when I watch these people on TV?

The center, the focus, the first importance is the healing. No, no.

If they really were healing people, it would just be an entree into preaching the glories of Jesus.

It'd be talking about great things in the book of Ephesians, wonderful things about the soon return of Jesus. Those guys don't hardly teach the

Bible at all because the focus is on the wrong thing, healings. That's not the focus. Healings were a means to the end.

What did healings and miracles do in the Bible? Well, it showed the compassion of God, right?

If it was Jesus on earth, how compassionate he was and kind and fulfilling prophecy.

But specifically, I wanna remind you that miracles and healings and wonders, they showed that the preacher was true and the preaching was true.

We say theologically it was to authenticate the messenger and to authenticate the message.

How do I know Peter's right? Other people were coming around saying they knew who the

Messiah was and it was a different Messiah. How do we know Jesus was the Messiah? Well, if two people stood there and said,

I'm the Messiah, no, I'm the Messiah. And this Messiah walks on water. This Messiah raises people from the dead.

This Messiah feeds 20 ,000 men and women and children. This Messiah can read your mind.

This Messiah can take water and turn it into wine. This Messiah can on and on and on.

And this Messiah can do what? Say, I'm the Messiah. Who do you believe? Miracles were to authenticate the message and the messenger.

So when you watch people on TV, 99 times out of a hundred, in my opinion, they do these miracles, but they teach the

Bible improperly. And so the miracles are not spectacular.

They're not undeniable. They're not supernatural. And they point to the bad message.

They point to people that don't even know the Bible. And so to me, it's actually a great thing because they don't teach the

Bible. It's a bad miracle, quote unquote. And so both show is false. Miracles were meant for something.

They were meant to authenticate the messenger and the message. And you know, in all the Bible, miracles are pretty few and far between.

Healings are pretty few and far between. And they happen in three time frames.

Moses and Joshua, there was a bunch of stuff going on in Moses and Joshua's day,

Jesus and the apostles, and Elijah and Elisha. Three time periods, only three.

And all three time periods was when the Bible was starting to be written. Books of the

Bible be written. Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, the prophets and Jesus and the apostles to authenticate the message and the messenger.

Why do we need miracles today? God can do whatever he wants, obviously. Mario, did you know you're not to put

God in a box? Not even the tabernacle or a tomb.

We have the authenticated message. We have the authenticated messenger. Miracles were for a reason.

Well, many reasons, like I said, compassion of God, but also to confirm and affirm and authenticate.

How do you know if I am teaching the right thing? How can I be authenticated? Well, you can open up your

Bible and see if I'm teaching the Bible. But before there was a Bible, Moses, Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, Jesus and the prophet, three times where most of all the miracles were being done.

There are some exceptions, but few and far between to authenticate the message and the messenger.

One man said, people often ask, why is it if God is still alive and powerful, he does not perform through men of faith today the same kinds of signs and wonders he performed when

Christ was here? The answer is that God has a plan in his dealings with men and that plan does not happen to include a constant repetition of the same kinds of miracles in every time and place.

If this were his plan, then miracles would lose their unique sign value because they would be taken for granted.

And so that's exactly right. Signs pointing, signs authenticating, signs showing compassion, signs and wonders.

Does God heal today? Of course he does. But no one has the gift of healing.

Back in the day, if you had the gift of healing, you could heal everyone. Now God heals through medicine. He heals through prayer.

He sovereignly heals. And sometimes he heals ultimately in glory. B .B.

Warfield wrote, and so we pass on to the fourth century in an ever increasing stream, but without a single writer having claimed himself to write a miracle of any kind or having ascribed miracle working to any known name in the church and without a single instance having been recorded in detail.

Warfield was saying for hundreds of years, no signs like this were being done. And all of a sudden now in Azusa Street Revival and the 1900s and on TV and with Benny Hinn, there's signs and miracles.

Anyway, what about miracles today? I just want you to know, if you turn on the TV and guys are talking about miracles and they're talking about send me money and they're not teaching the

Bible or they're teaching about seeds and giving and all this other stuff, you just have to turn that off.

You've got everything you need right here. You don't need to say, does God still working today? God is working today and he's working marvelously through preaching.

And so my advice to you would be turn off the TV and get involved in your local church. That's what

I think you should do. Well, my name is Mike Gabendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Thanks for watching. Let me know, do you like the new format?

Variety Hour, Theological Ed Sullivan, Theological Jay Leno. Is that what you like? Let me know.