Summer of 2016 Musings

No Compromise Radio Intro and the Gospel as the Program’s Foundation

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 recorded a few shows with Pastor Steve two days ago, but this is my first, and I recorded one with Greg Hatterberg, but this is my first solo show since summer vacation.

It is late August here in real time, but in NoCo time, Fred, it is November. No, it�s September. And I wanted to first say that the new book, Evangelical White Lies, is out, and you can get it at Amazon.

It should be up for Kindle now as well. Kindle should be up. Can You Live the Gospel? Friendship Evangelism? Should Christians Tithe? Should the Focus Be on the Family? Does God Talk Outside of His Word?

Are Bible Characters Perfect Models for Moralism and Other Things? Evangelical White Lies. I wrote it, I don�t know, probably three years ago, finally getting around to publish it. At the moment, in my spare time at night, I�ve been trying to work on the S. Lewis Johnson Colossians Commentary and working on some study questions and fine-tuning that.

Hopefully in the next six to eight months, that thing is going to come out as well. Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio. You can write me, info at nocompromiseradio .com. Don�t forget, if you go to our website, Reformation 2017, Germany, Switzerland, myself and Mike Gendron, we�re going to take a group of people from hopefully across the world, May 20th through 30th, and it is in honor of what God did in 1517 and following the Reformation.

If you�d like to go with us, go ahead and get online, fill out the form. We�d love to see lots of Bible teaching at these different sites. Well, this summer, I was in California for a good bit of it, and I�m just going to give you a few highlights and amusings, pastoral amusings today, as I consider how God works, how God refreshes.

By the way, aren�t you glad to have refreshment from the Lord and rest? And when I think about Jesus is our rest, and I think of Hebrews chapter 4, and if we had to work for our salvation, there would be no rest, would there?

Well, I guess you could rest. You probably would rest, but the whole time you would be thinking Damocles� sword, and you would be thinking, �Uh-oh, I better get moving. If I have to work myself into the pleasure of God and to be acceptable in His sight by what I do or say or don�t do or don�t say, man, you better get a move on.

That would be a very difficult way to live. We get to go on vacation and rest and take a break. I think next year I might have to go on a sabbatical. How about that? What will we do with No Compromise Radio?

No idea. I guess Fred will have to do a bunch of reruns. I guess we could have Pastor Steve fill in. I asked Pastor Steve to do six or seven shows while I�m gone, but I don�t know where they are. Maybe they�re here.

Maybe they�re here in the studio. I think one of the highlights of this summer rest, I was at a church in Felton, California, the church we go to when we�re in California. Well, we�ll go to Grace Church if we�re in Los Angeles.

I�ll talk about that in a second. But I was in Felton, California at Trinity Bible Church on Highway 9, and I have preached there for many summers. As a matter of fact, 20 summers. I think I preached there so many times that if it was a wedding anniversary, the 20th wedding anniversary gift traditionally was china, and now it�s platinum.

So I�m expecting the platinum gift. But I was preaching there, and it was the week before I preached there, and there�s a dear couple, and they had just celebrated their anniversary. Speaking of anniversaries, and I said, �How long have you been married

And the answer was, �Not 30 years. I�ve been married 27, I think that�s a lot. Not 40 years. Not 50 years. That�s impressive though. Not 60 years. Not 70 years, but 77 years. And here�s this cute couple.

I don�t know if everybody, when they�re over 90, they�re a little, cute little couple, and they read every night to each other a book about the Lord and the Bible, and 77 years. Then fast forward to August 20th, there�s a friend of mine, Ethan Wormell, and he got married.

I knew Ethan when he was a young person at school. He went to school about the same time my kids went to school, in grade school, and the Lord did a work in his heart, and he started listening to No Compromise Radio.

Hey, Ethan, how are you doing if you�re listening today? And we talked a little bit. He was a Marine stationed in Cayman Islands, and then Cape Town, South Africa, and he wanted me to preach the gospel at his church, at his wedding in the church.

And when the officiator, I wasn�t officiating the wedding, when the officiator said, �In sickness and in health, till death do us part etc., I thought to myself, that�s the way it should be. In sickness and in health, till death do us part.

