Amy Grant - Betty Rubble Award

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.

Show Introduction and Mission

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. Our tagline is, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. That's what we're trying to do. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

If you write, it goes directly to my email, and then I send it to our financial department. Accounts payable. Or if it's a theological question, I'll probably send it to Ray. Ben, by the way, is on board with No Compromise and the staff, and he's done a great job with the book giveaways on Facebook and tweeting, twittering, and the thing is exploding.

This is a veritable explosion, as Jonathan Gershner used to say. Who? If you don't know who that was, that was R .C. Sproul's theological mentor. So that's why R .C. talks the way he does. I don't think it has anything to do with camels or Marlboros or anything like that.

It has to do with his mentor, I'm sure, Jonathan Gershner. Don't forget, you're an enemy seeking the God you'd kill if you could. All right, what do we have on tap today? On tap today, oh, don't forget also the No Compromise 90 YouTube site.

I want you to know inside dope here, and the dopage is this. Carl Truman said he'd do a guest NoCo 90 for me. I have one on tap from Todd Friel that probably already played by the time you hear this. I've asked Phil Johnson to do one.

I've asked James White to do one. I've asked Byron Yawn to do one. I've asked Pat Abendroth to do one. And so what you need to do is you need to tell the big shots out there in the world, hey, you should do a No Compromise 90, 90 second YouTube, and then we'll post them.

They just put them in my Dropbox file and then up we go. If I deem them by my own sovereign will to be worthy of a No Compromise show. All right, I'm putting on my glasses now. Sadly, I had to go to the dollar store the other day.

I know that's sad in a lot of ways, but I needed to get something more than 1 .5 magnifying for my reading glasses. I got 1 .75. And you know what it made me think of? It made me think I'm the walking dead.

I'm 53 years old and I'm one day closer to dying. My dad died at 55. I hope I don't die at 55 or younger, but it's not up to me. And the one thing I do know is that I will end up dying. And so hallelujah that I'll see the Lord, but the whole death thing, who knows?

We have something on No Compromise Radio, if you're new to us, it's called Kooks and Barneys Award. And so that's Kooks and the Barneys. And a kook and a Barney is someone who tries to surf, but they're not good at surfing.

And they live in San Jose. They try to come over to San Francisco, excuse me, Santa Cruz and try to surf and they just mess up the lineup. They cut in on people. They drop in on people. They just are a kook and a Barney.

It's kind of like if you're a bicyclist and you have a $15 ,000 bike, but you can't ride very well, you don't have a good biking etiquette, you're a Fred. So Kooks and Barneys, Barney, Fred, Fred and Barney, Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble, Betty Rubble.

Amy Grant and the Betty Rubble Award

This is the Betty Rubble Award because I'm giving it to a lady and the lady who gets the Kooks and Barneys Award for a naive, unbiblical, atheological viewpoint expressed in the media. If you don't have a biblical viewpoint, probably shouldn't talk to the media would be my advice.

But hey, I am now one of them. I am media. I'm the media. Huffington Post reports from an article in Pride Source that Amy Grant, here's the subline, Amy Grant, Amy Grant talks gay fans and being invited to perform at a same sex wedding.

And so they didn't really talk to her much about every heartbeat, our baby, baby. She does have a new album out, How Mercy Looks From Here. I don't know where the here is from, but it doesn't seem like it's the biblical view of heaven.

She said this though, quote, she's 52, even when I was discovering my own sexuality and meeting people that had a different experience, this, you know, I, I could go off on this whole discovering my own sexuality thing, but I'm just, I'm just, I'm just trying to be nice.

This is K Love Wednesday, right? I didn't categorize them. I don't categorize right now. When you don't understand something, you can either default to judgment or you can default to compassion. So more comments that I'm just muting right now with my mute button.

Though she does not disclose her own stance on marriage equality, I never talk about anything like that. Probably because you'll lose your fan base, probably you'll get taxed by the IRS. They would have tried to look at our books, but they had no books.

There was no incoming money at no compromise radio. So we didn't have to worry about any of the outflow, inflow, outflow, cost accounting terms. Of course, that was my worst class I ever took at college.

It doesn't help when you're just a stoner, but it was cost accounting 308 and it was pretty much, it was like trying to decipher the indecipherable. It was trying to unscrew the inscrutable. It was very, very difficult for me to do.

So I just had to, I don't know what I had to do. I had to drop out. I do have a degree. I have a bachelor of science degree in business administration from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. There you go.

UNL. On the other hand, University of Nebraska at Omaha, that's UNO, they would call it, University of No Opportunity. So see, there you have it. Grant revealed she was honored, honored as in quotes, to have been recently invited to perform at a same sex wedding, but had to decline because of school.

