Testing Church Leadership (Part 2)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

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I've got to get some more sleep, I think. Plus, the thing is, I know Barbara's not gonna like this in California, but since I'm counting calories, and if you count calories,

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I'll tell you this, and you'd like to eat, then basically, you have to eat well. So you have to watch out for greasy food, you have to watch out for sugary food, and so you have to eat a lot of radishes.

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Radishes are an important part of my diet. So see, Barbara, she doesn't like it if I say diet.

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Well, anyway, it was my anniversary last night, and so my wife and I went out to probably the best steak place here in Worcester.

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You should hear the GPS in New England. It doesn't know what to say, Worchester, Worcester, shire, shosh, and so we went out for dinner, and we didn't really eat tons.

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I had not too much bread. I tried to make sure I didn't have much bread. We had a kind of a lobster roll, sushi roll.

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It was lobster month at this place. I just whistled when I said this place, and then

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I had a salad, a chopped salad, and then I had a filet, a 12 -ounce filet, and it was barely cooked, of course, so that was nice, and then

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I just had a half a piece of cheesecake. That was it, but I'll tell you what. It made me not sleep because I'm not used to that much food, and I'm not used to that rich food, rich kind of food, and so it was one of those kind of nights where I regularly have these dreams that the covers,

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I get wrapped up in the covers and the blankets, and it's like it's binding me, and it's attacking me, and it's some kind of movie where the pillows and the blankets are hindering me, so I didn't sleep well.

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That's the point of this whole thing, so I don't know if this is no -compromise radio or it's

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Bethlehem Bible Church, really one and the same. Today, we're gonna talk a little bit more about leadership.

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If you're at a local church, good for you. If you are, well, we do home church, and that's basically, well, what do you mean home church?

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If you wanna meet in a home with some other families and you have qualified leaders, elders, I don't really have a problem with that, per se, per se.

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See, that's how you get out of it, per se. They're really good people, but per se. Okay. If it's a

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New Testament church, elders, you meet at somebody's home, okay,

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I get it. If you are at home church because you're a man and you can't submit to any authority and you think you're the big cheese and so it's just your family, and you get together and read the

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Bible, that's how you do church every week. Well, it's not really church, it's a scam, and you are going to reap what you sow is basically what's going to happen.

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I guess there are some exceptions. Maybe you're in China, maybe you're in a different place where there's no church and it's illegal, and so you can't always get together with other saints, and so you get together in your living room and you read the

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Bible with your family. I would get that, but if there's a good Bible -teaching church right down the street, but you can't go, typically these are dominated by men who can't submit to anybody, and they can't submit to leadership, godly leaders at a local church either, and so they make sure to try to exact submission from their wives and children and anybody else who comes into their life, but they can't submit themselves, and so to be a good leader, you first must be a good follower.

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But see, this goes into no -compromise territory. I met somebody the other day and they said, oh, we'd love to listen, and it just seems like you're just right in our living room and just, this is a, just, you know, you're so kind.

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I wanna be kind, but I also wanna have a slant to the show, and so this is like the

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Tilt -A -Whirl show where you say, you know, I can't use Tilt -A -Whirl anymore because Wilson used that for his book, so now

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I can't use it, so what does that tell you? If you're at a church and there is bound to be trouble at a church because the blessing of God is at a local church.

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Jesus Christ is building the church, he equips the church, his spirit gives gifts to the men in the church, women of the church, and there's gonna be trouble, and so there's trouble because we're fallible, there's trouble because Satan attacks, there's trouble because the world condemns, and so what do you do?

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What do you do if some people are questioning the leadership? What do you do if there's a church split?

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What do you do if some people are leaving? Who do you follow? And so last time we looked at 1

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Thessalonians 2 where Paul was pushed to the very brink and then had to vindicate himself and his ministry.

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The pastoral heart of Paul comes out in 1 Thessalonians 2, and he basically says in verse one, what have you observed personally in your leadership?

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Paul said, in me, and we say as I'm addressing you here in Worcester and beyond, what have you observed in your leadership?

