Things That Last

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.

A Father's Voice, a Long Radio Ministry, and the Theme of Things That Last

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry, Mike Abendroth coming up on nine and a half years of NOCO Radio. Yikes, that's hard to believe. I think I've told you the story before, but now I'm getting so old I can't remember what I've said and to whom I've said it.

But I had a father who was dying of cancer in 1988 and that it began to affect his voice box, his throat. And so he had to kind of just whisper and we weren't a rich family, so we don't have a lot of videos of my father.

And I used to get really sad. I mean, I still could be sad today. I don't know what my dad's voice sounded like. And of course I could easily play into John chapter nine and Jesus and his sheep and knowing his voice.

But whenever I do die, and I don't know when that's going to be, I think my kids could figure out how to get in touch with my voice through all these sermons and shows. I think we're like 2 ,800 shows.

Now, to Fred Butler's credit, some of those like on Fridays are reruns or when I had this knee surgery, I had to do reruns. But even if they're like 2 ,000 or 1 ,600 shows, isn't that quite a bit? Very much so.

Today I want to talk a little bit about things that last. Things that last. I'm gonna write that down right now. Things that last. I don't know why pastors talk a lot about things and a lot about points.

I've got this thing about points. I'm gonna make a point about this thing. If you support No Compromise Radio, by the way, thank you for that. Trying to make sure I get the Patreon people. Whatever we said they would give them, we would give them, we are and will.

If you've signed up for Patreon and somehow you haven't got what you think you deserved, which was what is said on the website, please let me know. I wanna make sure I keep my word. From now on out, I think we're fine.

It's just the old school people that I don't know if I've gotten everything. We said, you know, there's different levels. If you give a buck a month, you get nothing. And it goes on up past that. Things that last.

Dried pasta, 1 .2 years. Now about six weeks ago, I just typed in things that last because I was working on this sermon about faith that lasts. By the way, that's where I'm going with this. And it didn't have anything to do with prepping or COVID or any of that kind of stuff.

So six weeks ago, things that last. Dried pasta, things that last. Bullion cubes, they last two years if they're sealed, no oxygen or moisture. Peanut butter, two years. And even if it goes past two years, it just might be a little dry.

Dark chocolate, two to five years. Now we're talking, now we're talking, why is dark chocolate better than milk chocolate? Milk chocolate has the dairy. The dark chocolate has little or no milk with a high cacao content.

So that's pretty good. Canned or vacuum pouched tuna, three to five years after best by date, best BY date. That's interesting. So you can keep tuna three to five years after that. You know what? If I had a kind of like a grilled cheese with tuna salad in it, I'd like that.

Because grilled cheese with anything, right? You've got the butter for the bread, you put it on a little skillet and then you put the cheese in there. For the longest time, I didn't really have any quesadillas.

But now that the kids are back at home because of all the school stuff and everything else, there's quesadillas around. I just put a lot of jalapenos on the quesadilla. Thank you. What else lasts? Dried beans, indefinite shelf life.

That's interesting. Even if they're super old, I guess you could soak them and they become tender. Honey, that's not a surprise to me. Even if it gets a little crystallized or it might get darker, it's still good.

On this list that I have in front of me, alcohol and the reason why alcohol lasts a long time, it's because of the alcohol. I did read that if you've got wine, if it's got a bad cork or it's too hot or too cold, it could go bad.

But anyway, hard alcohol, no problem. White rice, indefinite shelf life. Make sure though, you don't get any little tiny black bugs or rice weevils on there. You have to get rid of it. I guess you could just eat them.

The ones that I wanted to find, this chair is not working out for me. Okay. The ones that I wanted to find were things like this. Things like Twinkies. They were famous for having long shelf life, but it's only really 25 days, not 25 years.

The reason why they last a long time is there's no dairy. Spam. They wanted to have it with a long shelf life and convenience. Hard tack. Remember hard tack? If you watch any kind of pirate movies or voyages on the seven sea movies, they've got hard tack.

And it's essentially like a protein bar, except there's no protein in it, but it's survival food. Flour, walt, walt. Flour, water, and salt. And then they had to bake it twice. Kind of like biscotti, right?

