Pat Abendroth: Gospel Trends (Part 1)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry, Mike Abendroth here.

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Special show today, my brother, Patrick Abendroth, pastor of Omaha Bible Church in Omaha, Nebraska, was here at Bethlehem Bible Church doing a special conference.

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Friday night, he addressed the men and talked about some negative trends when it comes to the gospel.

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And he wanted the men to be alert to these negative influences so they could stand for Christ and his work.

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And so if that's what you're gonna hear today, part one, trends, negative gospel trendiness, watching out for attacks on the gospel.

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So this is Pat Abendroth, omahabiblechurch .org. You can pull up his messages. I think you'll find him an excellent speaker, a warmhearted pastor who wants to stand for the truth of God.

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Patrick Abendroth, gospel trendiness, nocompromiseradio .com. Father, thank you once again for tonight.

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Thank you for our great savior, Jesus Christ, that we can have forgiveness in him, that we can have life in him.

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Thank you that that very most important thing in the whole world is what causes our hearts to beat.

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And we're grateful that because of what he has done, our confidence is sure, our hope is more than just hope and hope.

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It's hope and trust in that historic great reality. And we're looking forward to that next historic reality when

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Christ returns and calls us home. Stir us up tonight, help us to learn, help us also to steep our convictions, not just so that we can know more, but that we might give you the kind of praise that you deserve and that we can lead our families if we have families and we can make a difference in this world for the glory of Christ.

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In whose name we pray, amen. We need to listen to three Bible texts.

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We'll turn to some other Bible texts as we go. But if you just want to listen to these words with the best concentration you can possibly muster with the spirit of God's help.

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For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

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For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.

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Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David as preached in my gospel.

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Such clear words, such important words, gospel words.

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And yet I would suggest to you men that there is a real jeopardy in relationship to the gospel itself, that we lose sight of what the gospel really is, that we lose sight of what the gospel really does, and that the great jeopardy is not outside places like this.

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It's not outside of evangelicalism. One great jeopardy for us of losing sight of and understanding the gospel is actually an internal jeopardy.

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It's actually within evangelicalism, something that we're a part of. And so that's what we're going to talk about tonight.

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We're going to talk about some awful gospel -related missteps that jeopardize the most important thing in the whole world, the most important thing that's central to all ministry, the good news of salvation in Christ.

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Now what I don't wanna do is sound like I'm some sort of fundamentalist, ranting and raving and angry about good news.

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I acknowledge, hello, my name is Pat, and you're supposed to say, hello,

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Pat. I am a recovering fundamentalist, okay? And so I'm glad we're having a meeting. So, but here we are, and we need to be serious, sober -minded, thoughtful, but motivated about clarity when it comes to the good news about Jesus Christ, because in so many ways, it's everything, and if there are gospel missteps that maybe we're taking or are prone to take, we need to take those to heart.

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And I love addressing you men, because men are to act like men and be bold and courageous, and we wanna lead, and we wanna lead when it comes to the most important thing in the whole world, and that's the good news about salvation in Jesus Christ.

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The gospel is this, the good news that Jesus Christ did it all, that Jesus Christ perfectly fulfilled

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God's law, that He did everything right as one of us, as a human being, and then, having done nothing wrong,

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He went to, looking for a cross, thank you. Pulpit used to be over there, so I'll give a little latitude.

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He went to the cross, He went to the cross, and He went there as if He'd done everything wrong, everything that we've done wrong, and He atoned for our trespasses, for our sins, our violations against God's law, having

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Himself kept that law perfectly on our behalf, and then what? Gloriously, victoriously raised from the dead so that we might have new life also.

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It's good news. Now, we could focus on one of those aspects. We'll talk about all of those aspects in one way or another, but it's the good news of salvation in Christ, right?

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Let's pretend like we're Baptists. We say amen to this. We say we agree with this.

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This is right, and so we'll talk about some missteps so we don't lose sight of the great news that is the gospel, that is really why we're here, it's why a church exists, it's why we worship and praise

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God, and I have more missteps written down here than we'll cover, but we'll certainly look at least a handful of these in our time together in this session.

