Gimme Sympathy (Part 2)

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. I don�t know why, but forget our intro song.

I need to change that, by the way. Okay. But I have an ELO song going through my mind,

Electric Light Orchestra. Why is that happening? I think what happened was when

Tom Petty died, I pulled up the traveling Wilburys, and listened to a few of the songs, you know,

Ray Orbison, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and the dude from ELO.

What�s his name? Somebody will email me, but by the time you do, I will have forgotten about this, and I won�t have cared.

Ralph Waldo Emerson. Let�s ask Siri. Hey, Siri, who�s the lead singer of ELO?

Jeff Lynne sings lead vocals in Electric Light Orchestra. Jeff Lynne. Look at that. Now, that was fast.

Siri, play me an ELO song. Play me an ELO song.

So, Jeff Lynne, anyway, I was thinking about the ways you can get more people to attend your church service, and I just thought that it was magic.

It's magic. If you just send out postcards and such, and have streamers, and egg drops, Easter egg drops, and helicopters, and people dressed up like Nemo, and Incredibles, and who are the latest people, little groms, little grommets, little�I don�t know what the things are.

I don�t have grandkids yet. And I thought, that�s like magic. It�s like a strange magic, and hence the

ELOs. Well, so much for no -compromise radio ELO songs. We�re talking about sympathy, and of course, we�re in Hebrews chapter 4, and if you have empathy for people, you say to yourself, you know,

I know how you feel. You know, I try to put myself in your shoes and feel what you feel.

That's what we would use the English word empathy for. Sympathy, especially with the

Hebrews chapter 4 passage, it means to help. You have a lot of compassion, and maybe even empathy, but you will help.

And so, because of the incarnation, Jesus knows what we�re feeling, obviously, when he suffers temptation, but then he helps because it goes on to say in chapter 4 verse 16, 4 .15

talks about sympathy, and then 4 .16 talks about help in time of need. That's what we do.

That's what we get, mercy and grace in time of need, right? It's this help.

And therefore, the writer in Hebrews says, �Hold on to your confession, your Christological confession, your theology about Christ.�

And he says, �Well, number one, you should hold on to your confession because you've got a great high priest.�

We probably talked about it on other shows. You've heard my sermons on it. Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,

Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Let us hold fast our confession. We have a great high priest.

Now, to talk about priests in our day as Protestants, it's strange to us.

What do you need a priest for? We normally think of an ordained minister of the Catholic Church or maybe

Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox Church. Maybe you think of an Anglican or something like that, and they can perform the rites and they can do the sacraments and different ceremonies and everything.

Or maybe, who knows, maybe you're a fisherman and when you think of the word �priest�, you think of the fishing priest, the priest mallet that you kill fish with when you're fishing.

I had to look those up, by the way, on Google Images, mallets. If you study the word �priest� with the background and did it come from Presbyteros, the

Greek word, and then you look at the Latin and you've got the Vulgar Latin with provost, one put over others, people who are in charge, you're essentially going to find this, that they're mediators between humans and a deity, right?

In the religious circles here, Christian religious circles, a mediator between God and man.

That's what's happening. And they offer sacrifices, they're mediatorial.

And if you go to the Old Testament, you can trace everything back to Aaron, and then they had certain qualifications and lineages that we'll talk about in another show, and they couldn't have physical defects, and the big offering was the

Holy of Holies entrance on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Leviticus 16. And you can imagine these people here that received this letter, the

Book of Hebrews, they were criticized and they were maligned and they were mocked because they didn't have a priest.

How are you going to have a priest go between if you won't come to the temple where the priests are?

That's the idea. And he, the writer, says, we've got a high priest. Here we have

Jesus, the exalted priest, and it's a present tense. We have a continuous possession, I'm going through a trial,

I'm going through a temptation, I need a sacrifice, I have sinned,

I'm struggling. Well, are they there 24 hours a day?

What if you're farther away? Here we have a high priest. He's a great high priest.

No Old Testament priest is ever called the great high priest. You need a go -between?

You've got one. You need access to God? You've got one. You've got troubles and fears and suffering and temptation?