Double baked. Be is the double, is the two. Lots of times there would be worms in those. And so the sailors, you know, the pirates would have to hit it. You'd see them hitting the hard tack, knocking the worms out.

Then they could eat the hard tack. And then lastly, something that lasts a long time that I find fascinating is pemmican. Pemmican. And of course, American Indians, red Indians, as the people in India would call them maybe.

You'd have some meat and you would dry it and you would pound it into powder and then add hot fat. I think that's what pemmican means is to make grease, literally. And then maybe add some berries in there.

And then you have pemmican. They all last. But as I referred to earlier, faith lasts. The faith that God gives lasts. And how long does it last? 25 days, 25 years? It lasts until you make it to heaven.

It's God given, therefore it lasts. And whether you become a Christian and die that day, like the thief on the cross, God made sure his faith lasted to the end. Or if you're like Stephen and you die a martyr, his faith lasted to the end.

Or maybe you have a grandfather or a grandmother and they became Christians at 15 years old and died at 100 years old. Their faith lasted 85 years. Or maybe you look at some of the patriarchs, their faith lasted 500 years, 700 years.

I don't know who's the oldest man in the Bible, not Mephibosheth, not Melchizedek, but he's as old as... There are some things I remember well and I would always remember that until I've just been studying Mephibosheth and I've been studying Melchizedek, so then I can not remember how old.

What's the oldest guy's name? Something with an M, right? I have to look this up now in the middle of live radio. Can you imagine live radio and the pastor doesn't know the main thing that he's always known his whole life?

Genesis chapter five, I believe. The Abraham's descendants, I do know where to look for it. Usually, okay, duh, Methuselah. So we've got Mephibosheth, Methuselah, and Melchizedek. What you don't wanna do is say, that guy is as old as Melchizedek, although he's probably older.

The Preservation of God and the Lasting Nature of Faith

All right, back to the point. The faith that God gives, he'll give unto eternity. And that faith, essentially, we're gonna look at Hebrews chapter 11 today. But my point is that the faith that God gives will sustain you through both prosperity, which is even harder than adversity, and adversity.

The faith that God gives you will sustain you through both prosperity and adversity. And maybe you're thinking, you know what? Something bad might happen in the future, something really bad to a family member or myself, and maybe I'll recant, maybe I'll turn away.

Maybe this is a faith that doesn't last to the end. And I just want you to know, Christian, you're preserved by God. God preserves Christians until the end. We call that the preservation of God. God, the triune God, he keeps you to the end.

He'll sustain you to the end. He'll protect you to the end. He guards you to the end. In other words, on the flip side, he won't abandon you. He won't forsake you no matter what, no matter what you do or say, or no matter what's done to you or said to you.

God's faith that he grants all of his children lasts to the end. I think that should be good news. Now, for me, as I said earlier, whether it's prosperity or adversity, sometimes it's easier to forget God, is it not, dear listener, when things are going really well, right?

Because you're not forced to go to your knees and cry out, oh God, help me. I've been in certain situations in life that there's no way out. I can't unsolve the problem. I can't solve the problem or get out of the problem.

It just has to be taken care of by the Lord and his handiwork, time. Something has to come up, but there's nothing I could do about it, at least legally. Listen to a few verses that just remind me in general, before we get to Hebrews 11, about how God preserves his people.

And some of these would be spiritual preserving and some will be temporally. But the idea is God loves his children and he will preserve his people. The Lord loves justice and does not forsake his godly ones.

They are preserved forever, Psalm 37. Psalm 66, who keeps us in life and does not allow our feet to slip. This list came from the Bible, but Kurt Daniels has a good section. The Lord will not forsake his people, nor will he forsake his inheritance, Psalm 94.

Who preserves the souls of his godly ones, Psalm 97. The Lord sustains all who fall. The Lord keeps all who love him, Psalm 145. He preserves the way of his godly ones, Proverbs 2. I will never leave you nor forsake you, Hebrews 13.

The one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out, John 6. And as I read those verses, it's good to think to ourselves, here's who the Lord is. That's why I remember when we talked about Psalm 23, it's so wonderful, so memorable, so close to everyone's heart.

It doesn't give us anything to do. The response should be trust and thanks and gratitude. And when God reveals himself, we should respond, but there are no commands in there. There are no imperatives there.