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What have you personally observed? And so if you say to yourself, I've observed godliness and faithfulness and I see how the person treats their kids and their wife, and I've seen that, and there's fruit, gospel fruit since these leaders have been here.

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Paul says it wasn't in vain. That's the first thing that you should do. Secondly, we look at verse two of 1

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Thessalonians 2, have your leaders boldly proclaim to you the word of God and the gospel of Christ.

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Remember Paul in 1 Thessalonians 2, he suffered and he was persecuted, yet he still kept preaching the gospel.

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False teachers, people who are in it for themselves, they don't do that, they run.

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Which leads us to question number three today on how to recognize real ministry, especially in the middle of trouble, in the middle of bumps in the road, in the middle of huge, gigantic church splits, what do you do?

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Recognizing real ministry. Three, have your leaders preach sound doctrine to you.

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Have the leaders preach sound doctrine to you. Paul says in verse three, for our appeal does not spring from error.

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Let's stop there. Now Paul preaches with authority, K. Russo with bold proclamation, he gospeled the gospel, 1

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Thessalonians chapter 15. This word appeal here is more gentle. This is more noco style, gentle, soft,

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K. Love. It's a gentle persuasive form of preaching. There's all kinds of different ways to preach, but Paul said this particular way that I preach to you wasn't from error, it wasn't from self delusion.

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If you want to put it in the passive form of the verb, and I think it is, it means our preaching agreed with the truth.

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Self delusion isn't the best way to translate it because of the way it's set up here in the Greek. It wasn't from error.

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Remember similar verb form, 2 Corinthians chapter four, therefore since we have this ministry as we receive mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walked in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

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Is that? Well, deceit is close to doulo, but it's not exactly, but the same kind of idea there as I'm looking at the

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Greek there. I'm supposed to get all this work done ahead of time, but see, that's why it's the end of the year and we're appealing to you to send money.

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See, appeals. I'm not commanding you, it's appealing. Just kidding. Okay, Paul preaches not from error, plenao.

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See, I thought it was that other word, but it's not. He said, my message is true. And I've taught you the non -negotiables of Christianity.

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I've taught you the essentials. And so ask yourself the question, let's say there's trouble at the church in some way, shape or form.

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What have your pastors taught you? They taught you about the deity of Christ? Have they taught you about the literal bodily resurrection?

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Have they taught you salvation by grace alone? Have they taught you substitutionary atonement?

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Have they taught you the paradigm guilt, grace and gratitude? They don't have to say that, but something similar.

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Have they been faithfully preaching the Bible verse by verse? See, false teachers don't do that.

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Well, there are other questions that you could ask. Here's another question that you should ask about your leaders.

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Are you sitting underneath the right kind of leaders? Actually, you could ask these questions, even if things are going well at the church, even if they've just paved your parking lot recently.

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Lisa is one of our members here at the church, and she's a dear lady. And Lisa serves the

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Lord, whether her body's breaking down or not, whether the cancer's around or not.

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And I love Lisa. And she's a neat lady. She came here years ago, and she pulled up into the church parking lot and almost turned around.

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She had never been here before because the parking lot was so bad, but she decided to come in anyway. We had a nice talk, and she's been here ever since.

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And we always joke about the parking lot because if you're coming to BBC for the parking lot, not really gonna make it.

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Question four, do crazy accusations stick to your leaders? In other words, are your leaders qualified?

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Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2, second chapter, verse three, our appeal does not spring from impurity or any attempt to deceive.

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So my message, he says, doesn't have any doctrinal errors in it. Remember false teachers?

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They do. Connivers, they do. And also doesn't spring from impurity or any attempt to deceive.

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So I do have my Greek in front of me now. Akatharsis, impurity.

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It's a general word for impurity, but there is a specialized connotation to the word emphasizing sexual impurity.

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Now, one writer said, yet a more restricted meaning of sexual impurity has much in its favor.

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Talking about here in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse three, a casual reference to such in this pagan environment would have shocked no one.

