Is Preaching Passe?

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.

Preaching as a Central Duty of the Church

Welcome to No Compromise Radio. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we are going to Israel, and you can go to Israel with us if you've got the cash, man, cash woman, cash cow. And you can go with Omaha Bible Church and fly out of Omaha, or you can fly whatever city you're near, as long as you can get to Tel Aviv at the right time.

February 14th, we'll fly out. Things will be on the website soon with a three-day extension for those that want to pay a little bit extra to go over to George Allenby's Bridge into Jordan, down into Petra, and then back.

Moab. Remember the cave. Anyway, you can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. Today we're still sitting here. It's a snow day, Snowmageddon, February 13th. This is show four that I got to get going, and I think it's supposed to snow 18 inches today, 14 inches, something like that.

Good bike riding weather, though. Talking about preaching, because I've been teaching a preaching class to Masters of Divinity students at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, adjunct campus, Northborough, Massachusetts.

And so I'm talking a lot about preaching to these men, and preaching is not just a subject that pastors should talk about. Congregations should know about preaching. They should be instructed in proper preaching.

They, if they don't have a pastor, should pick the right kind of pastor who would be a preacher of the Word of God. I guess I could solve the argument this way, make the argument this way. If you read your Bibles, do you just skip 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus?

And 2 Corinthians, too, since that's kind of a fourth pastoral epistle, in a way. Do you just skip those? Say, I don't need 1 Timothy, I don't need 2 Timothy, I don't need 3 Timothy. I'm single, so I just skip over Song of Solomon, and I'm single, so I skip over Ephesians 5.

22 to 33, or 25 to 33 for the men. No, of course not. You need to know what's in the pastoral epistles, and you need to know about preaching, because that is the main, or should be the bulk of the worship service on Sundays.

If you ask yourself the question, by time, how much time is spent on Scripture reading? How much time is spent on singing? How much time is spent on giving? How much time Lord's Supper? How much time communion?

How much time praying? How much time preaching? The biggest number should be preaching. That's right. For many churches, for most evangelical churches, my guess is the singing and the preaching are about the same.

25 minutes of singing praise choruses and inane songs, and then about the same for preaching. But if preaching is worship, then you ought to know how to be good worshipers. And so, if you are taught how to sing well, then you should be taught how to listen well as well, and speak well as well.

Speak good. Ain't that something? Paul says in the pastoral epistles to preach the Word, and he knows how important preaching is. G. Campbell Morgan, who was the pastor at Westminster before Lloyd-Jones, said, Nothing is more needed among preachers today than that we should have the courage to shake ourselves free from the thousand and one trivialities in which we are asked to waste our time and strength and resolutely return to the apostolic idea, namely, that we should continue steadfastly in prayer and in the ministry of the Word.

Pastors have to let some things fall through the cracks. Pastors can't do it all. Pastors can't do everything well. Well, with the single-mindedness of a town crier sent by the monarch, pastors need to preach the Word.

They need to faithfully deliver the Word. The tyranny of the urgent can't distract the pastor. Preach the Word, it says, and what I haven't talked about so far in this little mini-series on preaching.

It says, be ready in season and out of season. This is Star Trek language, I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. I told you before, Master Seminary said never use a Star Trek illustration, so what I said to my seminary guys at Southern, of course you can use Star Trek illustrations.

I used to be a, I wasn't a Trekkie, because that was kind of bad, Trekkers, I was a Trekker instead. I actually was at Disneyland once. I was a camp counselor at an overweight camp, Camp Camelot is what it was called.

And I wasn't overweight, and I was the counselor, and I was supposed to, you know, do jumping jacks with the kids and take them, I actually had a good job, I took them to the equestrian center for the horseback riding, I also got to ride.

Take them to the beach where we can see someone who had a bunch of pet tranquilizers and went swimming, and then they had to rescue them. See, things like that, educational things for kids. And then I took these kids to Disneyland, and I saw Chekhov there.

That was right after The Wrath of Khan came out with Ricardo Montalvo. And remember they put the, Chekhov received in his ear, the ear bug worm from Khan, Khandanian Singh. Not that I know these things.