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Number one, abusive gospel misstep number one, if you're gonna take some notes, abusive gospel misstep number one, and some of these are gonna be like bumper sticker slogans.

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Some of these are not going to be, but this is one of those bumper sticker slogan kinds of gospel missteps.

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Perhaps you've heard it before. Justification means just as if I've never sinned, just as if I never sinned.

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That's a gospel misstep, okay? I'm not sure where it came from. Some evangelical folklore where we've been trained to be

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Sunday school teachers and we're taught when we teach kids concepts or adults concepts, we're gonna teach them justification.

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That Bible word means just as if I never sinned. Evangelical folklore that came secretly from the devil originally because it's a gospel misstep.

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It's not true. That's not what justification means. And so in one sense, I wanna have an altar call for all of you men who've ever taught that in a class and we're gonna come forward in a good

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Finney -esque kind of way, and you're gonna have repentance at the altar up here that we don't have. But we won't do that because we don't wanna fall on our swords.

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All of us are guilty of believing wrong things and teaching wrong things at one time or another. And if we were gonna have an altar call,

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I'd want you to come forward and say, I confess my sin. I'll never do that again. But I need to prove it to you first.

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Justification is this in a nutshell. Justification, that legal word, legal idea, that forensic reality that you being a sinner are declared righteous even though you're not.

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You are declared a perfect law keeper because that word righteous has to do with law. You as a violator of God's holy law are declared a law keeper even though you're not based upon the perfect law keeping of Christ, right?

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Christ's perfect work on behalf of everyone who would ever believe is credited.

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It is imputed and based upon his perfect law keeping obedience, credited to you by faith,

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God declares you a perfect law keeper is the idea. Even though you know and I know we're actually what?

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Law breakers, we're sinners. Sin is lawlessness, 1 John says.

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And so we've all sinned and we're all lawless in that sense. That's what justification is.

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It's important that we remember that. In a minute, we're gonna go to Romans four and Philippians chapter three to see these ideas or these realities.

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But think with me about this. If justification is, this is the wrong idea, this is the gospel misstep, just as if I never sinned, where does that bring me spiritually?

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Spiritually, it brings me to zero, okay? It brings me to zero, just as if I never sinned.

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So now I'm at a big zero. And God requires zero from all of us, right?

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Wrong, he doesn't require zero from us. What does God require? He requires perfection.

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Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount said be perfect. That's what's required. What's God's law in summary?

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What does God require? Matthew 22, Jesus summarizes the law. What does he say? The law of God is that you be a spiritual zero and God will take you.

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All you have to do is just do whatever you wanna do and ignore God. Now, the idea is, well, the reality is he says, love the

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Lord your God, how? With all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your strength, all of your might, the idea is all of your faculties, all of the time, including your motives.

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Just treat God like he's God, do all the right things, all of the time. Oh, and while you're at it, love your neighbor as yourself.

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There's a summary of the whole law. Just as if I never sinned.

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Just as if I never sinned isn't a good definition at all. How about this?

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I'm gonna suggest this. It doesn't work on a bumper sticker or teacher training class unless you're serious.

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Justification, better to say, just as if I never sinned, that's important by the way, and just as if I perfectly kept

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God's holy law all of the time, right? Just as if I loved God with my heart, soul, mind, and strength and my neighbor as myself perfectly, even with motives all the time.

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Now, I realize there could be overlap in what sin is, but the reality is it's what you don't do and what you do and it's both.

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That's what God requires. And now it's so much richer, isn't it? What did

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Christ do? What Christ did was he atoned for our rebellion, yes, but he also positively earned for us this right standing before God.

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Let's go ahead and look at Romans chapter four, verse five, so we can see justification in this reality, then Philippians chapter three, but God doesn't require zero on the ledger.

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Zero will send us to hell. We don't want zero that sends us to hell. We actually want the positive side, not just the removal of the guilt, but actually the crediting of the positive.

