Commanding the Impossible

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and you can write me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

We have a Patreon if you're interested in that. In the old days, discernment ministry, man, there was a lot of givers.

Now, when you talk about Jesus, just a handful. There is a way, and there's a wrong way.

Anyway, today, we're gonna try part two for the

No Compromise Variety Hour. I don't know what to call it. It's only a half hour show.

It's a variety show. I used to do a TV show down in Memphis, and my wife,

I didn't know. I mean, if somebody said to you, do a half hour TV show or a half hour show, what would you do?

Well, what I've done in the past is I just talk about a subject for a half hour, like the first videos that we've been doing.

My wife said, why don't you make it kind of like a variety show? You don't have to, like Johnny Carson, he'd have a monologue, and then he'd have a guest, and then he'd have a singer, and then he'd have a juggler, and then he'd have who knows what, or David Letterman would have stupid pet tricks, stupid human tricks, again, some song, song.

So just variety show. So that's what we're doing on No Compromise Radio. We have a segment on prayer, Cooks and Barney's Award, book recommendation, message moment, are you a

Catholic or a Protestant? And then the main teaching time. So, like I said last time, if you don't like one of these segments, then just fast forward, keep watching, and then we'll be on to a segment maybe you will like.

Segment number one, prayer, the Lord's Prayer. I talked a little bit last show about how important the

Lord's Prayer is. Today, I want to make sure I focus on one of those key things about the

Lord's Prayer that in my life has really been revolutionary as I've been thinking through Luke chapter 11, what we call the

Lord's Prayer, the disciples prayer. And that is the word Father. When you pray, you pray to the

Father. Now, a few weeks ago, we aired a show about God as Father, but just as a reminder in this variety show format, that when you pray, you're praying not to a force, you're praying not to Mary, not to a saint, not to St.

Christopher, not to anyone except the Father. And you pray to the

Father because of what the Son has done for you and what the Spirit of God has applied to you and made you alive and made you born again and given you the righteousness of Christ.

We pray Father. God is not a machine. God is not, like I said, some kind of force, big guy upstairs,

Father. I regularly hear people pray to God, but I want you to think through, what does

Jesus mean in this template prayer where He says, I want you to pray to Father. Now, some people's fathers are bad.

Actually, there's never been a perfect father on earth, right, humanly speaking, but there's a

Father who's in heaven, a Holy Father, and He is a great Father and fathers provide. They protect, they pity, they train, they discipline.

Those are earthly fathers. How much more does a heavenly Father take care of all those things? And so when you pray, probably the best thing you can do is just don't say anything for a moment.

Remember who you're praying to. And then when you're remembering that it's because of the triune

God's work and you get to call God Father because of the work of the

Son and the work of the Holy Spirit, and that sets the tone. That's the entryway in.

You want His name to be honored. You want Him to look good. You wanna live in a manner that shows that you have a great

Father, et cetera. You actually get to call God the same thing that Jesus calls

Him, and that is Father. 1 John 3, behold, what manner of love the

Father has given to us that we should be called children. Children of God. You're a child of God if you're a believer in Christ Jesus.

And when you get to call God Father, you think of that word Abba in Galatians 4,

Romans 8. It doesn't mean daddy. It doesn't mean dad, dad. It doesn't mean papa. It means father with reverence, with awe, with intimacy, yes, but with a desire to make

Him look good and give Him honor. I love Ephesians 1, 5. He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself.

Calvin said, when you pray, you get to call Him Father. And He's not only a father, but quote, the far best and kindest of all fathers.

And so when you pray, you get to say Father. Well, our next segment is what we call

Kooks and Barneys. I'm in a surfing family. I'm probably at the bottom of the

Abendroths in terms of surfing skill level. I have to have a huge big board, a huge log.

I paddle out, don't catch too many waves, but I have a son who's a great surfer.

His wife's actually better than he is. I've got a daughter who's a great surfer. My wife's a great surfer.

And the rest of the Abendroths are not great. We just kind of get out there. But if somebody is doing something dumb in the water and they don't know the etiquette of surfing, the protocols for surfing, the rules for surfing, kind of this unwritten deal, they're identified as Kooks or Barneys.