And this huge worm thing to control his brain got placed in his ear, remember that bug? So when I saw Walter Cohn at Disneyland, I had to look at his ear. I actually got my picture taken with him because of the kids.

Normally when I see stars in LA and other places, I don't say, hey Tom Cruise, give me a picture. Hey Warren Beatty, hey Madonna, hey. I remember once I was standing in line to go see a show in Westwood and just turn.

I thought I heard a voice that I recognized, and I just turned behind me and the two people right directly behind me were Jackson Brown and Daryl Hannah. I started singing, I just acted like I didn't know who they were.

Oh man. So anyway, Star Trek illustrations, and I told the men, it's like the Borg, this is irresistible grace, this is the effectual call, you will be assimilated. If you're elect and you're unregenerate, you are coming to faith, Broseph.

Anyway, be ready in season, out of season. This is Star Trek language in the sense that this is Kirk to Sulu and he says, stand by. What does that mean? Stand around? No, it means get ready. Be on hand.

Be ready for action. This is an urgent call. Pastors preach the word. Be ready. Be alert. Be eager. Be insistent. Philip's version of this is translated, never lose your sense of urgency. Be ready for an emergency.

Remember Jack MacArthur saying, a pastor should be ready to preach, pray, or die within a minute's notice. Be on duty. Be on duty constantly. Be on your guard. Stay at your post. Why would Paul say this to Timothy?

Because there's going to be all kinds of seasons that the world doesn't want preaching. The nation doesn't want preaching. The church doesn't want preaching. You don't want to preach. Stay at your post.

Be on your guard, eagerly, earnestly, insistently, and to use our adverbs, not indifferently, not uninterestedly, with uninterest, with lack of interest, not apathetically, not dispassionately. What else do we have here?

This is urgent life and death. Eternity is at stake. Preach the word. And Charles Spurgeon said in his book, Lectures to My Students, what in a Christian minister is the most essential quality for securing success in winning souls for Christ?

Earnestness. He's talking about from the human perspective. And if I were asked a second or third time, I should not vary the answer. Success is proportionate to the preacher's earnestness. Page 305. Now you want to read the paragraph before and the paragraph after.

You can argue a little bit with Spurgeon if you'd like, but he's trying to make a point, like pastors make a point, maybe with a little hyperbole. There's an earnestness here that Paul says, Timothy, preach the word with earnestness.

That's what he's after. If I can rescue Spurgeon here, be ready in season, out of season. That's important. That is very important. Jeremiah 20, verse 9. If I say, I will not remember him or speak any more in his name, he testified, then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary of holding it in.

I cannot endure it. In season and out of season. That's when you preach. You press it home on all occasions, one man said. The New English Bible translates it, when it's convenient or inconvenient, when it's welcome or unwelcome, whether you feel like it or whether you don't, when those who are sitting there want to feel like it or don't.

I'll give you an illustration of this. When you go to a funeral and officiate it, most people aren't really wanting preaching. Now Christians do, of course, and they want to hear from God. They want to hear John 11, where Jesus wept for his dead friend, Lazarus, and then he talked to the ladies and said, I'm the resurrection and the life.

He who believes in me will live, even if he dies. Do you believe this? They love that. They want to hear God's word. They want to hear God's word that even though life is a vapor and that we're like the flowers and we're like the grass and we wither and fade away, but the word of the Lord stands forever.

They want that. They know to live is Christ and to die is gain, but you go to an unbelieving group of people at a funeral, oh, they will tolerate Psalm 23 being read. They'll probably actually want that because it's a little bit of religiosity in their unholy lives and they can still like that.

That's to be said. It makes them think that, you know, it doesn't matter who the person is, they go to heaven by death, salvation by death. You just die, you go. What needs to be done? If you get a little water on your head, that's even a double cure.

That's what an unbeliever would think. Just baptism, just death, off they go. But if you're an evangelical pastor and you get called by the local mortuary, we'd like someone who's a Baptist or a Bible-believing person to do the funeral.