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Doubtless, Paul's enemies were attacking him on many fronts, including this sin so prevalent among traveling religious teachers.

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Or to put my words in here, or TV evangelists. Constant use of akatharsia for sexual sins in all literature of the time is persuasive for giving it the same meaning here.

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The apostle disclaims anything of this type as a motive for his missionary activities. And so there's all kinds of religious prostitution, all kinds of sexual impurity.

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And Paul said, but that's not why I'm in gospel ministry. So ask yourself the question.

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You know, leaders are to be above reproach in 1 Timothy chapter three and Titus chapter one.

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People make accusations against leaders. I've been called all kinds of things. Trying to think the only thing

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I haven't been accused of. At least to my face, nobody's accused me of stealing money, but maybe there are some people who have accused me of that.

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I just don't know. Pretty much anything else, I have been accused of those things.

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And so when accusations are hurled at your leaders, like a 95 mile an hour fast, well,

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I'm gonna say fast pitch, that's not right. See, once I start mixing my metaphors, since I don't know anything about baseball, hurling the pitch from the pitcher's mound.

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But they don't stick, that's the issue. Do they stick or don't they? Just because people have accusations, it doesn't mean anything, especially in the realm of leadership.

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Because Paul knows, God knows, if it was just one accusation and you were out, there'd be nobody in ministry because you could get everybody out.

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That's why there are witnesses, just going back into Deuteronomy and Mosaic law.

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You know, if Mosaic law was around for today, it would help in this particular area.

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Here's Mosaic law for you. If you make an accusation against someone else and you can't prove it, the punishment that the other person would have received if the exact accusation was true will be put on you.

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And so when you accuse someone of something, if you can't prove it, then you pay for that false accusation.

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That's a whole show in and of itself. Paul said, these accusations don't stick.

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Paul said his manner of life was pure. He wasn't sexually wicked. And certainly, when you read the

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New Testament, you quickly understand that false teachers are in it for sex and money and power, greed in all fleshly areas.

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But false prophets, 2 Peter 2, also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.

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And many will follow their sensuality. And because of them, the way of the truth will be maligned.

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And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Their judgment from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep.

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And so Paul says, I'm not in this for myself. I'm in this for you.

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And when you see me preach, it's pure. When you look at my life, by the grace of God, I'm pure as well.

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Take a look at your elders. Are they lining up to what the Bible teaches in qualifications for leaders?

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Or are they deceitful workers? Satan disguising himself as an angel of light?

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And are they like that? But see, what typically happens is when there's trouble, eventually the leaders are looked at.

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And as you scrutinize them biblically, then you say to yourself, hmm, do they have the wrong message?

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Have they been teaching the wrong thing? Have they poured themselves out here with gospel motives, recognizing gospel ministry?

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My name is Mike Ebendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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Getting lots of emails in the last week, but maybe that's just because of my comments on No Compromise 90.

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If you have a topic for me on No Compromise 90, every week I say to myself, what am

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I gonna say this week? How am I gonna get myself into trouble this week?

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Actually, I do want to say this as a little detour here today. I don't have my Pete's coffee, although Terry sent me a picture of he and his wife at a

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Pete's coffee in St. Louis. That was pretty cool. And he also sent me pictures of his entire family at the

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Creation Museum, and they all had their No Compromise shirts on, six No Compromise shirts and the dinosaur in the back.

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I don't know, what kind of dinosaur was that? Was that a stegosaurus? Now, when I was a kid, we learned all these dinosaur names and then they changed them all.

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And so when they find a new bone, then they have to change it. So I don't know, do we have stegosauruses anymore?

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Or is this an allosaurus or? This is a plane -o -saurus.

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We can put some Greek words and we just say a -saurus. So what was

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I gonna say? I was gonna say something about Pete's coffee. I was gonna say, oh, here's what

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I was gonna say, No Compromise 90. I could, I know ways, believe me.

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I know ways to be as controversial as possible, and I'm trying to refrain. I'm trying to restrain myself.

