God's Sovereignty (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 ministry. I'm your host, my name's

Mike Abendroth, and I sound like I just woke up. I didn't just wake up, but it sure sounds like it.

And today on the show, we're going to talk about a very interesting topic. I would call this a spicy

Indian chai tea topic. I'm sitting here drinking chai tea. I don't know why

I am. Maybe because I don't feel that good, I guess. Maybe it will reflect the subject matter.

But if you're listening today in Canada, or Israel, or Saudi Arabia, or New Zealand, or wherever you're listening, or even here in Worcester, Massachusetts, I almost said

Worcester, California. If you're listening in Worcester, this is a spicy moment.

This is one of those No Compromise defining shows. And so we'll try to address this issue.

Here's the issue. By the way, if you want to write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

The website's updated now regularly, so you might want to check that out, info at nocompromiseradio .com.

Write us there. You can also get iTunes podcast if you'd like to do that. Coming up in the future here at Bethlehem Bible Church, just a plug,

March 18th through the 20th, Danny Akin will be here for a marriage and family conference.

Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Seminary, and used to be the right -hand man for Al Mohler at Southern Seminary.

And then May 22nd, Phil Johnson will be here preaching. That'll be an exciting day.

I might sit on the front row on that one. Reminds me of Herschel York, who teaches preaching classes at Southern Seminary.

He said, Mike, when you graduate and get your doctorate, in your honor, I'll stand as you walk across the platform.

I thought, wow, that's pretty good. And then when I walked across the platform, and they hooded me with the doctoral hood,

Herschel York over on the side, up on the platform, with all his regalia, stood up. And I thought, wow, that's pretty amazing.

I walked across the platform, and Dr. Mohler presented me with my diploma. And then he said, congratulations,

Dr. Ebenroth. And I thought, this is quite the moment. Sunshine, outside Louisville, and it was really quite the moment.

Well, what I didn't know is that the advisor for every doctoral candidate stands while the student that's under him walks across the platform.

So, hey, at least Herschel York stood when I became a doctor. So, just rambling here, and then

Donna Shannon, for the ladies, will be here in May for the Women's Conference at Bethlehem Bible Church.

Donna Shannon, she's married to Bill. Bill has been a pastor at Grace Church under MacArthur for years. The Masters College Chorale, one of the best singing groups in all the world.

They travel the world. They'll be here in May. And then we have the Wretched Radio Conference here at Bethlehem Bible Church coming up this

November with Todd Friel, Tim Challies, and a couple other guys. So, that's the update.

So, here's one of the defining moment shows. You're wondering, what could it be? What would he talk about that's kind of spicy chai tea -like today?

And that is, where is the best place to evangelize? If you had to pick a place, and you had to instruct maybe a newer

Christian, a Christian who's all fired up for evangelism, and you said, you know,

I needed to point this person in the right direction so they know the best place to evangelize, so they could have many opportunities to speak well of Christ and to proclaim his substitutionary atonement, his sinless life, and his resurrection, where would you point them?

You could send them to jail, I guess. You could send them to the town common.

You could send them to the mall. You could send them to Iraq. I guess you could send them to a lot of places.

But I think the most underestimated place that there should be evangelism, the place where you should do the most evangelism, the place where it's maybe the most important spot to do evangelism is, drum roll, in your church.

That's right. You should evangelize in your church. Did you know there are many people in your church,

I don't even need to know what kind of church you're at, if you're at a Calvary Chapel, or you're at a United Methodist Church, or you're at Grace Community Church, or as my daughter used to say when she was really little,

Grace -tomunity. And I remember I always would teach the kids that pastors preach the word, and if you see a pastor, you tell them, preach the word.

And so the kids are three and four years old, and I remember Haley was about that age, and she saw

John MacArthur, and pastor, I said, that's a pastor, and he's our pastor. So Haley waddled right up to John MacArthur and said, preach the word, preach the word.

So if you are at a church that preaches the word or doesn't preach the word, you need to evangelize people in your church.

Of course, you have to give caveats because today people freak out and wig out over subjects. They don't understand hyperbole or overstatement.

There are certainly regenerate people in your church if it's a Bible -believing church.

