Don Green Interviews Mike

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I just learned what a dunce cap was not that long ago. You know, those pointed hats that people would make you wear if you were under discipline in school, and maybe we�ll talk more about that later, but right now we have Pastor Don Green on the radio, and I�m usually the one asking questions, but Don and I were texting the other day, and he said, �What if I ask you some questions on No Compromise Radio since I�m the monthly guest and I said, �I would love that.

So, Pastor Don Green, first of all, welcome to No Compromise Radio.

Mike, I can�t tell you how excited I am about what lies ahead in the next 25 minutes.

Well, see, I brought up the dunce cap because I was thinking of Don Skotas. He said if you wear a conical hat, it�s like a thinking cap because it stimulates the brain, and so I just want you to know that I�m not a wizard, or never have been, so you can ask me any question you like.

Well, that�s going to be wonderful, and I�d like to just jump right into it, Mike, and talk about. I want to talk to you in this episode about some of your views of preaching. You have had many years of faithful preaching, you�ve studied preaching, you�ve written books about preaching, and I think that your listeners would really benefit from hearing some particular things if we can go that direction in the broadcast today.

Mike, that would be perfect.

You know, I think it�s been said, Don, that if you can�t do something, you should write about it or teach it, so.

Don. Well, let�s start here. You went to the Master�s Seminary like I did, and I know that you value that time. Talk to us a little bit about your perspective on those formative years at the Master�s Seminary under the presidential leadership of John MacArthur.

Mike Don, great question. And for me, when I sat in the congregation and I listened to John MacArthur explain the Bible, teach the Bible, here�s who Jesus Christ is, and when John�s in the Gospels, it seems like he�s at his best talking about the Lord and the Lord�s ministry.

I said to myself, and this is true, I didn�t say it out loud, but I said, �I want to be just like that guy. And I didn�t mean I wanted to be a great golfer or anything like that, but I wanted to know the Bible like John knew the Bible, therefore I wanted to know the Lord like John knew the Lord and to be confident and bold and brave and declarative and to be able to teach other people.

I never thought I would teach people, but I wanted to know the Bible well enough to know the Lord and to teach other people if I needed to, and for me, it was simple. I didn�t know about Fuller Seminary, I didn�t know about conservative seminaries like RTS, I didn�t know anything.

I just said, where did John MacArthur go to school? And within probably six months, I signed up for Talbot Seminary because that�s where John went. Well, I ran into Jim George, of all people, at Master�s Seminary there, and he said, you know what?

John doesn�t go there anymore, you know, and he took all the best professors and you need to be at Master�s Seminary, and so within one week, I left Talbot and went to Master�s Seminary because I wanted to be able to know the Word so I could teach it like John MacArthur.

That was a pivotal fork in the road for you, wasn�t it?

Fascinating. I ran into Jim on the campus of Grace Community Church, and matter of fact, I told him this story just a few months ago at the Shepherd�s Conference that, you know, 20-some years ago, Jim, you said, no, Mike, you need to go from here to here, and I was just thankful that Jim did that and the Lord orchestrated everything so I would sit there at Master�s Seminary.

And I kid you not, Don, the first probably two years, I couldn�t believe that they had let me in. I couldn�t believe that they were allowing me. I mean, I knew my sinful past. I knew what God had forgiven me for and rescued me from, and I thought, here I get to sit at Master�s Seminary and learn about the Bible and who God is.

I just thought, I�ve got to pinch myself. This is amazing.

I felt the same way in my first chapel service in 1993. There were tears running down my cheek as I realized that this goal and this desire that I�d had for so many years was now being fulfilled. And so, our backgrounds are similar in that way.

Now, let me, let�s go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I remember once at the beach, I was sitting there as an unbeliever and I thought, you know, am I going to be getting high every day of my life and I�m 50 years old?

Where would I get my drugs at 50? You know, those kind of thoughts. And so, when God saved me in 1989 and then gave me a desire to be in gospel ministry shortly after that, I just thought, this is a complete change.