You've got a mediator. You've got a one who makes intercession, who's already offered himself as a sacrifice.

We have a high priest who's seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven. Hebrews 8 .1.

Hebrews 10 .21. We have a great high priest over the house of God. Great.

What do you mean great? He's greater than any Aaronic priest. He is the wonderful priest.

And how do we know he's so wonderful? Number two, he's passed through the heavens. Hold fast. Why? You've got a high priest and he's passed through the heavens.

That's what verse 14 says. Standing between God and man, Jesus gives us free access, not just on the day of atonement, not just on the

Holy of Holies. S. Lewis Johnson said this, well, passed through the heavens, does that mean that he is no longer ours?

No, no. He has our names upon his breast, and just as Aaron carried the names of the children of Israel into the holiest of all, so the

Lord Jesus has passed through the heavens to the right hand of the majesty on high, and he still has our names upon his breast and upon his shoulders.

Our high priest. Think of it. This motley crowd of people, some of you are surprised.

Well, that's what we are, really. The world looks at us that way, don't they? But our names upon the breast and shoulders, typically of our great

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is seated at the very right hand of the throne of God at this very moment, still ours, though they're

S. Lewis Johnson. That is excellent. The priest passed through the veil, the

Levitical priest goes through the veil into the Holy of Holies, and here Jesus goes into the heavenly sanctuary.

He's great. He's transcendent. He's far above Hebrews 9 .24,

for Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

He is at the right hand of God. He sits at the right hand of God until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death.

That is Jesus, the exalted one. And that should make you, Christian, persevere.

You're going through hard times. Here Jesus passes through the heavens. He is ruling.

He lives to make intercession. He has dominion. He is an advocate with the Father, John said,

Jesus Christ, the righteous. That's why you can't turn back. That's why you can't go back to your religion.

That's why you can't go back to your Roman Catholicism. That's why you can't go back to the sacerdotal priesthood.

You can't go back. Jesus, He's also the

God -man. This high priest is the God -man. We have a high priest, number one, that's why you should hold fast. Number two,

He's passed through the heavens. Number three, He's the God -man. Jesus, what's the text say?

We have Jesus, the Son of God. So Jesus is the human name,

Son of God, deity. He's the God -man, very God, very man.

That's why He's great. He's human and He's divine. One person, two natures, the perfect mediator between God and man, 1

Timothy 2 verse 5. Has any priest, Levitical priest, has any

Jewish priest been like this, human and divine?

How do you know Jesus is human? Well, He has a human body. He has human names like Jesus, or Son of Man, or Son of David, Man of Sorrows.

He grew. He got tired. He got hungry. He got thirsty. He prayed.

He had righteous indignation. He died. He calls us brethren.

He is truly human, truly human. And therefore, we can have

Him not only as our representative, our substitute, our example when it comes to suffering, 1

Peter chapter 2, but when it comes to priests, He can be our great mediator.

We're men and women, and He can be a mediator because He is man. He's also

God, and we've seen that in Hebrew so far, all the things that He's done as God.

Even the Father calls Him God in chapter 1 verse 8. So this passage is talking about both the deity and humanity of Jesus, the high priest that you have.

Romans 1 talks about this great person, Jesus, with these two natures.

Listen to how Paul puts it. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God which

He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning His Son who was descended from David according to the flesh, who was declared to be the

Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead Jesus Christ our

Lord. And if you're listening closely there, descended from David according to the flesh and declared to be the

Son of God in power. You've got the humanity of Jesus and the deity of Jesus.

That's why He can be such a great high priest. Hold on because you've got Jesus the

God -man priest. You're going to go back to the temple over there,

Jewish people? Remember when the temple was still up? This is pre -70 AD. Titus hasn't smashed it down yet.

You're going to go back there? You'll never find a priest like Jesus. And if you take your

Bibles and turn them to Mark chapter 14, I want you to see the high priest, a sinful high priest, talk to Jesus and does he know that Jesus is both

God and man as well? Mark chapter 14. Just to take a little break here for a second and take a deep breath, my name is

Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. We've been going for about eight years.

I'm the pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church, Bethlehem Bible Church, bbcchurch .org.