I'm positive because God has so worked that and is so building the church. And I don't mean every person you meet in the church, you should say,

I kind of am suspect of that person's salvation because they don't look like I do, they don't act like I do, they don't get up at 4 .30

for devotions, et cetera. What I am saying is this, that there are many people who want a certain form of Christianity that's not represented in the

Bible, and so they go to churches. And James 5 is my proof text for today.

It is actually proving, if you look at James 5, 19 and 20, he will instruct the people that there are unbelievers in the church.

That is to say there are people in your church who are not going to heaven if they die in the condition that they're in now.

They have less than saving faith. Did you know there's a faith that doesn't save?

You can say you believe in Jesus, you can attend church, you can teach Sunday school, you can give your money, you can plow snow, you can do whatever you want to do, and if you are not born again, if God has not saved you, if he has not declared you righteous based on the work of Christ Jesus, you're not gonna go to heaven.

And so it's my conviction that the church at large in the USA and overseas as well is packed with unbelievers.

You don't have to look too far. If you go to Willow Creek, Pillow Creek, if you go to Saddleback, Paddleback, if you go to some of these churches when there's 10 ,000, 20 ,000, 30 ,000, 40 ,000 people, numbers aren't always wrong.

The Bible is the best -selling book of all time, and Pilgrim's Progress used to be number two until the purpose -driven life took over.

Certainly, I wish it wouldn't have, but that's another subject. Just because there's a lot of numbers doesn't necessarily mean something bad.

But you've got these churches flocking into places that preach a neutered gospel, a Christless gospel, moralism galore, and these people need to get saved.

But if you're at a good church, maybe you're at an OPC church, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, maybe you're at a Reformed Baptist Church, maybe you're at a

Bible -teaching church, there are people who are there who need to be challenged, who need to be evangelized.

At the very end of the book of James, some think it's a sermon, it's got sermon -like qualities, 104 verses,

I believe, with 52 imperatives, James is preaching to these people in a

Christian context. James doesn't talk about substitutionary atonement and resurrection, he didn't say much about Jesus, except a passing reference in chapter two.

Yet in the Christian context, with hymns about Christ and his death, scripture reading, fellowship, communion, this is within a

Christian setting, James gives these exhortations, and he has something very interesting for last.

Lots of times if you meet with someone and they would like to talk to you about something important, it's a lot of small talk at first, and then what's said at the very end, that's kind of the killer, that's the jugular.

And certainly James chapter one, verses one through chapter 518,

I would not consider small talk at all. You can just read that one time through and you wouldn't say, oh, that's small talk.

But my point is still the same. What's said at the end has a certain exclamation point to it.

And so you see with the book of James, there's no greeting here at the end.

Some kind of fitting conclusion is absent. He calls believers in the church to evangelize the professing people of the church.

Let me read James 5, 19 and 20. We're No Compromise Radio, and we're talking about today the most under -evangelized location in all the world, and that is in your local church.

There are sheep and goats there. There are people who are not Christians at your church. And you know, the great thing about it is they're willing to listen because they drive to church or they commute to church and they hear about Jesus.

And so you are able to talk to them. Most of them have a subset of knowledge and skills when it comes to definitions of Christianity, who

Jesus is, bodily resurrection, et cetera. And James says, 5, 19 and 20, my brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

That is scary. That's scary. It's one thing if you want to be a werewolf and in Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, and you want to go to hell, at least you think you do, and you say, you know what?

I don't care about Jesus. I hate Jesus. It's one thing to say that, but it's another to be in a church, to be around Christians, to hear about Christ and his work.

Let's say it's a great church, preaching the word faithfully in season and out of season, heralding the riches of Christ Jesus, and then die thinking you're going to go to heaven and then end up in hell.

That's reminiscent of John Bunyan. I almost said Paul Bunyan. That's reminiscent of John Bunyan, where he talked about at the gates of heaven, upon entrance to heaven, there's a porthole to hell.

And you can just imagine the trap door right at the gate of heaven for those who are only professing

Christians. If you're listening today, are you really a Christian? Has God made you new?

Has he made you born again? Are you justified in God's sight based on the work of the only mediator who can save you,

Christ Jesus? This is very important because not everyone who says to me,

Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, Jesus said, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven.

Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? And in your name cast out demons?

And in your name perform many miracles? Those are all plurals, by the way. And then

Jesus said, I will declare to them, I never knew you. There was no intimate relationship there. Of course he knew who they were, but he never knew them intimately.

Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. We live in a state today where there is shallow preaching, airbrushed preaching, false converts are the fruit of such preaching.

But there can even be good preaching and still goats are there. I know when

I preach on Sunday mornings, there are unbelievers here at the church. And so my point today is James point. And James point is this, the most under evangelized area in the world is the local church.

Why? Because people think everybody there, for the most part at least, is a

Christian. And it seems kind of odd too. How do you evangelize somebody that goes to your church? Now, you don't have to necessarily say, yeah, my pastor's probably unsaved.

Maybe he is unsaved. Maybe it's Abraham Kuyper like, who he preached his first sermon and the lady in the front row realized he wasn't regenerate.

And she confronted him with the gospel and God saved him. Those kinds of things could happen.

But God is calling you to the ministry of reconciliation at your church, reminding men and women how

God can be their friend through the work of the high priest, Jesus Christ.

You are an ambassador of Christ Jesus if you're a Christian. And I want you to realize that one of the reasons you should go to church and worship, gather with the body, is to evangelize other people.

Because there are people who are coming to church who aren't Christians. They hear about forgiveness, they hear about the

Bible teaching, and they show up and they aren't saved. George Zemeck was a professor at Master Seminary for a long time.

And I think I heard him say it or it was just hearsay. And he said, oh yeah, at Grace Church he thought about half the people who attended.

John MacArthur's the pastor there. About half of them were born again. Now maybe that's including small children and other things.

But I think his point to the students was that just because you go to church, and you can go to the best church, you can go to the church that has the best preaching pastor, and still not be born again.

And so I want you today to be your brother's keeper and to say to yourself, you know, I'm not going to be judgmental at church and assume everybody's not a believer.

But when people don't have the fruit of the Spirit, then I'm going to say to myself, maybe there's an opportunity that I could talk to that person and evangelize them and ask them about their faith.

James says, you know, there are people who are responsible. What does he say in 519?

My brethren, he's talking to people here in the church. My brethren, if any of you strays from the truth and one turns him back, then what happens?

Well, you've got an issue here with James as he's preaching to these dispersed

Jews. These Jews can stray from the truth. This is not somehow that they're backsliding, not somehow that they're, you know, really

Christians. This is a moral deviation. They are straying from the truth.

They are separating themselves from the truth and they are deceived. That's one of the hallmarks of an unbeliever.

Titus chapter three talks about that. They are deceived. People can be in your church and are listening to the truth, but in their hearts and their minds, with their will, they've moved from the body of truth, the

Christian truth, focused upon Christ. And they have moved from it. They're like 1

John 1, 6. They do not practice the truth. And you say, well, this is kind of hard.

I remember hearing Chuck Swindoll once saying, you know, you can't be a fruit inspector. Well, with all due respect to Chuck Swindoll, and I think he's a nice guy, but we are called to be fruit inspectors, not censorious, censorous, hypocritical, judgmental fruit inspectors, but fruit inspectors nonetheless.

How about this verse? 1 John 3, 10. By this, the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious.

How do you know about a child of God versus a child of the devil? Well, John says it's obvious.

Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

And so people who are unbelievers can be very obvious. And so it's your responsibility to go evangelize them.

It's not the pastor's job. Your job is that. Your privilege is that. It's like the sign for the lifeguards when you get coached to be a lifeguard.

If in doubt, go. If in doubt, go. It's the most unloving thing you could ever do is see somebody in the church and say, you know what,

I think maybe they're not born again, but I'll leave that to somebody else or I'll do it another day. How unloving is that?

We have to judge with proper biblical examination what we hear, what we observe, and then we go and tell them the truth.

The worst thing you can do is go and talk to someone and there really are saved, but saved people need to hear about the cross too.

And they should be thankful that you cared enough and they're probably struggling with some sin in their life and they should be thankful.

And you can do it in such a way that you're not obnoxious. James says, if one stays straight from the truth and one turns him back, literally the spirit of God uses you to turn them back or turn them around.

This kind of turn back could be used for the first time. You turn unto

God. This is really repentance, 180 degree turn. And God uses us to do his work.

We don't save, that's not what James means. This is similar to Jude 22 and following. Have mercy on some who are doubting, save others, snatching them out of the fire.

We're not saving anybody. We're not turning anybody. We just know the language here that is used.