I mean, I�m a different person. I have different affections. I used to run one direction, now I run another. And I look at my life and just think, you can�t do that to yourself. You can�t reform yourself like that.

It has to be a monergistic work of God, God alone working. And I look back to those days now even, Don, and as I�m talking about it, and it just thrills my soul that I would be the recipient of God�s grace, and I�m very, very thankful to him for his ministry in my life.

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It never gets old remembering the way God worked in our lives to save us, does it?

You know, I think it�s wonderful when we have baptisms at the local church, and I like to say to people, when I go to a wedding, even if I officiate a wedding, I always think back to 1989 and when I said, �I do� and my wife said, �I do� in a little church in Scotts Valley, California and I remember those vows.

It�s good to remember your vows before God to your spouse. And when I listen to baptisms, I hear their desire to follow the Lord, and I think, you know what? I�m reliving it with you. And when I got baptized, I wanted to say to the world, and did, I�m a follower of Christ Jesus and I want to affirm that again today.

Yeah, that�s tremendous. Let me follow up, fast forward 20 years from your days at Master�s Seminary. And you�ve grown since that time. You�ve done a lot of pulpit ministry, you�ve done a lot of writing, you�ve done further study.

And I want to ask you, I want to set up a question for you to answer. Master�s graduates would be known for handling the text of Scripture and explaining what the text means. I think that�s central to the mission of Master�s Seminary.

But over 20 years, certainly you�ve grown and you see things now that maybe you didn�t see or understand in your early training. Talk to me a little bit about what�s developed since you left Master�s Seminary, based on what�s transpired in your life over the past 20 years, and speaking specifically about your pulpit ministry.

Sure. Well, I�ll go from general to specific. I met with MacArthur about six months into the ministry here and we sat down for a cup of coffee and I said to John, �What should I do and how do I go about being a pastor?

Give me some hints. And John said, �Well, you know, you�ll figure it out. And I didn�t really know what he meant at the time, although now looking back, part of what John was telling me to do was just be faithful, keep preaching, God will give you wisdom.

Year after year you�ll get more experience and life experience, ministry experience, marriage experience, and that will all help you as God�s molding you into the man you�re supposed to be. And so now to answer your question directly, over the years of preaching, sometimes I wake up and think, �I know I�m going to teach the Bible today, I just don�t remember to whom I�m preaching, but I know I have to teach today.

So many times throughout the week, preaching and teaching, I think I�ve still valued the Master Seminary authorial intent, what does the text say and mean, exegesis, a faithfulness to understand God and His Word, God has spoken clearly, now let�s figure out what He has specifically said.

I affirm all that ten times over. But in addition to that, I think, Don, I now think to say to myself, I don�t disregard style, I don�t disregard the art of preaching, I don�t disregard the heat of preaching if the light of preaching is authorial intent and the heat is passion or style.

And the main reason is because of the book of Hebrews. We think the book of Hebrews is really a sermon, it�s called an exhortation in chapter 13. And the style in the book of Hebrews, if it is in fact a sermon, the style is everywhere.

Now, no one would say Hebrews lacks substance, showing the superiority of Jesus over the prophets, over the angels, over Moses, over the old covenant, etc. But it�s got style, it�s got amazing beginning, it�s got alliteration, it�s got inclusio, it has repeated words, the word better, it uses the Old Testament, just lined up this kind of catena of quotes.

And so, I think now, Don, I�m after both style and substance. If I had to pick one, of course, it�d be substance. But I think what you say should be said well because the topic deserves it, that is the Lord Jesus.

Don�t you agree with that? Let me ask you this in light of that. Martin Lloyd-Jones said, and I don�t know exactly everything that was in his mind, but in his book Preaching and Preachers, he said that I can say quite honestly that I would not cross the road to listen to myself preaching.

