A Summer Update and Lordship Part 2

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

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

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

Summer Travel, Church Life, and What’s Been Happening in Evangelicalism

Mike Abendroth here. It is August 20th, Friday p .m., 716 p .m. I�ve been trying to get to the church today, the church building, all day, and things have come up, and phone calls and Zooms and other things, and I finally made it in on Friday and thought I�d do probably a couple radio shows.

I recorded one show with Shane Rosenthal at the Whitehorse Inn yesterday, and now I�m back to kind of summer�s over, long vacation is over. I had a great time in California. I did what in California? I rode the bicycle maybe six days a week up in the Redwoods.

That was fun, getting back into shape, listening to podcast after podcast after podcast after podcast. I did�what else did I do? I fellowshiped with our friends, Pastor Drew at Santa Cruz Baptist Church, that�s where we park while we�re there and try to minister to and help out.

I preach there. I did a preaching conference in Sacramento with my friend Steve Meister, and did a preaching conference in Phoenix with my friend John Benziger. That was a fun one because my son Luke flew from his home in San Diego, and then we met in Phoenix.

So I�ve been gone. Spencer�s been doing a good job putting on shows. It was his idea, I think, to say it�s a summer of interviews. How many people have I interviewed in this show? And I think probably, I�m kind of a little winded, I just got off the bike.

Probably about, I don�t know, less than 10 interviews I�ve had to scrub because of someone�s immorality, someone�s bad theology, someone�s bad decisions. I mean, we�re all, of course, sinful and frail and fall short, and so I can�t say, �Well, you have to be perfect to be on the podcast because then I wouldn�t be on my own podcast.

But anyway, lots of interviews this summer, and hopefully we�re going to go live again. And this is not essentially live, but I�m back recording live. Sometimes Fred Butler thinks that I record way in advance, months in advance, and I used to, but not any longer.

Bethlehem Bible Church, I�m pastoring in central Massachusetts, bbcchurch .org, bethlehembiblechurch .org, bbcchurch, two b�s, two c�s. And I am going to try to pull up this file here. What�s going on in the news?

It�s been a crazy summer, has it not? I mean, the news, what would we pull up to just talk about? I listened to the rise and fall of Mars Hill, the Christianity Today�s version of Mark Driscoll�s Mars Hill Church, and Driscoll himself.

I thought it was insightful. I mean, it�s still slanted with CTs, Christianity Today�s biases, biases. But overall, I thought it was interesting, the way they did it. Some interesting interviews with people.

I thought the one, I don�t know, episode six or something, the sex one, wasn�t good. I didn�t like it, and I thought it had some inappropriate stuff. I just thought, you know, I don�t really need to know about that.

I guess it could have been worse, I mean, because I know certain things that Driscoll said that would even make it worse. But I didn�t like that, but overall that was good. What else is going on? Tried to do some reading.

That was fun to read. I always wish I could read more, but there are a lot of things in life I need to get done. So, I�ve got a little time before Kim gets home, and I hope to read. What else is going on in evangelicalism?

Gospel Coalition, they�re toast. I mean, they�re writing articles about vaccinations, vax, no vax. You�ve got nine Marx people like Jonathan Lehman. I thought he was against meeting. Now he�s for meeting.

I guess everybody can change their minds. Could be wrong on that. I don�t follow nine Marx anymore, I don�t follow Gospel Coalition anymore, but people end up sending me things. And so by default I have to know about it.

I was telling Shane Rosenthal from White Horse Inn, you know, No Compromise Radio Ministry was a lot, it was downloaded a lot more when I was always controversial, and now I end up talking about Jesus all the time, it�s less controversial.

By the way, the preaching tune-ups that I do, the preaching seminars, I basically tell them at the very beginning, it�s pastors in the area, or in this particular case in Phoenix, it was the pastors on staff.

And the ladies, ministry leaders, they were there too, sitting in. And I basically said this, my goal in this session, and these sessions, it�s a two day deal from like 9 a .m. to 3 p .m., is to get you to talk about Jesus more, and when you do, smile.

And if you�re listening today, I would say to you, if you teach the Bible to your children, to your wife, evangelism, rest home ministry, Sunday school, family worship, pulpit ministry, and any other place, podcasts, I hope that you think Colossians 128, �Him we proclaim is a banner for you, it�s a theological undergirding.