Paul said, as an apostle, we are God's fellow workers. And so here, turn in the salvation sense.

You want them to repent. You're using the word of God illuminated by the spirit to get to the heart of the matter.

So they turn. Similarly used in Acts 14. Men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you and preach the gospel to you in order that you should turn from these vain things to a living

God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. Acts 15, turning to God.

So God is going to use you to be involved in the salvation of the person.

And you know, there's wonderful results of this witnessing, this evangelism.

I think it's time for a little chai tea here. Wow. Verse 20, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his whole from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Now, when you think of the word sinner, you'll say, yes, I'm a sinner. But almost every time, with one exception, the

New Testament uses the word sinner as a person who is in the state of living in sin, characterized by sin, dominated by sin, enslaved to sin.

So a Christian is designated by the word saint because they are positionally in Christ and practically moving towards being more like Christ.

And so when Jesus said, I did not come to call the righteous but sinners, it's a word designating unbelievers.

If the righteous will be rewarded in the earth, Proverbs 11, how much more the wicked and the sinner?

The word sinner is a word used technically in the New Testament, again, with one exception, 1 Timothy 1, for unbelievers.

And so here, if you turn an unbeliever from the error of his way, and that's a big error, his soul will be saved from death.

That is a very serious thing. That is a very wonderful thing if God uses you to quote, unquote, win the person.

This is a very serious matter in the local church, and not only will you save a soul from death, you will cover a multitude of sins.

Can you imagine that God uses you to preach the riches of Christ Jesus, the only Savior, to cover like a big asbestos sin blanket so that no trace of sin could be seen so God does not obliterate the person.

They've been cloaked in the perfect robes of righteousness, the perfect righteous work of Christ Jesus, and those sins have been covered.

What a great word that is, to cover. If you take your friend out for lunch and you buy, you might say,

I'll cover that, meaning I'm going to pay the bill. It's totally paid. You don't tell your friend, let's go have some burgers, some

In -N -Out burgers, some Five Guys burgers, and I'll cover it. And then you walk out with your friend, and your friend is stopped by the manager.

I'm sorry, your friend only covered some of the bill. No, that's not it. Here we have the sins completely covered because Christ's righteousness has been imputed to their account through God's great saving work and justification.

And just how big is that sin blanket, that sin -covering blanket? It covers a multitude of sins, multitude of sins.

There's a lot of sins there. And so we are used of God to evangelize in the local church because there are people who are not born again in your church.

Listen to John Calvin. There's nothing more noble or more to be desired than to rest a soul from eternal death.

And this is what a man does when he recalls his erring brother to the way. We must not neglect such splendid work, end quote.

Of course Calvin knew that salvation was monergistic. Of course Calvin knew that we don't save anyone and we don't really do anything except God uses us to preach the word.

Of course Calvin knew that. But hear the way James phrases it. It's in a very personal way.

It's a responsible way where he says, there are unbelievers in your church, evangelize them so they don't go to hell.

That's what the real issue is. And so my call today is for you to stir up things at your church a little bit.

And if you've got the person who's rarely around, or you've got the person who you find living with the girlfriend, or you've got the person who seems to say things that are very works -righteous oriented, maybe there's an older person in your church and they talk about how they're a

Christian because they're baptized, whatever it might be, if there's a hint of that, then it might behoove you.

It would make you actually obey the scriptures in James 5, 19 and 20 to approach them and talk to them about the cross.

And you say, well, I don't really feel like that's my ministry. Well, your feelings come and your feelings go and your feelings are deceiving,

Luther said. My, I can't even remember the slogan. Feelings come and feelings go and feelings are deceiving.

My warrant is the word of God, not else is worth believing, Martin Luther. So we just do it anyway.

There are people in your church who need to be reconciled to God, who can't save themselves, who need to understand that Christ is the eternal

God who became man and died, who was raised from the dead. He was buried and then raised on the third day.

And he gives his righteousness to all those who believe in him by grace through faith alone.

And so there are people at your church today who will go to hell and they need to have someone like you go and tell them the freeing, liberating, sovereign grace, distinguishing grace of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Why don't you go tell them this Sunday? Why don't you stay a little bit later this

Sunday and have a little heart to heart chat from James 5, 19 and 20. 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 six. 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.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.