And the preachers whom I have enjoyed most have been very different indeed in their method and style. And so he recognized, as one of the great preachers of the 20th century, the role of style in preaching.

What would you say in response to that statement? I wouldn�t cross the street to hear myself preach. What do you think he meant by that and if you ever felt that way about your own ministry?

Don, I�m preparing a syllabus for a preaching class I�ll teach over in Germany later this year and I pulled out Preachers and Preaching today because I wanted to see what Lloyd-Jones said and thought, do I assign that book or don�t I?

I teach preaching classes pretty regularly and so sometimes I do assign it, sometimes I don�t. And Lloyd-Jones, I mean, he said a few things in that book that were just out of the park with just excellent pastoral homiletical heart and a couple things he would say, I think, you know, why did he say that?

But if you read my books, you won�t just say Mike said a couple things. It�ll be a lot more than that. So, I mean, I think he was a typical English person and a lot of self-deprecation and I don�t know, you know, he didn�t even like his messages recorded.

You know, they�d have to sneak his messages and they�d record them or when he was at Westminster here, they recorded him to make that actual book and I�m sure he didn�t like that. So, some of it�s English, some of it is, I�m sure he�s a lot more humble than I am.

But if you said to Lloyd-Jones, you know, there�s a man across the street and he�s preaching verse by verse and he�s trying to show you a high view of God and a high view of the Word, would you walk across the street to hear that man?

Lloyd-Jones would say yes, so he would have to walk across the street to hear himself.

Yeah, so he�s using some hyperbole there and yet feels the sense that there�s a humility,.

I guess, that�s embedded in that statement. Yes, and when I deal with students and have them give me their sermons and then I�ll watch them and critique them, once in a while then I�ll watch myself. And I�ve done that actually with students.

Okay, pastor, you know, teacher, let�s watch some of your sermons and see how you do. It�s awful. It�s horrible. And I think, why did I do that? And sometimes what I�ll do is I�ll put it on two times speed because you can see your hand movements and your body gestures are amplified because it�s two times the speed.

And it�s very, very difficult and that�s why it�s so important. Of course, if we�ve got to pick one substance, it�s over style. But it�s so important to be faithful to the text and my wife has a little slogan �faithful not fabulous.

I�m not trying to hit a home run every week in the sense of style, but I am trying to hit a home run in, Lord, you�ve given me a mind and excellent seminaries to study at. I want to find out what this text says in context and the chapter and paragraph in the New Testament and the whole corpus of scripture, and I want to tell the people, this is what you said.

I mean, can you imagine the old idols of the Old Testament? They could be seen, but they wouldn�t talk. They were mute. Yet God, he�s a spirit. He�s invisible, yet he speaks. And so, we want to be very careful.

I mean, can you imagine? God said. That�s what we�re telling people on Sunday morning. This is what God said. So, you better study to show yourself approved.

Yeah, and you better handle that message with sobriety and not be flippant about it, huh?

One time I was preaching through the book of James in my home Bible study, and it happened to come up to James 4, 5, and there�s a lot of different ways to look at that verse. It�s a problem passage. I think I put off my Bible study for about eight weeks, teaching other topics instead while I was trying to study that because I could not come to a conclusion while I had a full-time job and other things because I wanted to make sure this is what the Bible says.

Because anything less, frankly, to even quote R .C. Sproul, it�s sinful, right? If you teach something from the Bible or about the Bible that�s not true, it�s sin. So, I don�t want to sin with God�s word.

Yeah, there you go, me either. Now, Mike, I want to introduce a new segment to No Compromise Radio now, if I can.

You can, but I have an edit button.

You�re not going to need it. It�s a segment that I want to call �Pastor Mike�s Migraine. I like it already! As you look out on today�s preaching, maybe what you see in young creatures and your capacity of training young creatures, what is it that gives you a headache that, as you watch what men are doing in the pulpit today, talk to us about some of the things that distress you and make you think long and hard about the direction of the pulpit in general in today�s church.