I hope 1 Corinthians 2, verse 2, is what you do, that is, you�re determined to know nothing among people except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. You can ask me any question in the world if I�m on Lurie King, and I�m going to end up talking about Jesus, right?

You ask me something in a podcast, I�ll end up talking about Jesus. And therefore, I want people, when they�re preaching, to talk about the Lord, not just for justification, I�m going to do a show on this here pretty soon, but not today, but also for sanctification.

The law doesn�t animate, the law gives no motivation. What gives motivation for holy living? Well, Romans, Heidelberg Catechism, �grace, gratitude�, that�s what gives motivation. And we have Christ not only for us, but Christ in us, right?

Remember He gave us His Holy Spirit that He might dwell in us, and we would have the power, because of union with Christ, to say no to temptation, no to sin, no to unrighteousness, no to selfishness, and yes to godly living, yes to holy living.

Everybody that I know of is for holy living. The question really is, how do we live a holy life? And most of the evangelicalism, it�s simply whacking people with the law. What else happened this summer?

I was down in San Diego, my son lives in Solana Beach with a couple friends, and so we went to United Reformed Church in Escondido, Pastor Chris Gordon is there, Chris is a friend of the show, and I always tell people, if you want to hear a great narrative preaching, listen to Chris Gordon.

He has a podcast called Abounding Grace, and you can just pull it up online, I listen to all of his sermons, and it was good to see him after the service, I went over to Scott Clark�s house, and it was kind of fun, there�s Chris Gordon, there�s Scott Clark, and we just all hang out, brought my son, wife, Mrs. R. Scott Clark was there too.

So anyway, that was fun, I think that�s about it. Came home, hot, rainy, and by the time this is broadcast, the hurricane will be over, but it�s rare for us to get hurricane stuff here in New England.

But all that to say, I�m encouraged by not-celebrity Christianity, because that�s vapid, empty, vain, futile, null, empty-set, void. But I�m thankful that there are pastors around the country, and around the world, yea, even around the world, that preach the gospel and talk about Christ for pardon and for power.

So I�m thankful for that. And if you�ve got a pastor that does that, you ought to thank him. You ought to say, �Thank you, pastor, for telling me more about Jesus. Isn�t it an odd thing that out of all the people in the world that should talk about Jesus, some pastors don�t?

Now they assume Jesus, they sing songs about Him. When it comes to a call to salvation, a call to believe, they will talk about His life, death, burial, resurrection, etc. But He�s not focused in a central position.

He�s not at the hub, He�s not at the center, He�s not pervading everything, like Luke 24, John 5, Acts 28. The Old Testament, Moses and the prophets talked about the Lord Jesus, and I want to make sure I do that.

I have several goals in life I�d like to finish without controversy, that�s somewhere down, I mean, you know, without kind of, you know, failure, that�s somewhere down the line, but I�d like to talk about Jesus every time I get the opportunity to have anybody listen to me, because He�s a great, wonderful Savior.

I talked in Mark 4 last Sunday, I preached, �Who is this that even the winds and the sea obey Him Can you imagine? Next time you�re fearful, frightful, fear of death, you just go stand out at the ocean, stand by the ocean, stand in the ocean, you can�t stand upon the ocean.

Go under the ocean, under the water, and just think, who could just talk to the ocean and it obeys? And so you don�t have to fear, let alone fear death and fear everything else. Anyway, so I like to talk about the Lord Jesus, I want to do that every single time, and why won�t pastors do it?

You don�t know how many pastors out there just pretty much give Christ-centered preaching lip service. Now, sometimes it�s a theological issue, well, we don�t want to read Jesus into a text that He�s not, and these people have a lot of discontinuity, and they want to be very careful, and there�s not too many types, and not too many analogies, and not too many contrasts, and not too many examples, and not too many analogies or analogical correspondences.

And so it�s a theological issue. It�s a faulty one, but they try to hide behind theology. And some, I think they just, they think they�re in Ephesians 4, they don�t really need to talk about union with Christ in Him, in Him, in Him in chapters 1, 2, and 3, so they just start with the law and start whacking away, don�t let the sun go down on your anger.

It�s in there, it�s a verse, that�s certainly true. But without the Lord Jesus in the sermon, A, it�s a fail, and B, the tincture, the die will be of a legal nature, it�s not going to be of a gospel nature.

