Romans and Evangelism 101 (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.

Family Background, Ministry Updates, and Personal Ramblings

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. Had a big family fight a few generations ago. Abendroths, we�re now the Abendroths. From this day forth, we�re the Abendroths. I hate always to be on the winning side of things, but our family was right.

Our family was right to do that, to disassociate, to rename. Who knows? Most likely, we were on the wrong side of it. Knowing my family tree, that�s probably the case, because I know what I am. I�m very thankful, aren�t you, that the Lord saves people from not only unrighteousness but self-righteousness by granting freely through imputation the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, the man who came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it.

Yes, he was more than a man, God-man, but in fact, man. In fact, man now is well glorified. We�re in a little mini-series in No Compromise Radio. By the way, if you are a Patreon listener or a Patreon donor, would you email me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

Tell me how much you give a month and what your name is and address, and I want to make sure I express my thanks to you, because I don�t have that information and need it. So that would be my request.

What else, anything else? 2021, February, Omaha Bible Church, Bethlehem Bible Church, No Compromise Radio, Pat Abendroth, Mike Abendroth, Mike and Pat, no, we are not Irish, but could have been. Off to Israel, and then I�m toying around with seeing how much an extension trip to Rome might be.

I mean, you�re already all the way over there. Fly over to Rome. I�d like some ricotta gelato across from the Vatican. I know the name of the place, Bridges something, anyway, that�s where I�d like to get some gelato.

Espresso, you can get about anywhere, it�ll be good. Some fine dining, some trips to see Titus� Arch, Mamertine Prison, the Forum, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, and it�s almost like the Israel trip in the sense that it�s got some really cool historical Christian things.

You think about the Senate, you think about triumphs, those things are really, that�s what makes it fun because as neat as Israel is, Rome�s probably a cooler city in terms of fun and fashion and stuff like that.

I know we�re not actually after only fun and fashion and cool, I get that. Noco Mascot here is in the studio. She�s 14, she�s got a kind of limp leg and she just walks around and in the old days she would never think about going to the bathroom in the studio, but now when she walks around kind of aimlessly, I�m wondering, I kind of get to that grandma mode.

I just took her outside so I think we�re going to be fine. There she goes. Just like older people, now they don�t obey. Older dogs, older people like me, harder to obey. She keeps going over there, there�s a little snack area for the kids, snacks that I think my wife stashed here at the church and she�s wanting some little snack, Welch�s 80 calorie gummies or something.

All right, enough of that. If you want to know what I listen to on my podcasts when I�m on the bicycle or elsewhere, I love to listen to Christ the Center. You can get that show. I love to listen to Glory Cloud Podcast.

I love to listen to, most of the time, the White Horse Inn. For a while I�m like, I don�t know about the White Horse Inn, but I think Shane has been doing a good job filling in for Mike and post-Sam Albury shows.

I like to listen to Abounding Grace Radio, sermons. I like to listen to Office Hours. What else? Oh, that�s probably enough for now. I don�t have that in front of me. We�ve been talking about evangelism in the Book of Romans.

Reasons We Should Evangelize

So last time I talked about reasons we should evangelize. Before we actually got to the message found in the Book of Romans, I wanted to give you some reasons so that you�d be motivated to evangelize.

And it�s from Jesus was an evangelist to Jesus�s great commission to the disciples, and then to us, the reality of hell. It gives glory to God, the elect are out there ready to be reaped, a mighty sowing and reaping.

And then I wanted to move toward what does the Bible actually say about the message? So remember the Romans Road? Everybody sinned, Romans 3 .23. But you know, the free gift, eternal life, Christ Jesus 6 .24.

I don�t know if they have anything in chapter 5, 6, 7, or 8, or 9, but they�d always go to 10. Believe in your heart, you know, confess with the mouth, believe your heart that Jesus, you know, was raised from the dead, and you know, you�ll get saved.

So, I�m not against those verses at all, but I wanted to expand that a little bit so we didn�t go from just minimalistic things. And of course, that�s always a question in evangelicalism. What�s the least amount of knowledge somebody has to know in order to be saved?

Well, I can�t really answer that question. I mean, you�re going to have to understand sin. You�re going to have to understand the Savior. You have to understand your own condition. You have to understand that Jesus, the God-man, fulfills the law and, you know, dies on the cross for lawbreakers, is raised from the dead, and you have to trust in Him.