Scheduling problems. Still she joked, quote, anytime somebody asked me to perform at a wedding, I say, I do not have a good track record. A lot of the weddings I've performed at, the marriages have ended poorly, end quote.

Marriage, Holiness, and Why Same-Sex Weddings Should Not Be Celebrated

So I'm going to give her the Kooks and Barney's award today. And here's the thing. While we ought to be very compassionate toward people, all people, sinful people, heterosexual sinful people, homosexual sinful people, celibate sinful people, we don't celebrate any kind of sin.

Now I celebrate marriage, God's ordained covenant of marriage, a man and a woman, one man, one woman. She was asked in the, I did pull up the full interview by Chris Azzopardi, a Christian music legend, talks gay fans, marriage, and first album in 10 years.

He asked her, did you ever feel that you had to reconcile your Christian faith with your acceptance of homosexuality? Now accepting homosexual friends, accepting that people aren't all Christian people, but this whole, I accept it like I could care less.

I could give a rip about what the Bible says about homosexuality. And it clearly talks about it. And without getting into Leviticus passages, because I don't need to go there, somebody said on the YouTube channel a while ago, I mean, I don't respond to any of them because I just can't get into that.

But someone said, do you ever eat shrimp? Well, yeah, of course I eat shrimp. And the reason why I eat shrimp is because I'm not under Sinai's mosaic law. That's why I eat shrimp. And so if you mean I can't mix clothes and can't eat shrimp and can't eat lobster, and then homosexuality is put in those same categories, you have never read the Bible.

You have never put your thinking cap on to think even clearly. You could probably have a good course in English literature, and that might try to help you. But when the default is we've got to destroy the Bible in any way we can because we don't like what it says, then we'll use naive arguments like, do you ever eat shrimp?

So we can clearly go to Romans chapter 1, 1 Corinthians chapter 6. I don't have to go to Leviticus, but I think if you do look at the big picture and say to yourself, God is holy, and God is transcendent, and God is immutable, He doesn't change, and God is immutably holy—you know, it'd be one thing if God was holy, but He was just immutably holy.

And He'd only be holy on the days when you were doing the right thing, but on Judgment Day and days that you were sinning, He would be mutably holy, and He wouldn't really be holy that day. See, wouldn't that work out well?

But the problem is, God is never changing. I, the Lord God, never change, and so immutably holy. And with a mutably holy God, you'll see, for instance, before Mosaic law in the Garden of Eden, one man, Adam, and one woman, Eve.

And here, God blesses that man and woman as they are to cleave to one another. Then you see in Sinai, you'll see God's view of marriage and view of sex, by the way God created sex, and He created hormones, He created testosterone, He created all these things, to be enjoyed by a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage.

I don't think you're going to find any prudes on No Compromise Radio than you see in the New Testament. It's the same thing. God is immutably holy, and so it'll show up in the way He commands His church.

So when you go to 1 Corinthians chapter 6, and when you're at Corinth, like I just was a few weeks ago, it's interesting to look up to the Acropolis, which is the high place, and that's where the temple prostitutes would be living, and they would descend upon the city for temple worship, prostitute worship, worship with the gods that they served by sexual intercourse.

And so, it was a very tough place, it was a carnal place, it was a seaport, and you know what happens at seaports. To Corinthian eyes, you understand those words, sexually immoral place. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, listen, you used to be that way, and he includes heterosexual sin, homosexual sin, and a lot of other kinds of sins, all sins, all things that show that we have no righteousness of our own, and that every person born except for the Lord Jesus Christ is born sinful because of Adam's sin, is credited to our account by God's sovereign will and decree, and consequently, we then are sinners, and we produce sinners, and we are sinners by nature.

And so, what we have is we have Paul writing to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians, and he says, such were some of you, but you've been washed, you've been justified, you've been sanctified, and when God saves sinners based on Christ's life, death, his representative work, his substitutionary work, God the Father confirms this as wonderful and as good and as right and as accepting in his sight.

Jesus says, it is finished, and the Father says, amen, and his amen to Jesus' finish, it is finished, is raising Jesus from the dead. He confirms it by raising him from the dead. And so, what we have is we have a variety of folks who are trying to just go to the Old Testament and say, see, look at Mosaic Law, but they have no idea what they're talking about.

So, here she says, did you ever feel you had to reconcile your Christian faith with your acceptance of homosexuality? Amy Grant says this, that's not my life experience. In the same way, if you put my shoes on, you would go, quote, I thought this experience was going to be one way, and it was totally different, end quote.