There's no law. This is just who God is, the gracious shepherd host. 1 Peter 1 .5, are kept by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. That one's fascinating too, because in the context of suffering, he, the writer Peter, inspired by the spirit of God, you're gonna make it to the end, no matter what the suffering is.

And that's really the same case here in the book of Hebrews, as we'll see in a moment. 2 Timothy 1, I know whom I have believed and am convinced that he is able to guard that which I have entrusted to him until that day.

I wanna sing that song, until that day. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless with great joy. You might wanna study that passage in Jude sometime because whose joy is it?

I mean, we'll have joy in heaven. Will God have joy that we're there in heaven? I think you're gonna be surprised by the answer. Arthur Pink, quote, how are you keeping yourselves these days? People used to ask him.

He replied, I'm not, I'm being kept. That is important. And from the standpoint of God's keeping his people, we ought to rest assured that he does keep his people and that we will not be separated from the love of Christ, whether it's tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, or sword, right?

Because we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Dear Christian, God's gifts, God's calling, are irrevocable. That's Romans chapter 11. He is not going to go back on his word. And if he begins a good work in you, is he going to perfect it to the end?

The answer is yes. Therefore, when you think about the preservation of God, that spurs on your perseverance. God preserves, we persevere. There are all kinds of commands about persevering to the end. And there are all kinds of things that say something like, if you continue in my word, you're truly my disciple.

I believe that. But what I don't want you to do is to separate preservation and perseverance. God preserves, we persevere. And I want you to remember it in that order because that's the right order, obviously.

God, then us. First Corinthians 15. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand, by which you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

God preserves, we persevere. And you have to persevere. You better. There's going to be warnings. You better persevere. I don't mind those warnings at all because that will remind us to keep persevering.

And God has ordained the end, preservation, and the means, commands, and warnings, so that we might persevere. Colossians chapter one. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet he has now reconciled you in his fleshly body through death in order to present you before him, holy and blameless and beyond reproach.

God preserves. What's our response? We persevere. If indeed you continue in the faith, firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.

Christian, you persevere because God preserves. Christian, I could just give you this side of it if I want. You must persevere. You must continue in the faith. You must keep believing. There obviously is a faith that doesn't save.

There's a temporary faith. There's a parable of the soils, sower of faith that just comes up for a while and then there's problems and it doesn't bear any fruit. There's a faith that's a demon faith. That's true.

But the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 11 is trying to encourage the people, and they're going through a lot, and he wants them to know that their faith is going to end. No, their faith is going to last.

Your faith ends until you see God face to face. Then it's no longer faith. It's sight, right? God grants the gift of faith. And if God gives you something, it's going to last. That's my point. It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake.

So God's going to give you a faith that doesn't last. It's broken. You got to return it in 90 days or whatever. You don't have to take a special insurance policy out. You go to Best Buy and you buy something for $300.

Do you want an extra warranty? You don't have to do that when it comes to faith because it's from God. Acts 18 27, and when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him.

When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed. Faith is a gift. You even believe through the grace of God. And you know the verse in Ephesians chapter two, by grace you have been saved through faith and it is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God. And most likely with the grammar there, everything about salvation, it's all God's gift. And includes, that includes faith. We believe, yes. God does not believe for us. No, he doesn't believe for us.

We must believe. But the question is, where'd your faith come from? And if you're dead in trespasses and sins as an unbeliever, the ultimate origin of your faith has to be with God. After all, you can't even see the kingdom, Jesus said, unless you're born again.

So God makes you alive. He makes you born again. He bears you from above. And then your response, of course, and when you think chronologically, I don't think there's a gap. You are made alive and your response instantaneous and immediate would be to believe.

I think there's a logical sequence, right? Regeneration precedes faith, that's true. But in time, we see it as simultaneously. Faith is a gift from the Lord. And since it is, it's going to last. And the writer of Hebrews telling these dear listeners to the sermon and recipients of the epistle letter, they need to know about Jesus and they need to know that he's a high priest and he has been the author waxing eloquently.

And I mean that literally because it's a very wonderfully rhetorically rich epistle since what is important about Jesus matters, how you say it matters as well, right? You want to say things well about the Lord Jesus and this writer does that very thing.