Mike, I don�t know where to start, actually, because there are so many different things that kind of distress me. So, one of the first things is I�m distressed and get a migraine when the pastors just kind of use the text as a weapon to kind of whack the people, and that�s kind of their tenor.

And one of the reasons I hate that is because I think I did that for a long, long time. Taking the Word of God, and there are certainly times of conviction, there are times of the Word is wielded like a sword, and it goes down to our very bones and marrow and soul, and it just cuts us.

But the Word can do that itself, and I don�t need to have a frown on my face, you let me down again this week, congregation, and just kind of be mean or angry or just seem like I�m mad at people. And so, I don�t like that about myself when I do it.

I think I did it for years. Funny story, 20 years ago when the church began to record my sermons, sometimes they didn�t get them recorded, and I was very bothered by that, Don. I�d spent 30 hours preparing that message, and now it�s not going to be up online.

I mean, you�re robbing the world of my sermon. And now, boy, I�m sure glad they lost that particular sermon. That was a providential, we forgot to hit record deal. And so, I just think that if you�re, you know, to use Spurgeon�s words, if you�re talking about heaven, preacher, let the joy of heaven show in your face.

And if you�re talking about hell, you know, your normal everyday face will work. It�s just, you know, if I�m talking about forgiveness, you know, can�t we smile and think, you know, we�re forgiven people.

We�re children of God. We get to call God Father. I think that the demeanor of the pastor should be kinder and sweeter when he talks about some of those things. So, the first thing at the top of my list is people just kind of, you know, angrily.

Whacking the congregants. Yeah, well, that�s convicting to me, Mike, because I tend to be sober-minded and serious in demeanor outside of the pulpit. And so, I need to temper that when I�m speaking to God�s people.

And when you�ve got a congregation, you�re speaking to the same people week after week after week. If you get to know them, you can�t help but have sympathy for.

Them as you�re speaking to them. Absolutely. Well, just to interrupt you for a second, since it is my show, Don, when you were here, I would say that you preach with reverence, high view of Christ and his word.

It was a sober yet clear message. But when you would say beloved, sometimes when people say beloved, I just think it�s kind of a throwaway word, but I think you meant it. It came across as sincere and, you know, if you�re going to talk about, I don�t know, adoption as sons because of Christ�s work in Ephesians, well, you know, I would expect you maybe to smile more or something like that.

But I thought your message reflected well the tenor of said passage, Psalm 6. And so, they were just my side comments there.

Well, I appreciate that, and I�m glad it�s your show, not mine. Yeah, I am too. Talk a little bit. How much time do we have, Mike?

We�ve got five minutes.

Okay, perfect. Talk a little bit about young preachers and the balance between giving the flow of the text, talking with this compassion that you�re addressing, and for a guy fresh out of seminary, he�s got all kinds of technical things that he wants to say from his study and the scholarly things that he�s been dealing with during the week.

Help us think through how those things fit into a message, if they do at all.

Don, you and I talked about this a little bit while you were here visiting. I think mistakes that pastors make, especially when they�re out of seminary, whether it�s Master�s Seminary or any other evangelical seminary, they�ve learned so many different kind of aorist verb tenses, they have learned subject genitive, object genitives, they�ve got a lot of that stuff in their mind, and it is fascinating.

It is wonderful. Many students probably like me, I learned English because of Greek and Hebrew, and I think my English, while I still struggle with it, I think it�s better than what it used to be because of biblical languages.

And to compound the problem, they listen to men like John MacArthur who have been preaching to the same congregation for over 40 years, and they know what a present tense is. They know what a passive is, and they get that.

And so, when you first get to a church and begin to tell people what you learn in seminary and you try to preach like John MacArthur preaches, but he�s been there 44 years, you�ve been there four days, I think that becomes problematic.

And there�s nothing wrong with, and I�ve been here now 19 years, and this last Sunday I was preaching in Hebrews, and Hebrews 1, it�s a men day clause, those are the Greek words, and basically it�s on one hand, verse 7, on the other hand, verse 8.