Now, still Amy talking, though, she's quoting within a quote. None of us has any idea what somebody's life experience is like. Well, A, duh, B, what does that have to do with anything? And here we go back to the typical deal where a life experience, well, this is my life experience, and I've met a lot of homosexual people, and they're kind and loving and monogamous and committed, and their marriage has lasted, and I've met a lot of heterosexual people, and they're sinful and rude and unfaithful, and they cheat on their spouse, and they get divorced, and they ship their kids off, and what does that have to do with anything?

That just shows you depravity, I guess that's a theological lesson, but it doesn't help you understand what the Bible teaches. Amy Grant should know better. Amy Grant does know better, but the same kind of thinking, could it be?

I don't know her motives. This same kind of thinking, did this contribute to her divorce and then remarriage? I don't know. It seems like it does, although I can't prove it. And so my name is Mike Abendroth, this is NoCompromiseRadio .com, and we are talking about Amy Grant and her talking about performing at a same-sex wedding.

Pastoral Practice, Weddings, and Unequally Yoked Marriages

She basically will do it, and so what would happen when I'm asked to do that, and eventually this is going to happen in the United States of America? What about performing gay marriages as a clergy member, as a man of the cloth, as a reverend?

Well let's think big picture. I am a pastor here of a local church in Massachusetts. By the way, it was super easy to be licensed to perform weddings here, because if you're the religious leader of a group, Baha 'i or anything else, atheistic group, you can get such a certificate.

And I don't know how many weddings I've performed or officiated over the years. I don't know, 25, 30, something like that. And here's what happens. You say to your kids, I have to go perform a marriage today, I'm going to go marry someone today.

And the kids are like, I thought you were already married. What do you mean you're going to go marry someone? Yeah, we're going to go marry someone. No, I'm going to go officiate the wedding. And then the kids go, okay, dad's already married to mom, and so he's not going to go marry someone.

He's going to go marry them off, I guess if it's one of my own kids. But we've got to marry someone, meaning officiate the wedding. So first of all, when I got here, I would officiate weddings of two unbelievers, which is fine to do, it just maybe isn't wise to do.

Why isn't it wise? Well, you have to meet with a couple, and then you have to go to the rehearsal, and you have to go to the wedding, and then you have to go to the rehearsal dinner. That's before the wedding, of course, but I just forgot that, so add that in.

And then you have to go to the luncheon, reception, and all those kind of things. And I remember what my professor said back at Master's Seminary, Alex Montoya. He said, I have better things to do on my Saturday than to officiate weddings of unbelievers.

First I thought that was really rude, but it's kind of a no-compromise deal. I have better things to do on my Saturday. In other words, if you are both unbelievers and you want to get married, then why don't you go down to the Justice of the Peace or go down to Mayberry RFD or something, and Andy will perform it, and it doesn't matter.

Why do you want the cloak of God over you? Of course, people are—even unbelievers realize that there's a God by looking at creation and their conscience bears witness as well. And so it would be nice to have a holy marriage, a holy wedding, to have God's stamp of approval on your marriage.

Who wouldn't want that? But see, without faith in Christ Jesus, it's impossible to please God, Hebrews chapter 11. Now furthermore, those who are in the flesh, Romans chapter 8, can't please God. And so while it's sin to get married, I would say it's less sin to get married than it would be to live together.

And so what we have here in the world is we have—there's some noise going on upstairs and it's bugging me, so if I sound distracted, I am. So while I'm glad people, if they're living together, will get married because they'll still be sinning, but it's less sin.

They're not honoring the Lord Jesus Christ, but at least they're not sinning by fornicating or committing adultery, so they're in marriage, and so I'm glad for that. And so I would do a few weddings when I first got here, officiate them between two unbelievers.

It'd give me an opportunity to preach the gospel to them in my study, in my office, and tell them, this is what I'm going to tell all your friends, and that's exactly what I would do. So I don't condemn people for preaching the gospel at weddings.

And in fact, my general tenor, my general idea is this. I won't do unbelievers' weddings, but I will make an exception here or there. In other words, if one of my kids is an unbeliever and they want daddy to do it or a relative or something like that, I'm not going to just give the blanket statement.

I won't do them. And so when people are unbelievers, I just don't do their weddings. And so if people are not regenerate, heterosexual, homosexual, I'm not going to do their weddings. And if the people are two men and two women, actually years ago when Massachusetts became the first state to do gay marriages, in the old days I'd get the certificate of marriage and it would say groom, and then have all the information, I'd have to sign it to validate it and all that stuff.

And then it said bride, and then all of her information. And now it says, you know, person one, person two, and at the bottom, male, female, and on the other side, male, female. And I think that's pretty sexist because where's the transgender deal?