That was probably the highlight when I met this couple, by the grace of God, married 77 years. And I asked the man, I said, �I�ve only been married 27 years. What advice could you give kind of a young whippersnapper like me who�s only been married 27

And he said, �Stay in the Lord. And I didn�t say to myself, �Well, that�s the human side. What about the sovereign side, God�s keeping me in the Lord I didn�t say any of that. I just said, �Amen.

I just was so glad to hear that, �Stay in the Lord. I don�t ask people to give money to No Compromise Radio Ministry. Sometimes I want to ask, but I don�t. But I will ask you, not only to tell your friends about No Compromise Radio, but I will ask you, would you pray for me and my wife, and that if I live long enough, that I could say good things about the Lord and her, and it�s not like we�re going through any kind of crisis or anything, or it�s not like our marriage is in trouble.

But I know I must be hard to live with, and I�m a big sinner, and I want to keep my vows. As my Indian friends say, I want to keep my wows. And if you�ve been married 77 years, I�m glad you kept your woww, your woww.

Dear, dear couple, 77 years. Okay, well, let�s fast forward a little bit. The other thing that I was very thankful for this summer was I got to go to the Master�s Seminary and teach a doctoral-level class, the Doctorate of Ministry class about preaching.

And I was given two topics, what we learn about Jesus and from Jesus about preaching, and then how to polish a sermon, taking the data and then making a few adjustments in terms of rhetoric, style, delivery, homiletic, oratory, et al.

And I first, at the seminary, took one hour to painstakingly show that the Book of Hebrews is an exhortation. It�s a sermon. It might end like an epistle, but the bulk of it is an exhortation sermon, homily, if you will.

And chapter 13, verse 22, lends itself to that as it�s called that very thing. Well, I wanted to show that the writer of Hebrews, he uses alliteration. We don�t know who wrote it, but it�s a he. If you look at when he addresses himself, it�s a he.

Some people think Mary wrote it. Now, who in the world would think that Mary, the Virgin Mary, would have written Hebrews? Maybe some people think Priscilla wrote it, but it�s a he. And it�s a Z. No, no, no.

World War Z. Oh, I did go into my first gender accessible bathroom. No, I didn�t go to Target because I�m still refusing to go to Target. I know eventually I�ll probably have to go, but for right now, no Target.

And it was in Santa Cruz, gender free. They had regular bathrooms on one level, and the next level, it was all the gender stuff. I looked to see who was in there before I went in, and then locked the door.

World War Z. Oh, live to survive. Had to take a picture of it and put it on Twitter, by the way, at NoCoRadio, if you want to be involved in the tweet land. Okay, what was I talking about again? What was I saying?

Oh, I�m at the seminary, Master Seminary, and oh, Hebrews, Hebrews with alliteration, with a punchy direct shot across the bow intro, with seven descriptions of Jesus, then seven Old Testament quotes, illustrations, segues, assonance, inclusios.

There's a variety of things that the writer uses as he's presenting this message, and my point was, if we think that it's all data, and we just want to be faithful to the text and how we say things as we teach or preach, this goes for you teachers as well, Bible teachers, and maybe you're a mom or a Sunday school teacher or something like that, but the way you say things is important.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that he gospeled the gospel. The message determines the delivery, and if you've got the greatest message in the entire world, the gospel and the Word of God, you should speak well.

In 1 Timothy 4, verse 13, I believe, you're told to read the Word, Pastor, but you're also told then in 2 Timothy 4 to preach the Word, to herald the Word. And if it was up to me, if I were God, I would just say, read the Word so you don't mess anything up, but God has ordained preaching, and He has ordained us saying things well, and that's what the Hebrews letter could show you.

And so I can prove it biblically that what you say, you should say well. It is a false dilemma, it is a false bifurcation that you say, well, it's all about what we say, not how we say it. No one has been able to convince me yet that how you say something is irrelevant or not important.

The way you say it is important, and of course, if I had to pick which one, well, then it would be what you say, but you don't have to make that choice. So I was talking to the seminary students about that, taught three hours in the morning, a couple hours in the afternoon, and I was very thankful to be able to teach some of these students.

I have some of the students send me their sermons, and then I critique them, and then we Skype and talk about them, and that is something that I'm thankful to do as well. So there's a couple highlights from being away this summer.

I didn't do a lot of reading like I normally do because I had to keep reading my book, not because I'm a narcissist, although I struggle with pride, it's because I had to keep editing and re-editing and re-editing Evangelical White Lies to make sure.