They're just out of control. And so I don't want anyone to be a Kook or a Barney in the water.

I don't wanna be one. I'm sure I was when I first started surfing, but I don't want you to be a theological Kook or a

Barney. And so it's an award I give. It's an imaginary award. See it right here, it's invisible. I'm gonna give this award today to anyone who says, don't put

God in a box. How many times have you said something from scripture about God?

Well, I don't wanna put God in a box or you're putting God in a box. Like what in the world?

Essentially what they're saying is don't let me be forced. Don't force me to deal with the

Bible. Don't tell me what the Bible says. I'm gonna just throw something out there to get you off track.

It's unproductive theologically, but it's productive for me because now you have to argue yourself that you're putting

God in a box. And now it's on you instead of the truth being on me. Ambrose, a theologian of old said, the things which

God wishes to be hidden are not to be examined. And the things which he has made manifest are not to be rejected.

Lest we as ingrates be improperly curious toward the former and damnably ungrateful for the latter.

Like what in the world does he mean? Well, I could use Deuteronomy 29, 29 and say to you, the secret things belong to the

Lord. But do you know what? When things are in scripture like predestination, like election, like depravity, things like that, we are to examine them.

We are to think through them. We are to say, you know what? Yes, and so when somebody says, well, don't put

God in a box, I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to say using a metaphor, you know, you're limiting

God. Now, if I'm putting God in a box by limiting his power or his knowledge or his holiness or something about his essence, well,

I'm not to do that. That would be improperly, sinfully putting God in a box that is limiting his greatness, his majesty, his awesomeness.

But if putting God in a box normally means I'm out of my comfort zone with what you're saying about God from the

Bible, talking about hell, you know, these days we've got Kirk Cameron saying that, you know, hell is not eternal conscious torment.

He's reading that bad theologian with the last name Fudge and all of a sudden now conditional mortality and, you know, annihilationism and everything else.

If I'm out of my comfort zone because you're talking about eternal torment and hell forever, God in a box?

But what if that box is God's revelation in Scripture? I'm gonna put you in that box.

You might not like to be in that box, but I'm gonna put you into that box. God can do and will do whatever he wants to do, right?

According to his nature, according to his being. How about this, Rod Rosenblatt?

God put himself in a box. They called it a tomb. Or people have said,

God put himself in a box. It's called the Ark of the Covenant. Next time you're talking to someone from the

Bible and they say, don't put God in a box, don't go back on your heels. Just keep pressing, keep pressing, keep pressing.

Well, it's important to read books. Today, we're now at the segment called book recommendations. And now

I'm going to recommend a book because if you're gonna be a Christian leader, you should be a reader.

I think Luther said, read three hours a day or, you know, get out of the ministry. Maybe Wesley said that. Somebody said it,

I just said it. Mike Abendroth just said three hours a day or get out of ministry. We need to be readers.

Well, the recommendation today, this is one of those books that I kept in my sock drawer. What's in your sock drawer?

Key books, Christianity and Liberalism by G .J. G .J.?

Leave this in Mario, J .G. Machen. Machen, I love this book,

Christianity and Liberalism. You'll read it today and you'll go, it was written in 1923.

102 years ago. And it is just as apropos. I mean, when you read the

Bible and you think, this is for today, it's because God's word is enduring. It's transchronological, if you wanna use a big word.

And of course, books written by men, mere humans are not. But when you're talking about things from the

Bible, the stuff that Machen talks about from the Bible, it endures in the same problems we had now, they had back then.

Christianity and Liberalism. Here's a few quotes to get you to wanna buy the book and you can find it online for free.

Christ died, that is history. Christ died for our sins, that is doctrine.

Without these two elements joined in a indissoluble union, there's no

Christianity. Essentially what Machen is doing is saying, there's two religions, the natural religion, everything but Christianity and a supernatural religion.

A supernatural religion where God enters in supernatural account.

Machen doesn't talk about it, but one of the reasons why I believe the miracles of the Bible, just at face value,

Red Sea, resurrection, walking on water, feeding 10 ,000 people.

Why do I believe all those? Well, they're in the Bible, that's true. I believe them for that reason.