We've been asked to secure such a person and the people in charge of the funeral don't have a pastor here locally and the request of the deceased was to have an evangelical pastor come and would you come?

I don't know one. Yes, I'd be glad to come. I don't know one person there, not one. And you see the folks and you hear them talk outside and you quickly realize, you know what, these people were just like I was without the grace of God.

The way I handled my father's death was alcohol, ignoring, kind of just head in the sand, distraction. Let's go see another movie tonight and just not think about it. So then you stand up and preach. I'm telling you, pastor, preach the Word.

You need these kind of exhortations because otherwise, you know they don't want it. And so Paul says to Timothy, there's no closed season for preaching the Word. There's hunting season, there's fishing season.

It opens, it closes. We have dairies around here and there's a season for ice cream, homemade ice cream. And then right around November, they cancel that and around springtime, they open it up. You got to preach the Word.

First Corinthians chapter 4 verse 1, let a man regard us in this manner as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy.

You're going to pull the trigger. You're going to deliver the goods. You're going to preach the Word, whether people want it or they don't. You don't say to yourself, well, you know, this whole thing about being faithful, I'm not so sure about that.

I can cut some corners. We can get some more people. There are a few things that I could do. If I contour the edges, we can be successful around here. When commitment is the key, when integrity is the key, fidelity to preach his message, Titus 1 says this, holding fast the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching that he, the elder, may be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.

2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 2, and these things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, Timothy, these entrust to faithful men who are going to preach in season and out of season.

That's the idea, who will be able to teach others also. Where are the men who are going to lay down the summons? Where are the men who are going to preach even when people don't want to hear the preaching?

I think if Jesus, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel. Well, my name is Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. This is what you do when you're in the middle of a show and you're like, well, what do I talk about the rest of the time?

Well, you can always have Pete's coffee. Preach the word, stay at your post. I will say this. Why does anybody say that on the radio? Let me say this. Well, of course you have to let me, I'm talking. One day I'm going to die, they're going to bury me or cremate me or something.

We're going to do a cremation show here in a little while. In fact, I'm going to write this down, cremation. First cremation in America was 1896, if I believe, and they read some Darwin and some Hindu scriptures.

Hmm, hello, cremation, ah, we're going to have to skip the cremation, go back. But one day they're going to do something to my body. And there are many things I don't do well. There are many ways I fall short of the mark of God.

I trespass, I transgress, I miss the mark. Sad that I do, but I'm thankful that Jesus never did. I'm thankful that God sees me union with Christ. Aren't you glad for those kinds of things? But what I've determined to do is that if I stand up from the pulpit on a Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, men's discipleship, funerals, marriages, youth groups, retreats, Bible conferences, seminaries, or any other platform, Awana, Pine Derby's, and you ask me to come and speak, I will open up the Bible and proclaim the word.

I'll tell you who Jesus is. Now looking back, is there a time that I didn't do that one time? Well, maybe in some of my moralistic days of preaching, I don't know how clear I elucidated the truth of Christ Jesus.

But overall, and this is to God be the glory, who's given me a great education, who's given me wonderful models of preaching, who's given me the right theological resources. I mean, it's all his glory, has nothing to do with me.

But my human responsibility, my human endeavor, my own earnestness and sweat and toil and determination and setting my face towards proverbial Jerusalem is this. That guy preached the word in season and out of season.

Wherever he was, he opened up the Bible. So much so that the baccalaureate people at the local high school only send invitation for requesting attendance, not speaking. Let it be known, let it be said, that if you ask me to come and talk, I'm going to preach the Bible.

CNN won't ask me, I know that. Newspapers won't ask me, I know that. But if they were to ask me, I'm going to preach the Bible, I'm going to talk about Jesus. And if you tell me I can't talk about Jesus and say in Jesus's name, like the National Prayer Breakfast with Ravi and those kind of people, you've got the wrong guy to ask.

In season and out of season. At the White House and at your little podunk church where nobody else who's a big shot even knows. At Harvard and at Princeton and at Yale. At White House Prayer Breakfast.

When Bethany Hamilton talks more about Jesus and more accurately in front of the president than Ravi Zacharias does at the National Prayer Breakfast, what would that tell you? What does that tell you?