There are some minimal things. I don�t know what�s the least amount. So, instead, I�ll just give people as much information as I can because I realize people don�t really know Christianity anymore. A hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago here in America, and even before this was America, people understood the Bible.

It was common parlance. It was normal to talk about things, and you can notice Bible stuff in Shakespeare, and you can notice Bible stuff just in the every normal day discussion. And there�s no peace for the wicked in other things, obviously.

So, I�m going to just give as much as I can. And so, today, we�re going to look a little bit more about the message, of course, preached, but the best way to do that is to tell you some wrong ways that it�s preached.

Wrong Ways to Preach the Gospel

So, the first session, we talked about motivations for evangelism. Now, we�re going to talk about some wrong ways to preach the gospel, so that if you tend to do this, you won�t do it anymore. If you hear this, you�ll know what�s wrong, and that you don�t fall into this trap of looking at someone and then telling them what you think they want to hear.

Isn�t that really the problem? I can have my funeral message all ready. I can have my wedding message all ready. I can have my sermon ready. And then you stand up in the pulpit behind the desk of the funeral home, and then you see all the people grieving, and you were going to talk about there�s only one way of salvation, and you see a bunch of Muslims.

Well, I feel your pain. I understand the pressures that people have. And that�s why, like Paul in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 2, before he went someplace, he determined, he made a resolution. He knew what he was going to do and say before he got there.

So then, in fact, that would bolster him. That would help him keep his mind fixed on what he was supposed to do as an ambassador, as a steward, as a missionary, as a sent one, the apostle. How to wrongly preach the gospel.

And by the way, you know, I am the man. This is not, oh, look at these poor people that do that. You�re going to hear a lot of yourself probably in this. I�m going to hear a lot of myself in this, where we�re all learning.

We�re all growing. And as jabby as I like to get, Gabby too, on No Compromise Radio, Twitter, or Facebook, or even sometimes on the show, we realize, I, not the royal we, but I realize how sinful I am, and how weak I am, and how I�ve fallen short in so many areas, including evangelism.

Therefore, I rest in God�s great Son, who perfectly evangelized and never thought, I�m afraid of man, and I�m not going to tell them about who God is. I�m afraid to confront sin. I�m afraid to whatever.

He never did. Therefore, we rest in His work and in that righteousness. How not to preach the gospel, number one, with some type of superficial formula. A, admit. B, believe. C, confess. Now, if you use that, I don�t really have a problem with ABC, because I�m going to give you four Ws, but if it�s dumbed down ABC, and you�re just trying to get somebody to answer a few basic questions, and then you pronounce them as saved, or that�s all you need to talk about without even discussing the object of your faith, then I don�t like that.

Do you believe you�re a sinner? Yes. Do you believe Christ died for sinners? Yes. Will you receive Him as Savior? Yes. Then you�re saved. I am. That�s from A Little Thing by William McDonald. I am. Yes.

Almost kind of like leading them to get a kid to say the right thing and to get them to say the right thing when, in one sense, you should probably talk about the Lord Jesus and then try to talk them out of it, because there�s a cost, is there not?

How not to preach the gospel. Number two, a kind of felt-needs approach. If you come to Jesus, He�ll fix everything that�s wrong in your life. Now, if �fix everything� means He�s going to fix your standing before God, okay.

He�s going to fix your eternal destiny to heaven now, fix in a different way, not to repair, but to adhere, like fixture. But I think what we�re after is, what about come to Jesus and your marriage will be better?

D .A. Carson said, �Weigh how many presentations of the gospel have been eased by portraying Jesus as the one who fixes marriages, ensures the American dream, cancels loneliness, gives us power, and generally makes us happy.

If you begin with perceived needs, you will always distort the gospel. Number three, what would be a bad way to preach the gospel? I think if you only talk about the effects of the gospel, that would be a wrong way, i .e., the social gospel.

If you�re going to talk about love and charity and feeding the homeless and things that, obviously, an individual Christian, based on their own conscience and desire and gifting, can decide to serve poor people and to feed poor people and to house them, fine.