But from the human perspective, logically speaking, once you realize our belief, our consent to, that God made everything out of nothing, then every other miracle can happen.

Of course, you think to yourself, yes, that's easy. Machen said, it is usually considered good practice to examine a thing for oneself before echoing the vulgar ridicule of it.

If you're gonna critique something, you should probably know what you're talking about. And certainly he did. Here's a few other quotes that I love from the book.

The New Testament without the miracles would be far easier to believe, but the trouble is it would not be worth believing.

Sold, I'd need to go read that book again. Another quote from Machen in Christianity and Liberalism, the book recommended today in NoCo.

The truth is that if Jesus be merely an example, he is not a worthy example for he claimed to be far more.

Here's what he's talking about here. Is Jesus an example? Well, 1

Peter 2 says he is in terms of suffering, but he's just not an example to follow. How do

I know that? All right, follow Jesus' example. On your mark, get set, go. How are you doing? Well, you can't follow his example.

He's the perfect man, but we can't follow his example because we've been tainted by Adam's sin and our own sin and our own corruption now in light of that.

And so we don't need just an example. We need a sin bearer. We need somebody to die for our not living up to the example of the perfect man.

So Jesus is not simply an example like the liberals would say, he is a substitute.

He is a representative and substitute. Well, I think I hear in the background, some music.

I think it might be the drifters. This magic moment. Is that an infringement on copyright of this magic moment, this message moment?

You know what? We could just call this segment the mess because lots of the message translation is just a mess.

By the way, that should be another Kook and Barney award when people go, you know, my life's so messy.

No, your life is all sinful is what it is. So is mine. It's so messy. No, your room's messy.

It's kind of fun when Mario's in there in the audience. Otherwise it's just me sitting here back to the one star, zero stars for Abendroth, one star for Jesus.

Got to give Jesus at least one star. That's my review on iTunes.

The message moment, Psalm one. Psalm one's such a great Psalm. It's the entry into the

Psalms. And it's all about who Jesus is. Psalm one and two go together. The Lord Jesus, the righteous man.

Here's what the mess says. How well God must like you. You don't hang out at sin saloon.

You don't slink along dead end road. You don't go to smart mouth college.

I don't even know what people are called anymore, but I don't think Gen X calls people smart mouths. Instead you thrill to God's word.

Now, come on. That's not even close. I mean, sometimes the message does in an application type way, get the sense of the scripture.

Okay, I'll give it that. But since it's God's word, I want it to be as precise as possible, as close to the original as possible.

Of course, when you're translating things out of Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek, it can't be one -to -one because it's a translation.

But this is not a translation, it's a paraphrase. And by the way, translators, paraphrasers have theological backgrounds.

They have theological bents. If I were to translate the Bible from Hebrew, from Greek and from Aramaic, I would translate it from a

Calvinistic perspective, from a law gospel perspective, from a predestinarian perspective, from God's sovereign over everything perspective, et cetera, et cetera.

So here, if he's gonna paraphrase it, the theology of Peterson is gonna come through.

The new American standard on the other hand, translates it this way, Psalm 1. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the

Lord and in his law, he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither.

And in whatever he does, he prospers. And so when I read Psalm 1, I think you wanna know who the blessed man is, who delights and meditates day by day?

It's the Lord Jesus. And then I read it in light of that. And I think in light of that,

I would like to delight in God's law. I want to meditate on his law day and night.

The paraphrase of the message needs to be just for a moment, this magic fleeting moment.

All right, what's up next? Our next segment, drum roll please. Are you a

Catholic or are you Protestant? Are you a Roman Catholic or are you a Protestant? And in this section, I give two quotes, two sentences that are almost exactly identical, but one's

Catholic, that is Roman Catholic, and one is Protestant. Roman Catholic, Protestant.

Which one are you? And of course, if you're watching, you're probably a Protestant, but if you're not careful, you're gonna slip into this blending, this fusion, this coupling of justification and sanctification.

And instead of believing that you're justified by faith alone, you're justified by faith, you might be thinking you're justified by faithfulness.

And faith has an object, faithfulness is the subject. You're to be faithful as a

Christian, category of sanctification, faith alone for the right standing before God. Are you a Catholic, Roman Catholic, or are you a

Protestant? Statement number one, God gives a man right standing with himself by, both of them start off that way.