Mondays we have the sermons. Here on the radio show that I've preached at Bethlehem Bible Church, once in a while Pastor Steve's sermons pop up.

And then Tuesday through Thursday we have new shows recorded within the last couple weeks.

Those are for Fred. I don't think Fred listens anymore, but that's all right. He used to. And then Fridays, it's usually a rerun.

I would say we have about 2 ,000 shows, and I like to just sit in here, well,

I like to interview people. Lately we've had Evan Burns, and we've had

Dan Borvin, and we've had R. Scott Clark, and we've had Phil Foley, and we have had

John Tucker, and we have had, I don't know, a variety of folks.

I like to interview pastors and missionaries and other people who, I guess some are well known and some aren't well known, and I like to talk to both of them.

And when they send me the stipend, I have them on. Stipends are us. No, but seriously, then we have quite a few,

I guess, reruns, because if I record four new shows a week, Monday's the sermon,

Friday's the rerun, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday we play the new shows, and then I have one that I stash because I go to Israel, or I go to the

Shepherds Conference, or I go to the sanitarium, you know, wherever I might go.

I have a comment, but I better not make it as to do with sanitariums.

Why? Why would they call it? I know why they would call it a sanitarium, but definitely, you know, you can tell how things are not politically correct back in the old days.

All right, what we're talking about here on No Compromise Radio is we're talking about Jesus. If you don't really like to hear about Jesus, you just want a bunch of law to live by,

I suggest Richard Baxter. As much as I don't like Richard Baxter, sometimes he didn't talk about Jesus.

So anyway, but I don't recommend him, unless you like a lot of law, law.

That's how we say it in New England, by the way, is law. I've been here, coming up on, I think

I celebrate in a week, in a month, in a week, in a month, in a year, they're all the same, thousand years, years, day, coming up on finishing my 21st year here in New England.

That's amazing. That is amazing, going into my 22nd year.

I think there should be, do I get a watch for that? Do I get a watch for that?

I got a biopsy for that. Oh, if you are a man and are you know a man who has prostate cancer, really any other cancer, but specifically prostate cancer, and you have a lot of questions and you would like some counsel or someone to talk to, you can email me, mikeadnocompromiseradio .com.

Tell me your Gleason scores and all that stuff, your PSA numbers and the core biopsies and what percents

Gleason three plus four or whatever they might be, and then I'll give you my phone number or I'll just call you, give me your phone number.

I used to sell prostate biopsy stuff, equipment, and then have prostate cancer.

Hopefully it's eradicated with the brachytherapy. And what happens is typically is you have a high

PSA, the doctor sends you, your primary care doctor then sends you to the urologist, urologist says, well, your

PSA is high, let's take some biopsies. They do 12 random biopsies, typically 12. And, uh, in the different lobes of the prostate and then they, somebody trying to call me and then ever notice what happens is, you know,

I have my phone in my pocket and it's on vibrate and then sometimes I, is that a vibration in my, in my pocket, right?

Do I, is that my phone ringing and it just might be, I don't know, a nerve twitch or something in my quad, but you think it's the phone.

And then they, the urologist says, we have biopsy and then, you know, if you do have some

Gleason three plus three or three plus four, four plus three, whatever they're, they are surgeons.

And so their option is going to be, and I don't fault them for this per se, their option is going to be, well, you should have surgery and surgery to take your prostate out is a big deal.

Sometimes it has to be done, but it's a big deal and there are other things you can do. There's different kinds of surgery, da

Vinci and non da Vinci. There's brachytherapy, two different kinds of that. There's proton, there's photon, there is active surveillance.

There is, you know, ginger and vitamin D or whatever, you know, saw Palmetto and lycopene and selenium and the list goes on and on and on.

So anyway, I learned a lot through this whole process, not just about prostate cancer and treatments.

I had brachytherapy at the Memorial Sloan -Kettering with Dr. Zalewski, Zalewski, Zalewski, there, that's it.

Michael Zalewski. And, uh, anyway, I want to help you because it wasn't just that I learned about that.

I learned about, I'm weak, I'm frail, my faithfulness wanes, uh, but Jesus, the object of my faith, uh, never fails and he is sympathetic.