On one hand, angels are created beings, they serve, on the other hand, the Father says of the Son, your throne, O God. And I think there�s a way to explain it if you, you know, just naturally talk about it that way.

Here�s how this would sound in English. If you�re a Greek student, you go, oh, cool, men day clause. And if you�re, you know, a struggling, you know, stay-at-home mom who�s got five kids, you go, okay, I understand.

But what I think the bigger point is this, Don, I think if you film a movie and you�ve got 12 hours worth of film, you�ve got to cut a lot of that to make it into a cogent one-and-a-half-hour movie.

You�ve got to leave things on the cutting room floor. And I don�t think young pastors do that very well. Pastors don�t do that well. Cutting things out to make a synthesis. This isn�t a paper. This is an oral delivery, and there needs to be inflection.

There needs to be introductions. There needs to be stark things. There needs to be pitch, volume, all kinds of other things factored in. This is a message for one hour, and you can�t bring all this other stuff in.

And so, I think you�ve got to learn to say, I�ve got to throw away this nomenclature and this verbiage and get more into the text so they can see the flow,.

So they can see the context. Yeah, sometimes it�s going to make a difference whether you�re conscious of preaching to the audience in front of you, with stay-at-home moms, or guys that have been working 70 hours a week, or if you�re writing for a future, you know, with the idea that I�m going to publish a book someday in the future.

That�ll change the way that you preach, won�t it? Well, that�s exactly right. And for me now, being here 20 years, we have plenty of men who have gone to seminary, who are in seminary, who know some Greek and Hebrew.

And so, sometimes I might even say to myself, I�m going to put something in for them. But typically, you�ve got folks that are, you know, they don�t know some of these Greek things, and they don�t know some of the bigger words.

What we did down early on is, in our bulletin, we put a biblical theological vocabulary word in the bulletin and gave a definition every week to just kind of help people. And now, I think it�s a little easier for people if I said �monergism then I say �God alone working.

That�s almost like the pastor in me that says, �I�m going to give you a theological word, and now I need to define it.

Yeah, good. 30 seconds here if we can, Mike. We�ve spoken a lot to prospective seminarians and pastors, preachers here in this broadcast, which has been awesome. Give us a word, what would you say to today�s listener, those that are sitting in the pew?

What would you say to them to help them support their pastor, either in church life or even as they�re listening to a.

Message on a Sunday morning? I have been blessed, like you have been blessed, to have a congregation that respects that the pastor has to do a lot of studying, and there are times of emergency, and there are times that the pastor needs to drop everything and get to the hospital.

But the pastor needs to not call his office an office. It needs to be called a study, and he needs to study. And if you�ve got a pastor who doesn�t give you rich, full, well-balanced meals on Sunday, but always says he�s got to study, then you might question that.

But if he�s giving you good messages every single Sunday, they don�t just happen by osmosis. They don�t just come out of the air. He�s been studying diligent behind the scenes, and you really have to reserve that for your pastor.

So, probably the best gift you can give your pastor is that you pray for him and you pray that he gets the things done even early in the week when it comes to the work of study, and then that work turns into joy and then a passionate delivery, and I think that�s probably the best thing the congregant can do.

The pastor needs to sometimes say no, and it happens to be for everybody in life. You need to learn how to say no, and pastor has to say no to a lot of things until that message is done, and then he preaches it, and then guess what?

This particular Sunday, last Sunday, Sunday night, I had come home and I thought, you know what? I�ve got a lot of work to do on Hebrews because I need to say this, that, and the other, so I was studying for about three hours on Sunday night for the next week�s message, so it never stops.

I personally have gone over my time, Pastor Don, with your new show, but I have to wrap it up. But I have to tell you, your questions I�ve enjoyed, and I�ve been glad to be a guest on my own show. Thanks, Mike.

Good to hear from you. Thank you.