God gives a man right standing with himself by, option one, placing

Christ's goodness and virtue to his credit. Placing Christ's goodness and virtue to his credit.

Right standing. The other option is, God gives a man right standing with himself by putting

Christ's goodness and virtue in his heart. Putting Christ's virtue and goodness in his heart.

So in the category of standing, which one is it? Placing Christ's goodness and virtue to his credit, that's option number one.

Putting Christ's goodness and virtue into his heart, number two, in the context of standing.

And of course, you know the answer. It was similar to last show. We as Roman Catholics, we as Protestants, what do we believe?

Protestants believe in crediting. Catholics, Roman Catholics believe in infusing.

The Protestant view is by placing Christ's goodness and virtue to his credit. And that's the accounting language.

That's justification. That's forensic. That's courtroom. That's legal standing before God's court.

By putting Christ's goodness and virtue into his heart, that should be in the category of sanctification.

We believe that. Christ for pardon, Christ for power. But that's not in the same category.

Categories matter. That's why good theologians know the difference between the category of sanctification, standing, and sanctification.

Christ for pardon, Christ for power. And so if you picked by placing Christ's goodness and virtue to his credit, you are a

Protestant in your thinking. If you believe it's by putting Christ's goodness and virtue in his heart, that is right standing, then you're a

Roman Catholic. So make sure you don't blur the lines between justification and sanctification, because that's exactly what

Rome does. And so many seem to be doing an evangelicalism with final justification, with federal vision.

It is a perennial problem. Well, we come to our main topic for today.

And that main topic for today has to do with Jesus, because I like to talk about Jesus.

That's why it's called No Compromise Radio. Jesus never compromised. I take you to the passage of Matthew chapter 12, and the false teachers are trying to get

Jesus. They're trying to essentially lynch him. And Matthew 12, it says, then he said to the man,

Jesus said to the man, stretch out your hand. And the man stretched it out and it was restored healthy like the other.

Mark's account, it says of Jesus that he looked around at them with anger, grieved at the hardness of their heart.

And so Jesus looks around. By the way, Jesus, true man, perfect man.

Did Jesus have emotions? Right, we wanna talk about impassibility when we think about God before the incarnation and God doesn't have these emotions.

There's language of emotion in scripture, analogical language, but there's no, God isn't passable.

But here we see Jesus. He's got anger because remember, the second person of the

Trinity, right? Assumed human nature, took on flesh to use John's language.

And so now Jesus has divine nature and human nature, divine will and human will.

And here with righteous indignation and anger. And he also has grieved heart, deeply grieved.

The language in the original is an intense, deep grief. I mean, these false teachers are so calloused.

They have been working out their false doctrine for so long. Just like when you lift weights and you're out working with hammers all day as a carpenter, you get calluses and he,

Jesus, sees that. And there's anger and there's righteous grief. And he said, stretch out your hand.

Keyword said. And back in those days and even in today's culture, how do you heal people?

Odors, incense, techniques, all kinds of quackery that you do, exorcisms,

Latin. What does Jesus do? He just says something with command, with authority.

He just rebukes those false teachers by saying something simply to a man.

Sounds to me just like God speaking the world into existence, sun, moon, stars, earth.

He did nothing but speak. By the way, could the Pharisees now accuse

Jesus of doing anything, working on the Sabbath, is talking on the Sabbath work?

The hand was restored, perfectly brought back to its former condition, commanding the impossible.

That's the segment here, commanding the impossible. Stretch out your hand. And so that leads me into a discussion on commanding the impossible.

Jesus did that with a physical deformity or somehow the man's hand got hurt when he was working.

Jesus commands the impossible, stretch out your hand. How does that work? And actually he did stretch out his hand.

Sovereignty, responsibility, God's work with the response of man's work. Does that kind of make you think, oh, that's almost like a mini picture of salvation, commanding the impossible.

Believe, how could a dead person ever believe? When you go evangelize people and you wanna tell them about who

Jesus is, you give them law to show them their sin. Then you tell them the good news. How could they ever believe?

They're slaves to their own flesh. The world has corrupted them. Adam's sin is upon them.