That's what we're talking about here on No Compromise Radio, the sympathetic high priest. Well, we're looking at Mark chapter 14, verse 61, because I want you to see the account of Jesus and I want you to see what his enemies thought and I want you to see how he's both

God and man. Mark 14, 61, but he kept silent and made no answer.

Again, the high priest was questioning him and saying to him, here's Caiaphas, the high priest, are you the

Christ, the son of the blessed one? And hey, Jesus, most people are begging when they're in front of me and, uh, you're, you're keeping silent.

Don't you want to plead? Don't you want to beg? Don't you want to, I mean, what's

Mark say? Kept silent and made no answer? Wow. You know,

Caiaphas is probably saying to him, am I stuttering, right? Are you the Christ, the son of the blessed one?

Now, the account in Matthew says, I adjure you by the living God that you tell us whether you are the

Christ, the son of God. I want to put you under oath, so you are obligated to make a response.

And verse 62 says of Mark 14, and Jesus said, I am, and you shall see the power, you shall see the son of man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming with the clouds of heaven.

Do you think you're the judge? I'm your judge.

And tearing his clothes, the high priest said, what further need do we have of witnesses? I think it's all a big act.

I think it's an Oscar nomination. How, how disgusted he, he's trying to show on the outside and the inside, he's probably super happy.

He's going to rip his clothes and show how it's blasphemous and show the disdain and high priest ripping his clothes.

But Hendrickson said on the inside, he's probably filled with fiendish glee. You have heard the blasphemy.

How does it seem to you? And they all condemned him to be deserving of death. Now, how can you commit blasphemy and be worthy of death?

That's the question. Now, people say, well, Jesus is not God, he's the son of God.

What did Caiaphas think? What did these people think? When Jesus is talking about the son of God, right?

He calls himself, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed one? Are you?

I am. What is he trying to say? What did Jesus mean? Oh, he's the son of God, like he's lesser by nature, in nature, ontologically less.

What's son of God mean? It means the same nature as God. The son of God is of God.

They all knew, they all knew he was claiming to be God, and therefore they're going to try to kill him. And they began to spit at him and blindfold him and beat him with their fists and say to him, prophesy.

And the officers received him with slaps in the face. And they are whacking away.

Jesus is fully human, verily God, and verily man, fully human, fully

God. And that's why he's such a great high priest. No other priest is like this.

Can you imagine this kind of priest? What does the London Baptist Confession say about this great

Christ? Christ, in the work of mediation, acteth according to both natures, by each nature doing what which is proper to itself, yet by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture attributed to the person denominated by the other nature, the office of mediator between God and man is proper only to Christ, who is the prophet, priest, and king of the church of God, and may not be either in whole or any part thereof transferred from him to any other.

The number and order of offices is necessary, for in respect of our ignorance, we stand in need of his prophetical office.

In respect to our alienation from God and imperfection of the best of our services, we need his priestly office to reconcile us and present us acceptable unto

God. And in respect to our adverseness and utter inability to return to God, and for our rescue and security from our spiritual adversaries, we need his kingly office to convince, subdue, draw, uphold, deliver, and preserve us to his heavenly kingdom.

Jesus is the Son of Man, and he's the Son of God. He's divine.

He is greater than all the high priests. He has two natures, therefore we have assurance of power, he's

God, and sympathy, man. And you say, well, how can somebody like that know my struggles, know my pain, know my hurts, know my brokenness and woundedness?

Well, stay tuned next time, because there's a high priest who can sympathize with your weaknesses.

And his name is Jesus, and we're going to look at Hebrews chapter 4 another time. My name's

Mike Abenroth, this is No Compromise Radio Ministry. If you want, you can go to nocoradio .com, and if you order two sexual fidelity books, you get shipped for free,

I think it's $14 of value, Things That Go Bump in the Church, written by Byron Yon, myself, and Clint Archer.

And you don't have to say anything, you just order two. Order two or more sexual fidelities, and I'll send you Things That Go Bump in the

Church. That's nocompromiseradio .com. No Compromise Radio, with Pastor Mike Abenroth, 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 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.