I love the Erskine brothers and other men with Thomas Boston and the Merrill men back in the 1700s in Scotland, there was something they called a gospel tincture. And it�s anything but a self-righteous law-only whacking away, moralistic, ethical, TED talks, but done poorly.

There�s a legal tincture in some of those men. And by the way, I know it, because I was that way. And it took the book of Hebrews and Cancer for me probably to recognize it, and the marrow of modern divinity was a good help.

Therefore, here on No Compromise Radio Ministry, you hopefully will hear regularly about the Lord Jesus. I hope if you give your testimony someplace, that you basically talk about the Lord. Could you give your testimony without mentioning your name, without saying, �I, me

Unless you said, �He saved me we�d go for that. Or to use my son Luke�s dare-to-be-a-John-the-Baptist preaching, John the Baptist, his goal was to point to Christ, that he, John the Baptist, might decrease so that Jesus might increase.

And if you�re going to be like any Bible character, that would be a good one to be, right? You can write me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. There�s a couple conferences I�m going to speak at. Kind of the new deal that I�m doing is, you know, I�ll come for a Saturday or Friday, but I need to stay in the pulpit at Bethlehem Bible Church.

All right, well, you can�what are we going to do? We are going to say to you that if you order �Sexual Fidelity I�ll send you a free one. I used to say, �Order �Sexual Fidelity and I�d give you a free �Things That Go Bump in the Church.

But that book actually has been discontinued. I still have lots of copies. But Harvest House said it�s discontinued, and I have the rights to the chapters that I wrote. So I think I�m going to republish that.

I don�t know under what �Evangelical Gobbledygook. What would be a good title? �Toxic Waste. What is going on with these celebrity Christians? I mean, I see how easy it is to do, but I don�t want to do it.

I don�t want to do that anymore. And I�m not talking about �I�m a celebrity Christian. I�m sure in my own mind I think I am. Until the missus gets home, then that�s quickly rectified. But just, you know, because people have big platforms, and they know how to do social media, and then we want to listen to them, I think there�s different ways to go about it.

And I just was reading Heidelberg Catechism, questions 26, 27, and 28 about God and His fatherly providence, and how we can be patient in adversity, and we can rejoice and be thankful. And prosperity, because of the father who meticulously controls everything.

I think we need to go back to kind of �creeds, not deeds. Okay, good deeds will flow from that. I don�t know if you ever like any fables. Let�s see. It�s 15 minutes in. Do I keep going with the show, or do I stop?

What was I doing last time? I think I was talking about Lordship Salvational, wasn�t I, in S. Lewis Johnson�s Lordship Salvation? Maybe I�d just read a little bit more of that. Remember he wrote an article, How Faith Works, subtitled �The Volcanic Issue of Lordship Salvation is Still Emitting the Smoke and Fumes of Controversy S. Lewis Johnson, Jr.

I�m working on a book, Discovering Colossians. Hopefully it�ll be out sometime later this year or early next year. I hope to finish that. And I appreciate S. Lewis Johnson. He�s with the Lord now, but I think he had a good trajectory, and he was moving out of the dispensational world into the covenant world.

And he would affirm things like covenant of redemption, covenant of works, covenant of grace. And he was trying to, even as a guy who loved Dallas Seminary, deal with the issues historically back with Ryrie Hodges and MacArthur.

So you know what I�ll do, I�m not going to do a different show, let�s just do kind of part two of this. Saving Faith, S. Lewis Johnson, I�ll quote him, and then if I want to make a comment I will. In the Confession, and remember he went straight to Westminster Confession when it comes to sanctification, right?

What is justification? What is sanctification? Everybody kind of quotes the Bible, there�s a faith that doesn�t save, you know, what do we do? And he was quoting the Confession that was saying that our good works are never the ground of justification but only the consequences.

Remember you stand before God and it has to be on perfect grounds and the perfect work of Christ Jesus. And there are evidences, there are fruit, but it�s not the root, right? Fruit, root. S. Lewis Johnson, quote, �In the Confession, the grace of faith by which the elect are enabled to believe and be saved is the work of the Spirit by the ministry of the Word.

And by the Word, the ordinances and prayer, the grace of faith is increased and strengthened. In the next section, the Confession teaches that saving faith rests on the truth of God�s testimony in the Word and that it yields obedience to its commands.