They're corrupt themselves. Satan is blinding their mind and you tell them to believe. How could they believe?

You're telling them you must believe on the Lord Jesus. Don't you tell people that? Believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved.

Paul in Acts chapter 16 to the jailer, believe on the Lord Jesus. You are commanding people to do something that's impossible.

Dead men can't make themselves alive. You can't come out of the tomb. Lazarus can't come out of the tomb on his own.

So what in the world is going on? Romans 8, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.

Indeed, it cannot. For those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Jesus said to the man with a withered hand, stretch it out.

I just want you to be reminded that that's a great picture of man's inability. He tried to stretch it out before Jesus showed up, certainly over and over and over.

His hand's withered, something's wrong. That person has an inability to do that very thing physically.

And it's the same thing when it comes to spiritual things. We proclaim the truth to people. We tell them to believe.

We give them the commands. We tell them the good news. And in light of the good news of Jesus, the perfect law keeper, the one who died for lawbreakers, the one who was raised from the dead, who ascended to heaven, who's seated at the right hand of the father, who's gonna come back to judge the living and the dead.

You trust in him for salvation, forgiveness of sins. Believe. You're talking to dead people.

Don't you know, dear Christian, when you tell people to believe, they never could believe because they're dead, unless God was working.

Unless there's a God who commands the impossible because then he does the work and then you respond.

We usually use Lazarus as the example. Lazarus is dead. How could he come out? Jesus says, Lazarus, come forth.

Good thing he said Lazarus because everybody else will come out too if he just said, come forth to the tombs. Commanding the impossible.

Physically, stretch out your hand. And spiritually, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. People are walking around.

Huge fascination now with zombies. Walking dead, night of the living dead.

All, you know, night of the living dead, part 42. I mean, everything's zombie crazy these days. Dead men walking.

They're spiritually dead, although they're walking around physically. And Jesus is telling people to do what they can't do because as he's pleased to do it, the spirit empowers.

There's an old man named Pelagius. And he said that if God gave obligations, believe.

Stretch out your hand to use the physical part. That if God gave obligations, people must have the power to do them.

If God says, believe, then you've got the power to do it. But Augustine said,

Pelagius, you're wrong. God lays obligations on us, even though we can't perform them, so that we might run to him and ask for mercy and grace and help.

Think about it. Adam and Eve before the fall, were they responsible to obey God? Take care of the garden, et cetera?

Yes. Were they able to obey God? Yes. After the fall,

Adam and Eve, you, me, as unbelievers, were we still supposed to love

God and love neighbor, the two great commands? Yes. Were we able to keep those commands? No.

God didn't change his law because of the fall. The law is still there. So now God is commanding things that people can't do.

And that makes grace so wonderful because now God helps. God comes alongside, God empowers,

God opens up our hearts and we respond with faith. What we're talking about, depravity is real, but also grace is real.

B .B. Warfield said, we point out that the doctrine of inability does not affirm that we cannot believe, but only that we cannot believe in our own strength.

That is so good. I don't wanna make spiritual depravity, total depravity, whole depravity, spiritual inability.

Oh, that means nobody could ever believe. And sometimes as Calvinists, sometimes as Bible teachers, we say that.

No, no, it means we can't believe in our own strength because once God makes us alive, once God makes us born again, then we respond with faith.

And so I just want you to be reminded, dear viewer, dear listener, that you're out there telling people to believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ. They could never do it except by the strength that God supplies.

So here's what we do. We proclaim the truth, tell them to believe, and at the same time, pray that God opens their hearts so that they can rightly respond to the truth.

My name is Mike Gabendroff. This is No Compromised Radio Ministry. I almost said, I am No Compromised Radio.

I am Spartacus, I am Spartacus, I am Spartacus. You can write me, mike at nocompromisedradio .com.

Write me and tell me, I like the new format. I don't like the new format. Just let me know.

Mike at nocompromisedradio .com. And don't forget, if you want to order books, and several people are doing this, 10 or more books, 40 % discount.

You can pick and choose whatever's on Amazon, drop ship to your house. If you want some stocking stuffers, Mike Gabendroff, No Compromised Radio.