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So in Romans chapter four, verse five, in so many ways, you could pick just about anywhere in Romans, but Romans four, five, because it's a classic text, says, and to the one who does not work, but believes or trusts or has faith in him, that would be

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Christ, who justifies, who declares righteous, who declares a law keeper is the idea that the ungodly, his faith, faith in Christ in our context, is counted or credited as righteousness and righteousness and justice and justify that related words, the idea is essentially, he's getting at the same idea, the same reality.

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It's a great, awesome reality. By faith, when you trust in Christ, you're not only receiving removal of guilt, forgiveness, if you will, you're also receiving his perfect law keeping credited to your account.

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So now when God looks at Pat, a sinner, an ungodly person, like Romans four says, or you, he says, you're righteous in my eyes.

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And if you and I are honest, we say, but we're not righteous. Righteous in my eyes based upon what?

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Yes, Christ's righteousness, because he does it on our behalf. It's extraordinary. How about Philippians chapter three, just to get another sample.

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Philippians chapter three, verse nine. The apostle Paul is talking about the same reality about Christ's great work and Christ's great righteousness credited to us and it says in verse nine, and to be found in him, to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness, not having a law keeping of my own that comes from the law and his own efforting is the idea, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God.

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Theologians talk about the alien righteousness and it is alien because it's not ours. It comes from God that depends on faith and not faith in faith.

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And to look at the greater context, he's talking about faith in what? Faith in Christ, faith in whom really would be the right idea.

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Christ's righteousness credited to us. Remember some wise

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Bible teacher once said, the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls is the doctrine of, anybody know

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Latin to be fancy? Let's really show what we know. Sola Fide, right? Faith alone and what he meant was faith alone in Christ alone in his perfect work.

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The doctrine upon which the church stands or falls and we're getting it wrong because we're trying to be simple.

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Let's not get it wrong. Let's be clear and let's give Christ even more glory than he would otherwise get.

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And not just saying he takes our sin away. That's awesome and should be emphasized, but he not only takes our sin, our guilt away, he gives us that positive righteousness because he himself positively kept the law for us, which is gonna give

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Christ more glory, exaltation and praise. If we see him for the full savior that he is.

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And so that just stokes up the fires of praise and we understand that he's not this half a savior, he's a full savior, he does everything necessary.

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And I so love to worship him as a result of that and be thankful to him for that.

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If that's the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls and I think there's good insight in that, that would be important for us.

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It's better than we might've even imagined. Just as if I'd perfectly obeyed the law of God.

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Let's move on to another gospel misstep, an abusive gospel misstep. Perhaps you've heard this one before.

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Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, what? Use words.

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You guys hang out in the same bad places I hang out. That one is so trendy.

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When I was working on this message, I was sitting at a Starbucks and there were some local youth workers at a big evangelical megachurch just across the street from the

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Starbucks where I was sitting and I kid you not, I was working on this message and they were talking about that.

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And they were doting over it, what a great philosophy of youth ministry it is and how awesome this is and it was just blowing my mind.

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I thanked God for the bad providence as the Puritans would say. Or maybe the good providence.

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Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary, use words. You know, oh, that's so good, so awesome.

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Well, we don't know exactly where that came from. Usually it's attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. We don't know for sure, but I'll reference it in relationship to him and I would just encourage you to maybe remember it this way if it's true.

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St. Francis as a sissy. That's sissy evangelism, okay?

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It's bad, it's bad. Now, sometimes it goes under other guises that are related.

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Deeds not creeds, right? Sometimes we wanna put it that way. Or incarnational ministry.

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That's really cool right now if you're hip. By the way, borrowed from old Protestant liberalism. If you go back a little ways and see where that came from.

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Or incarnational, deeds not creeds. Not only that, preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.

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Now, I'm so thankful for your response and I'm thankful that you're theologians and theologically minded and you could probably give the lecture from here on out, but I'm gonna go ahead and try to do a good job anyway.

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What's wrong with that? What's wrong with that? We do wanna be sincere.

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We do wanna be incarnational in the sense that we wanna show people the love of Christ. Please don't misunderstand. I'm trying to use a little shock value.