But I think if you want to boil the gospel down to, �I preach all day, and if necessary, I�ll use words that�s not going to do any good. The gospel is about somebody else. It�s not about you nor about the effects in a social way.

Number four, inclusivism, where everybody goes the same way, many paths up the mountain. You could say pluralism as well, where there�s lots of different ways to get to the same place. I think you have to be careful with that as well.

I think I�m going to move that thing here in my notes, because I don�t really think I want that in the notes. So now, I was going to do a little bit more on some false ways, but let�s just get to Romans.

I�ve got Romans out. There�s the dog. She�s laying there. I think she�s happy to be here versus stuck in the garage. She can stay in the house. She stays in the house at night, but when we leave, she�s in the garage.

So then if she gets mad and wants to do anything, she�s just in the garage. What we�re going to look at in the book of Romans as a template, as just a helper, this is not �you have to do it this way because consider, if you�re a Christian, how many different ways do you hear the Bible describe preaching the gospel?

Of course, at its root, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, you have Christ dying not for his sins, but for our sins, according to the scripture. He was dead, and he was buried, and he was raised, of course, according to the scripture.

You know, he ascends into heaven. But there�s lots of times when you hear Peter, Acts 2, and Acts 4, and Paul, and Acts 9, they don�t use the exact same words. So that�s your register in your mind. The Bible, when discussing the call to salvation, and the call to faith, and the object, the triune God, it�s not formulaic.

Everyone doesn�t start off with, �Do you consider yourself to be a good person I don�t even mind that question, because people are so distorted now when it comes to common grace and how good they are in light of that versus how good they are in God�s eyes.

But if you don�t start off that way every time, you didn�t do the wrong thing. In other words, I see differences of preaching in the Bible, and so therefore what I�m going to give you is a template. So, if you can get to know Romans, then you can understand this pretty simply.

And I don�t think there�d be anything wrong if you got done talking to a person and you had about 20 of those ESV Romans journaling little inserts. I don�t know what they�re called, a journal. It�s only of Romans.

And you gave that to them. Would that be too much to give? Do you need to give something a little less? I don�t mind if you give something less. We used to give out the stop tracks from Grace Church, STOP.

But here, the book of Romans would be good for unbelievers to read, because right at the very beginning, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.

Jesus Christ, our Lord. And it goes on. Mike Havendroth, No Compromise Radio. Just taking a breath. You don�t know what to do. You just say that. Info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. I know what to say. I�m just leading up to it.

The Four Ws as a Template for Evangelism

Therefore, for a template that would be easy to remember, four Ws. Okay? Who, there�s going to be two who�s and two what�s. Who, who, what, what. Four Ws. That�s going to be the way you can think about it.

And you know what? I�m going to give you this in order, this particular order, but if you want to do it in a different order, that�s fine because you�re going to see we�re going to flip back and forth through different chapters in Romans.

You�ll realize, oh, this is not a formula. By the way, praise the Lord that it�s not a formula because what if you�re talking to an unbeliever and then they get you sidetracked and you�re off your formula?

No, no, no, wait a second. I have to go back to such and such. You can just engage and you can be trusting that the Lord is working and that he uses frail people like you. One of the things I�ve noticed over and over and over when I read biographies about Adoniram Judson and William Carey and whoever it might be, I realize, you know, unless it�s some kind of hagiography where they�re just painting them into sainthood, if the author is, the biographer is honest, he, the author, or she, the authorette, will tell you just how much these men and women, their wives are like a Mary Schleser, how sinful they were and yet God used them anyway.

That�s the thing. I mean, think about counseling people. I don�t really think I�m the best counselor, but I do know that I know the Bible and I try to give some advice and I try to tell them this is what the Bible says and this is what I think and don�t mix those two together, right?

One is Bible, God�s wisdom. One is my wisdom, hopefully derived from the Bible and here�s what I would do if I were you. Here�s what I�ve done in the past, but I know deep down I don�t have all the answers and I still can try to give them the truth and hope that God uses the word to change people.

Who, who, what, what. Four Ws. Who is God? I�m going to do that to start because people don�t really know the object of their faith very much. Who is man? Because you want to see yourself in light of who God is, not in light of other people.

Bell Curvish, if you will. Number two, knowing that God is great, knowing that we�re sinful, there�s a problem, so Jesus comes to do something. What did Jesus do? What did Jesus accomplish? And he was our, I was just going to give you the details, I don�t need to.