He's trying to motivate the listeners and the recipients to not just be lethargic and downcast and giving up hope, running back to the temple, running back to Judaism, abandoning the faith. No, Jesus is superior.

And whether it's the priesthood according to Melchizedek principle, our truth that helps them, or that he's greater than Moses because there's builders and there's architects and there's houses. And which one is Jesus compared to Moses?

There's lots of ways he motivates the people, but he's been telling everyone that Jesus is this great apostle. And his name is not only God in chapter one, he's not only called God in chapter one, but he's also called high priest in chapter two.

He's called the apostle in chapter three. He's called the mediator in chapter eight, the shepherd in chapter 13. I mean, the list goes on. It's all about who Jesus is. And he begins to talk about the application of this truth at about 10, 19, and especially in Hebrews chapter 13.

And so the book of Hebrews chapter 11 really talks about the object of their faith. The object is Jesus, the high priest, the Messiah. Some of them didn't know his name was Jesus, but the Christ that was going to come predicted in the Old Testament, prophesied about in the Old Testament.

We are given types and shadows about him from the Old Testament. This Messiah has come now and he has lived and died and was raised from the dead and they need to trust in him. Why go back to Judaism when Judaism the whole time was pointing forward to Jesus?

And this is going backwards. This isn't going to help. Now, Hebrews 11 sometimes is called the roll call of faith, but you want to make sure you get that spelling down right, Lee. It's not the R-O-L-E call, like we're supposed to imitate all their actions.

It's called the roll call, R-O-L-L. Here's a list of all these people who all trusted in the Messiah. That's the point. Now, the actions that are in here that are good, of course, I don't have any problem of having you imitate those, but the main thing is it's a faith chapter, not faithfulness.

It's about the object of faith, not the one having the faith and not the faithfulness that comes from faith. Faith leads to faithfulness. That is a given. But what's going on here could be described by Calvin as quote, since the grace bestowed on us is more abundant, it would be absurd for us to have less faith than all these people here in the old covenant in Hebrews 11.

He says, therefore, that those fathers who were endowed with such a little faith did not have strong grounds for the belief as we have. We should know that we are ungrateful to God two or three times over if less faith appears in us under the reign of Christ than the fathers showed when they had under the law by such outstanding examples of constancy.

End quote. What does that mean? You say, if we have, since we have more information about Jesus now and since he's already come the first time, well, these people who had less information and less revelation and just shadows and types and not the real thing, pre-incarnation, they should motivate us.

They have less, we have more. Make sure you keep running the race. Very pastoral. And he ends in verses 32 through 40 with a real pastoral flourish. Problem is I'm out of time. So I can't even get there, but you can hear the author, the pastor with this desire to spur them on whether good things happen or whether bad things happen.

And he says with typical homileticians devices, homileticians device, and what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of, and then he lists a bunch of people. I've got a lot to say, but I don't have that much time.

I've got to land the plane. I need to land this plane. I just can't keep going on and on and on because I could go on for a long, long time. Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel. There's a lot of people.

And the prophets. He's going to say here, here's a faith booster. If you want an outline, here's 0 .1 and we got to stop. Christian, you can trust God in your prosperity because he is omnipotent. He is the one that gave you the faith.

You can trust him in your prosperity. Your faith will last through prosperity. Lasting faith. Faith will, I'm writing this down, last. Well, my name's Mike Abenroth, this is No Compromise Radio. I needed to get into this section, but that was all intro.

So now I know how long my intro will last in my sermon, Lord willing, this Sunday. We're still hoping to go to Israel. By the way, we've got the deal on the books. If you order Sexual Fidelity online, nocompromiseradio .com, I will send you things that go bump in the night for free.

So that's like a $15 value. If you order 10 or more things, Sexual Fidelity, I will make sure I give you a really good discount. And if you order 10 or more things that go bump in the church, I'll probably sell them to you for $50, postage included.

So $50 for 10 books, $5 each, postage included. You'd have to email me for that. You can't do that online. Mike at nocompromiseradio .com, 10 things that go bump in the night, $50. That sounds pretty good.

You can email me, Mike, at nocompromiseradio .com. Don't forget Israel 2020, February 24th through March 5th. We've got 12 slots open.

Ministry Information and Closing Announcements

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.