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We don't wanna just have creeds and no deeds. Okay, but what's wrong with preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words?

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If you have a Bible, I'll invite you to turn to Romans chapter 10. Romans chapter 10 is super helpful when it comes to this.

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And as you're turning there, I'll just suggest to you that the problem with it on one level is that the gospel men can't be lived by anyone other than the

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Lord Jesus Christ. You can't live the gospel. You can't do it.

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I can't live the gospel. It's impossible because gospel means good news, okay?

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If we preach the gospel, we're telling good news. You don't live news. I suppose if you wanted to play word games, you could say you do, but really, we don't live news.

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Look at Romans chapter 10, verse 14. Romans 10, 14, good news is to be proclaimed, not lived.

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How then will they call on him, Jesus that is, in whom they have not believed?

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And how are they to believe in him of whom they have not or never heard?

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Notice the emphasis on heard. And how are they to hear without someone preaching, heralding, proclaiming?

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Verse 15, and how are they to preach, notice, unless they are sent, as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news.

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You can't live the news. You could watch the news or hear of the news, but if you're the one giving the news, you can't live it.

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You tell of it. You proclaim it, especially if it's good news. Imagine with me, if you would, a newscaster.

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What does a newscaster do? Does a newscaster watch the event that happens, and then all of a sudden, with you watching on your television, live it out?

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Do they mime it? You know, do all this kind of crazy stuff, and you're going, what is that?

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That's not what they do, that's silly. Now my head hurts. They don't do that.

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It's ridiculous. That's why I wanted it to stick in your mind. What they do is they tell you about what happened, and they might tell you the meaning and the significance about what happened, live on the scene at 11, here's what just happened.

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Well, that's what happens with news and newscasters. Our news is, let us tell you about what happened one

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Friday afternoon outside of the city gates in Israel, in the Middle East.

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It's historic, it's something that really happened, and we tell not only what happened, we tell the meaning of what happened.

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Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. You can't preach the gospel without words.

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Can't be done. It's preaching, proclaiming, heralding. It's true, we wanna live differently.

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We're salt and light, as Jesus says. We don't wanna be a contradiction to what we're proclaiming, but it's so crucial that we see those verses, even verse 17, so faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

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Back when that was written, there were people living certain ways that were commendable and certain ways that weren't commendable.

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Human nature hasn't changed, but the text says, what's most important, faith comes by hearing, and hearing the word of Christ, the gospel.

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We gotta remember that. Furthermore, this isn't a good model for evangelism.

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It's problematic on another level. It's problematic because I'm a sinner, so are you.

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So how can I live the gospel? How can I preach the gospel with my life?

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Let me be really blunt. The gospel you preach with your life is anti -gospel.

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The gospel you preach with your life is a perversion of the gospel, right?

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Because you're a sinner, and so am I. The only one who could ever live the gospel is Jesus Christ, so we don't point people to ourselves.

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We point people to him, the good one, and we tell good news about the good one.

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It has to be that way. It has to be that way. And you say, what about the

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Holy Spirit transforming my life? And that's all good, right, and true. I think Paul had the Holy Spirit working in his life, but even if you had a bumper crop of fruit going on in your life, hopefully you wouldn't be so audacious as to disagree with the apostle

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Paul, who himself would say in 1 Timothy 1, verse 15, I am the foremost of sinners.

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I think he had the Spirit of God indwelling him, and he was producing fruit. And he's still saying,

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I'm chief of sinners. So he didn't preach himself, he preached Christ. Don't preach yourself, and that brings us to a further problem when it comes to this, and it reminds me of 2

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Corinthians, when Paul's talking about, I think this very kind of matter. How about turning to 2

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Corinthians chapter four? If I'm gonna preach the gospel without words, then

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I'm not gonna really be telling about the true Jesus. I'm gonna be telling you more about who than the true

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Jesus, the person

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I like to talk about most in my flesh. I'm gonna be talking about myself, right?

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If I preach the gospel with my life, and tell stories about me, me, me, look at me, me, me, that's all

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I'm talking about myself. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015, and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org, or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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