And then after we understand the personal work of Christ, then there�s a response. Right? Peter preaches, he didn�t even say repent and believe. They ask, what should we do? And he says repent and be baptized.

Now the three responses we�re going to look at revolve around repentance and faith. And there�s one more, but you�re going to have to stick around to hear that show. Four Ws. All right? Four Ws. I just looked at my text, that�s why I was thinking about something else.

Who Is God? Creator and Judge

A more detailed Romans road. Here this great book, some call the greatest book. Hamilton, the greatest book in the Bible. Coleridge, the profoundest piece of writing in existence. Clark, if any minister wants to strengthen his people, he can hardly do better than to give them a massive dose of Romans.

Number one, who is God? W number one, who is God? This is the first category that we�re going to talk about today. If you end up talking about sin first, it�s fine by me. Talk about Jesus first, whatever you think is best for the situation.

I�m just glad that you�re out there talking. Chantry said, Walt Chantry, evangelists today are making the dreadful miscalculation that sinners know who God is. They all center upon man�s eternal fortunes and utterly ignore the question, who is God?

The sinners thus treated never really, never realized the gravity of their plight. They don�t know whom they have offended. This is tragic. Therefore, they�re going to need to know about the object of their faith and the object of their law breaking.

Whose law are you breaking? So the first, and every one of these four Ws is going to have three points. So this is actually a 12 point sermon. 12 point sermon, three points under each main category of four total.

By the way, I try to teach seminary students and preachers not to do that. Sub points, sub point A, C, 1 .0. That�s why it�s better just to say I got 12 points. But I wanted you to have the four Ws. So see, I don�t know how I�m going to do this.

Actually, I�m trying this out on you because I need to preach this, this Sunday. Maybe I should just say, here�s four Ws, and I�m going to put three under each. Three things about who God is under this category.

Three things about Jesus in the third category. Three things about people in the second category. And see how we go back and forth and around. And that�s why if you have a fill in the blank outline, and then you don�t give the person the right fill in the blank, they come up afterwards and they have to know what�s in that blank.

They�ve got to get that thing filled out. Oh, man. In the old days, I�d just yawn right in the microphone. I suppressed that. You could probably hear it if you turned it up, but I was trying to suppress that yawn.

Who is God�s number one creator? You�ll notice in the book of Acts, and maybe we�ll go there in a minute, that when people didn�t know about who God was, Paul, for instance, would talk about the creator, God as creator.

When Paul would talk to Jews and they knew who God was and who He is, then regularly you would hear the Bible says, right, Old Testament quotes. But in our day and age, pretty much this post-Christian culture we live in, I don�t think people know anything about God.

To them, God�s a God of love. My God�s a God of love. As Sinclair Ferguson said, I don�t really think that�s true because if there�s a God who loved you as much as you think your God of love is, you respond differently.

But also, they�re like, well, my God�s not an inclusive God. Sorry, not exclusive God. He�s inclusive. He�s tolerant. Basically, they�re creating God as their own image. They�ve been told tolerance is good, exclusivity is bad, inclusivity is good, whatever orientation you want, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So the first thing we need to do is talk about God as creator. Now, since we�re in the book of Romans, Romans 124, therefore God gave them up in their lusts, in the lust of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.

And here we have a rejection of divine revelation found in nature, and God then actively, not passively, gives them up. And you�re kind of hearing this first stroke of gave them up in this death knell, as I think Barnhouse might have called it.

Why? Verse 25, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, capital C, who is blessed forever. Amen. They took the truth that they can understand in natural creation about who God is and how he exists and how he ought to be honored.

They took that truth and they said, you know what? We�d rather worship the creature. We�d rather worship other creatures. We�d rather worship us, the creature, versus the creator. Instead of giving praise to his glorious name, as Psalm 92 would say, we�ll worship somebody else.

We�re going to reject that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and he with power, with majesty, with an order, with a sovereign ex nihilo creation out of nothing that should cause us to say, we praise you.

They�re going to turn their back on that. God regularly, often creates. Oh, look at this. I�m out of time. Here I am waxing unequivocally. My name is Mike Abendroth. That�s No Compromise Radio. See you next time.

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