So the other day, there's that transgendered MMA boxer, the man who has no male parts anymore, but he's still a man. He's kicking the snot out of these ladies. And we're not smart enough to say, this is really a man, but because of maybe he just wants to win, he'll cut everything off, or maybe he just is messed up and he needs help, but now he wants to fight other people.

He's going to fight girls. This is crazy. So no compromise radio. We're talking about gay marriage. And so I will not marry a believer and an unbeliever because I know 2 Corinthians 6 has a broader, well, it has a more, the author's intent there, Paul's intent was not specifically marriage, but we get some good principles derived from that and being unequally yoked and whether it's business or marriage, I think there's some principles that we can extract from that very passage, even though the primary intention of the passage isn't don't marry an unbeliever.

But I think that's something that we shouldn't do, certainly for those who have been married and they've lost their spouse, and Paul talks to them in 1 Corinthians 7, to marry in the Lord, marry in the Lord, or if there's been a biblical divorce, there can be a biblical remarriage, you marry in the Lord.

That should be every Christian's M .O., marry in the Lord. So what about two Christians? There are Christians that sometimes I don't officiate those weddings either, and I'm trying to give them advice, they don't want to follow my advice, then I don't officiate the wedding.

I give people books to read and say, here's, you need to read the books, and these are the five weeks of premarital counseling you need to attend, and if you read the books and if you do this counseling, then I'll officiate the wedding.

I'm not under law, biblical law, just because someone comes up and says, would you officiate? Sometimes people ask me and say, well, would you officiate our wedding? And I'll say, sorry, I'll be in California that week.

And they'll say, we'll fly you home, I used to fly home and do that, but now who wants to do that? Because I'm old and tired, I'm on vacation, you've got two travel days, a couple other days, and so I'm very pleased and privileged that people would ask me, it's very, I mean, who would ask me to do a wedding?

And when people do, I'm honored, but I just don't have the time to do it because I'm on vacation, so I say no for lots of reasons. And so soon enough, people are going to knock on the door and say, we're gay and we'd like you to do the wedding, and if I say no, for whatever reason, I'm on vacation, you didn't read the books, you are trying to do something that's not even biblical, that is, two men or two women trying to get married, this is not representative of Christ loving the church.

Ephesians chapter 5 shows that, Christ loves the church. And so this isn't Christ loves Christ, this isn't the church loves the church, two men or two women getting married, this isn't something to be celebrated.

While I won't treat you poorly, while I won't treat you unkindly, my lesbian friends know that if they ever were to get married, quote unquote, and ask our family to go, and they probably would, we know, they would understand, sorry, we love you guys, but we can't do it.

I'm a Bible teaching pastor. And we would be just as nice to them afterwards, if not more, but we wouldn't go. And they would not say we're homophobic. That's why Brandon Ambrosino's article in The Atlantic was so good because so many people are homophobic-phobic and they are afraid of people who they think are afraid of homosexuals with an irrational fear.

I have no irrational fear of homosexuals at all. I love all kinds of sinners and want to be just like Christ in that, loving sinners enough to tell them the truth, but I'm not going to celebrate anything that's unrighteous.

I don't celebrate fornication, I'm not going to celebrate homosexuality. And so I like it that Brandon Ambrosino reported in The Atlantic that though he was gay and told his professors that he was homosexual, at Liberty University of all places, they were kind to him and loving to him and compassionate.

And Gandhi used to say, I like Jesus, I don't like his followers because his followers don't really match up to who Jesus was. But Brandon said in the article in The Atlantic, there are some words in there I would prefer not to have read, but it's a secular thing, and I think the point is clear.

Here's the point, that if Gandhi was at Liberty University, that he would love the people at Liberty University and not just love Jesus. Why? Because they're kind, because they're loving, because they're compassionate.

This caricature of Christians holding up signs, God hates fags, at funerals of military, that is not biblical Christianity. You see all kinds of people out in the world that call themselves Christians, and it's not biblical Christianity when that happens.

Jesus, if he was around a homosexual, he would be kind to them and nice to them and tell them this is how you can have your sins forgiven. And even personally, if a homosexual doesn't think that's sinful, then let's talk about envy, covetousness, pride, jealousy, lust, and all kinds of other things.

We here at No Compromise Radio don't want to compromise. Here's the good news, Jesus Christ's death was great enough to be able to forgive all those who would believe homosexual sins, heterosexual sins, but Amy Grant does get the Cooks and Barneys Award, the Betty Rubble Award today for not standing up to tell the truth.

But I guess we should have known that.

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.

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