In season and out of season. That's why a pastor, of course I want people to like me. I want people to like me so much they invite me back. I want to have people like me so much that they say, you know what?

I liked him. He's nicer in person. I understand. I get it. I understand all the machinations of likability and respect and adoration and honor and double honor and honorariums. I understand it all. But if I walk away with people thinking more highly of me than of Jesus, Brigham Young University, something's wrong.

Preach the word in season and out of season. When it's convenient and when it's not. And if you get asked by Brigham Young University to come deliver a topic on whatever you want and you do what Ravi did, I don't know how you can sleep.

I have no idea. And then Facebook your reasons for it and how God was so honored in it. Please. What a farce. What a direct contradiction to 1st 2nd Timothy chapter 4. Preach the word in season and out of season.

These people don't want to be told that Mormons have the wrong definition of Jesus, the wrong definition of the source of authority of the Bible, the wrong definition of salvation, the wrong definition of grace, the wrong definition of pretty much everything.

And they're enslaved to our righteousness system and without proper preaching, they're all going to hell. How unloving can you get? But here's my bet. Here's my guess. If the first time he was asked to speak at a Mormon place in Utah was 2004 and the current one was 2014, it won't be another 10 years before he's asked back.

Preach the word in season and out of season, whether you want to or whether you don't. I personally, and I've said this before, that if I was asked to go speak at Brigham Young, of course I would be kind.

My voice would be like this, it'd be soothing, it would be appropriate, I wouldn't be yelling, but I would be begging, I would be pleading, and I would be sweating by the way. My armpits would be sweating big time because here I would stand on a national stage and tell Mormons that unless they repent and believe in the real gospel and the real Jesus and real grace, through real faith, that they were going to go to hell.

And I would have only done one thing similar to Ravi. I would have started off with the definition thing, you know, the problem with our society, we've got the wrong definitions. And even though you couldn't have been nicer and kinder and you paid for my wife to come, and the common grace of God in you and through you was just exemplary, and by the way, this will probably cost me my honorarium, but I'm concerned for your souls, and there's going to be no apology, there's going to be no, I first have to get some common ground, there's going to be no rationalistic apologetics, I'm here to talk to you about your souls, and you need to consider your ways.

And there's a way that seems right to a man, but at the end it's the way of death, and that's Mormonism. If you'd like to summarize Mormonism in one verse, that's it. You think you're going to heaven, but you're going to hell, you're on the broad road that leads to destruction.

In the next 25 minutes I'd like to tell you about this real Jesus, and we're not going to start in Bethlehem, we're not going to start in Gethsemane, we're going to start back in eternity past. That's where we're going to start, and how the Father and the Son and the Spirit made a covenant to send the Son, and He was sent.

More often than calling Him born, He was sent, and He was sent, why? Because He eternally existed, I've come to do the work of my Father. He rarely said He was born, why? Because He's eternal Son of God, and this is why Jesus needs to be the eternal Son and fully human, so He can be God our Redeemer and man our representative.

Here is substitution and atonement, here is the deity of Christ. This is Romans 9 .5, this is Titus 2 .13, this is John chapter 1 .1 and 14. These are the I Am statements. Here's what the Bible says, here's what the Bible says about God, and He's not going to give His glory to another, and Jesus gets all the glory.

You've got it all wrong. Won't you believe in the real Jesus? Won't you repent of your sins? He offers clemency even to the people who are at the highest spots of Mormonism. Even you, if you're a student, He offers you clemency.

I'm not concerned about being asked back, I'm not concerned about anything else, I'm concerned about your soul, I'm concerned about preaching the word in season and out of season. That's what I'm concerned about.

Jesus Christ offers forgiveness for even your blasphemous Mormon doctrines. Won't you repent? Let me spend some time telling you more about this Jesus who was born and came and lived and died and was raised from the dead.

Preaching with Patience, Exposition, and Final Appeals

Preaching the word in season and out of season, we prove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. My name is Mike Abendroth, this is No Compromise Radio. You can write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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 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.