Although in section 3 it is stated that the faith is different in degrees, weak or strong, and that it may be often assailed and weakened. In section 2 an important statement is made about faith�s makeup.

But the principal acts of saving faith are accepting�now he�s quoting the faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of the covenant of grace.

Johnson goes on, �What then may be inferred regarding saving faith I mean, we all believe in the Lordship of Jesus, but technically what is Lordship salvation? Have the Confessions talked about it?

What do we do? �It is God�s gracious gift by which we are enabled to rest upon the truth of God�s Word, and specifically upon Christ and his satisfaction of God�s just claims against us by his atoning death.

This belief in or on Christ, the Reformed theologians have contended, consists of knowledge, assent and trust. And then he gives the Latin words �notitia, assensus, and fiducia� to use the classic terms.

Right? Because you can have�and these are my own words now�you can have a faith that doesn�t save, knowledge only or an agreement, assent, even emotional, right? Intellectual and emotional, like the demons believe and tremble.

They shudder. That�s the word used elsewhere for the hair that would go up on the back of a dog when they�re afraid, right? That hair kind of bristles up. And I remember the Jews used to call demons sometimes the hairy ones because they were not literally hairy, but that�s what they would do.

They�d be afraid of who God is. Notitia, assensus, and fiducia. Johnson, �It is important to note that saving faith, while always in essence the same, is often different in degrees. See Hebrews 5, Matthew 6, Matthew 8, Romans 4.

And so what Johnson is trying to say is there are some people that maybe have weak saving faith, frail saving faith, strong saving faith, he says, �is often different in degrees. So now Johnson asks the question, �How does this bear on lordship salvation controversy?

It appears clear that a total commitment of one�s life to Christ in all life�s details is impossible, yet saving faith envisions such a change of life that it�s bent is forever toward righteousness. Okay, I think that�s really good.

I think that�s important for us as listeners. If you�re talking to an unbeliever and they say, �What must I do I wonder if you�d ever say, �You need to totally commit yourself to Christ and in every area commit your life to Him, a total surrender.

I just was listening to a preacher here locally in central Massachusetts, his sermon last Sunday, and he said, �Saving faith is a total, complete surrender-slash-commitment. And I just want to say that that�s impossible.

That�s impossible for me to totally surrender, totally yield, totally commit, totally desire. That can�t be. The wonderful thing about saving faith, the object of faith, perfect, the Lord Jesus. Saving faith, it can be weak, but as long as we have knowledge, assent, and trust.

It can be frail, but as long as we have knowledge, assent, and trust. Do we have to totally commit our life in all our details to Christ? And the answer is, how could that be done? And what�s happening is, we�re talking about, you know, I�d like to surrender this area of my life to Christ�s obedience.

I�m fine with the terminology, let�s get it out of the justification category and put it in to the holy living category. That�s the issue. I�ve said before on this show that unbelievers� response to the personal work of Jesus preached should be trust, believe, rest, receive, rely.

That�s how the Calvinists, that�s how the Reformed framed it, fiduciary categories. But it was the Arminians, it was the Wesleyans even, that said when you proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus to unbelievers, that they must surrender, they must commit, they must be willing to give everything up, they must yield it all, they must be willing to treasure and to desire, etc.

And therefore, those categories of more of the will than of trust have confused things. There�s no possible way anyone can completely commit their lives totally unto the Lord. You could say, �I�d like to, He would deserve that but you can�t do it.

Johnson, speaking of the people of God, the late John Murray of Westminster Seminary wrote, �They are not perfect in holiness, but they have been translated from the realm of sin and death to that of righteousness and life.

Sin is their burden and plague. Why? Because it is not their realm, they are not at home with it. It is foreign country to them. �They are in the world, but not of it. They who are of the world are those who live in sin, in the realm of sin.

They are those to whom holiness is abhorrent, even though they may be able to keep up a good front before the church and the world. They do not hunger and thirst after righteousness. Their aspirations are not heavenly.

They are not strangers and pilgrims on the earth, looking for the city which has foundations. And then, Johnson says of Murray, �Murray�s words are true to the lives of the great saints of the Bible, as the experiences of Abraham, Jacob, Lot, and others indicate.

Even Paul could say, �I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not therefore acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. And therefore, we are going to stop there and talk about his article a little bit more, maybe next time, or in two times.

But my name is Mike Avendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. I�m glad you listened.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Avendroth 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 6. We�re right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.