I think the first book I wrote, Prince of Preachers, it said something about the ten lepers that Jesus healed, and only one came back to thank him. But I think as the formatting took place, it was ten lepers.

Now, if anybody could heal a leper's spots, change the leper's spots, Jesus could, but that was not what I was looking for. So this time, instead of using a larger publisher, we've used Day One, which isn't so big, but Harvest House, bigger, Zondervan, you know, maybe the biggest, HarperCollins.

Do you cash your check if you're a No Compromise Radio host and you get a check from Rupert Murdoch? I don't know, I'll tell you on a different show. But this time it was CreateSpace Amazon. You click, and they print it, and then they send it to you.

So that's the way we decided to go about it this time. Sexual Fidelity, we have those books, but they're stacked up in my garage, or someone else's garage, to be precise. If you want to order Sexual Fidelity or Things That Go Bump in the Church, we've got those books.

Go to our website, and there's actually Things That Go Bump in the Church, half price. If you want to get that, please feel free to do it. Okay, anything else that happened this summer? Well, I was very pleased to go to my home church, that is Grace Community Church.

My home church now is Bethlehem Bible Church. I was really glad to come back and preach to them because I know what they know, because I've taught them. That's one of the special things about preaching to your home church.

I've been here almost 20 years. But the home church, the church from whence I come, whence from where I come from, I am from Grace Community Church, and Steve Lawson was preaching in the morning, and I went to Phil Johnson's Sunday school.

That's not too bad. It's not too bad if you get Phil Johnson for Sunday school and Steve Lawson for the service. Now nothing against Lawson, Steve and I are friends, but I was hoping John was going to be preaching, but he wasn't.

And after everything John has done for me, I decided to dedicate the book Evangelical White Lies to John MacArthur, my father in the faith, may the Lord grant many more men like him to his church who are lions in the pulpit and kind outside of it.

If you want to ask me any theological question, info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. Many of you do that. But probably the most frequent question we get on the radio is, we're at a church, it's kind of dopey, should we leave?

And I know what it's like to be the pastor and have people leave for different reasons. And I pretty much tell you the same thing every single time. Have you talked to your pastor about it? And then walk through the issues.

Every church is going to have something that you don't like, but be very careful on how you leave. And if you do leave, then be careful all the more. Does that make any sense? I was studying Mark a lot this summer, the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mark, and I began to listen to Jesse Johnson from Emmanuel Bible Church and his preaching through the book of Mark.

I'm listening to his Judges series as well. If you'd like to listen to good Bible teaching with excellent insights, you will know more about the text when you're done listening to Jesse than you did before.

That's a true sign of a good expositor. Then pull it up on podcast, Jesse Johnson, and he is at Emmanuel. And Jesse has been on No Compromise Radio before. He has spoken at Branson, Missouri with Brandon House and myself several times, and Jesse, you can send me the check.

I don't know if I sent Jesse the evangelical white lies or not. And of course, evangelical white lies is selling like crazy, like hotcakes. I mean, I think Amazon printer has just shut down. There's so many people wanting to buy it.

I figure if I sell about a thousand, that would be good. That's what I'm usually after, about a thousand. If you can sell a thousand books, you know, I've thought, Nate Pikowitz and I have thought, okay, how do you write the next radical or crazy love, but have good theology?

I don't think you can separate the two. I think the theology and the style, first of all, I'm not a mega church guy. I don't have a huge platform like Chan or the Plat, but then there's just something about those topics that I couldn't really write about.

And don't get me started on the whole radical thing. I'm tempted. I'm tempted. Okay. Okay. Anything else that happened this summer? It was great to see my son, Luke. He was on a barge in Alaska. NoCo Jr. was up there.

He was back and got to see him for about 12 or 13 days when he came back from the barge and he was alive. He did say to me, dad, I could make probably 20 or $30 ,000 in a couple months on one of those deadliest catch kind of boats.

And it would be $30 ,000 for a couple months work if you live to cash the check. Now I think his testimony is good and I think he's secure in Christ, but I like to keep him around for a little bit, especially because it's just, you know, I've got one son, three daughters.

I like to just keep them all for a while. The rest of my girls were working at a place called Mission Springs. It's a Christian camp in Northern California. And the claim to fame of Christian camp Mission Springs is that Tom Hanks worked there when he was a kid.