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There are ways that we could make that thing blow up like no other. But I don't really wanna do that because I think it'd probably be too caustic and it doesn't really, it doesn't do what

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I want it to do. If you've noticed the ones between like 15 and 18 or something,

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I wanna try to make them where you smile a little bit, more pastoral, good news, gospel -driven.

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It doesn't have to be wacky. If I want it to be, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, it would be, okay, today let's whack away.

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And so, some of them are, the Beth Moore one, maybe I need to do a Francis Chan one, who knows, those kinds of things.

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But I'm just telling you, I'm using some restraint. So if you think there's no restraint, I want you to know

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I'm using restraint. So, Pastor Steve would be proud of me, allegedly.

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Recognizing real gospel ministers, especially when there's trouble. Paul vindicates himself.

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And the fifth question I ask you that stems from 1 Thessalonians 2, verses three and four, are your leaders man -pleasers or God -pleasers?

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That's a good way to figure out if you've got the right kind of leadership. But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please

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God who tests our hearts. And so, to be approved by God, it's a perfect tense.

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It's a process of testing. And Paul is saved on the

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Damascus Road and then tested by God.

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This God who is able to sound the depths, as one man said, of every thought.

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Paul says that is his motivating factor. It's not to get money, it's not to get fame, it's not to claim something for himself.

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Paul has been approved after testing, and then he is preaching the gospel.

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Not to please people, that's present tense. I don't want to keep on pleasing people. I'm not in it to keep on pleasing people.

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I'm not in it to please people. I want to please the one who examines our approved hearts.

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Same verb, examines and approved there. No wonder Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4, these verses, sometimes they haunt me, but more often they keep me in my lane so I run properly.

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This is how one should regard us as stewards of, excuse me, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

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Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me, it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court.

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In fact, I do not even judge myself, for I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.

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It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the

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Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.

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Then each one will receive his commendation from God. 1 Corinthians 4, verses one to five.

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So Paul basically says, as God is my witness, I am here to please the

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Lord. Isn't that so different than false teachers who want to be in the lights, who are prideful, who want to tickle ears because they want people to like them?

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Paul said, you know, I want to please the Lord and I want to honor him. And that is a good way to look at leadership.

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Are they all into the ecumenical thing? That's people pleasing. Are they into, well, Jesus as an example, he's not really a substitutionary atonement.

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Church discipline, nah, we don't really need to do that because people will leave. What are the motives?

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Are they God -pleasers or man -pleasers? Paul said in verse five, we never came with words of flattery, as you know.

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Why? Because he's a God -pleaser, not a man -pleaser. You know, with a pretext for greed. God is witness.

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Not in this for money. We're not trying to manipulate. We're not in this for self. Paul says,

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I'm not trying to get money from you. Was Paul able to get money?

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Yes, but he went above and beyond and said, no, he wouldn't. But you can read 1 Corinthians 9, if you should pay your pastors, the answer is yes.

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But if they're in it for the money, they're not pastors. Paul says, I'm not in it for sordid gain in Titus 1, verse 11.

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That's for the unbelieving false teacher. For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things that they should not teach for the sake of sordid, improper, disgraceful gain.

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Always evil connotation. I'm not in it for that. I'm not seeking glory from people, verse six, whether from you or from the others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ.

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And then the last question, we've got to wrap it up here. Do your leaders love you? I think that's question six.

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But we were gentle among you like a nursing mother, taking care of her own children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you, not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you had become very dear for us.

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And here Paul says, like a mother has a love for her children, I've had a love for you.

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That's the way I've loved you. Like a nursing mother, caring for her own children, loving, feeding, protecting, cherishing, nurturing.

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Has the pastor and the elders there at the church done that? And you've lost a loved one and they've been there for you.

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I think the answer is, if it's true, then when there's trouble in the church, you should support your leadership.

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So my name is Mike Abendroth, there's nocompromiseradio .com. How do you recognize gospel ministry?

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Why don't you go home tonight, read your Bible, 1 Thessalonians chapter two, and then pray that your leaders would do that very thing for the sake of Jesus Christ, the real shepherd of the church.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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.

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

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