Okay. Does that make sense? I think that must make sense. I try to read a lot of biographies in the summer, but just didn't really get to them. I was trying to read who's the guy that was the backstabber with the George Washington account, the Benedict Arnold.

I got that biography, started it, but never got that done. I am reading Grunt by Mary Roach about Marines, behind the scenes things with that, shark repellent, et cetera. I think that's, she's an excellent writer.

I've enjoyed that. What else has been on my desk? Well, Burkoff is on my desk because I'm going to start adding in a special show segment on No Compromise Radio and we have message moments and we're going to have Burkoff briefings.

And I'm just going to, when I need to fill a show, fill a few minutes, can't think properly. I'm just going to pick up Burkoff, find a spot that I've underlined in his Systematic Theology and then read it.

The Arminian View, page 478, according to the Arminians, regeneration is not exclusively a work of God, nor exclusively a work of man. It is the fruit of man's choice to cooperate with the divine influences exerted by means of truth.

Strictly speaking, the work of man is prior to that of God. They do not assume that there is a preceding work of God by which the will is inclined to the good. Naturally, they also believe that the grace of regeneration can be lost.

The Wesleyan Arminians alter this view insofar as they stress the fact that regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit, but in cooperation with the human will. They do assume a prior operation of the Holy Spirit to enlighten, awaken, and draw man.

However, they also believe that man can resist this work of the Holy Spirit and that as long as he does this, he may remain in his unregenerate condition. Louis Burkoff, page 478, Burkoff Briefing. Isn't that fun?

I'm going to come up with some of those things. We've got Heno, we've got Brownies, and now we have Message Moments, Kooks and Barneys, and Burkoff's Briefings. I did get the new Todd Friel book. I was happy to endorse that, Stressed Out.

You might want to pick that up if you're anxious. If you're stressed out about evangelical white lies, then you can get both of those. When I click on evangelical white lies on Amazon, underneath it says, people who bought this also bought Stressed Out.

Whenever I release a book, like one week before I release a book, people spend all their money on Todd Friel's book that he has released. So we're just going to kind of back and forth. And I don't know, I think I'm going to run out of gas because I had several books written and just tucked away.

Sexual Fidelity and Evangelical White Lies, I don't have any more tucked away. I've got about 18 ,000 words of a particular topic tucked away. But I don't know what will happen there. I do have an idea for a compilation with a particular friend of mine, and another compilation with a particular friend of mine.

Two different friends, so I think I've got too many friends. What else is happening? This fall, I hope to be teaching at Bethlehem Bible Church men's preaching discipleship, taking men here, laymen, and teaching them how to teach the Bible with the three key ingredients of teaching, hermeneutics, exegesis, homiletics.

Those three. Got to focus on all three or else you're in big trouble. I did not chime in on the eternal sonship, eternal submission, trinity, imbroglio. I have not said anything about that. People have sent me some of my old sermons, though, to say I believe in a certain view.

And I want you to know that I can learn and grow. As time goes on, I am more confessional. That is to say, the battles have been fought with the confessions, and I don't want to start anything new. And when people come along and start new things, I wonder about that.

So I will default to some of the confessions from now on. That would be wise. R. Scott Clarke would be very happy with that. But I will say with the Trinitarian debates and issues that the whole eternal submission deal, I don't need to figure out that issue in a Trinitarian sense in order to be a complementarian.

It's good to understand what God has revealed in his word about the Trinity so that we can understand it. I get that. I don't want to go off into weird heresies. I get that. But I don't need to have women teaching men in our Sunday school classes.

And when that happens at OPC churches, I'm just like, what is going on? And it has nothing to do, in my mind, I don't need Trinitarian issues solved to make that happen. I'll go elsewhere where it's very plain and clear.

And I think over the summer, the complementarians have gotten beat up for maybe some good reasons. But then also for a lot of bad reasons. At this point, I'm still going to consider myself a complementarian because I don't know what other better words there are.

And I think baggage included, I'm still one. And my views of the Trinity are correct. I default to Dort. Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio. Great to be back. We're going to try to have a bunch of new shows.

This is our seventh year. If you've been encouraged by the show, would you write me an email? Info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. I would love to be encouraged.

The Master’s Seminary, Hebrews, and the Craft of Preaching

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth 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.

Closing Credits and Station Disclaimer

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.

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