Preach Christ (Part 1)

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No Compromise Radio Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author,

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Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the

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Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.

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I have a newspaper article this morning. I'd like to read a portion of it. The title is called

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Please Laugh in Church. First Church Plans Holy Humor Service Sunday.

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Marlboro, Massachusetts. I think it's about ten days old. This weekend, the

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First Church in Marlboro Congregational will spice up its services by sending in the clowns. The church will have a

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Holy Humor Service this Sunday featuring stand -up comedy, a laughing

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Jesus on the cover of the church bulletin, and a sermon begins with, Have you heard about the one that happened on the road to Emmaus?

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This is a brainchild of interim pastor Betsy Waters, who says humorous church services have their roots in medieval times and have become more popular as the years have gone by.

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She said we laugh, cry, and tell stories. Waters began the tradition three years ago, always on the week after Easter to show that God has the last laugh over death.

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She said the resurrection is one of the greatest punchlines of all times. It's God's creative humor at work in the world.

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I'm not done reading the article yet, but if you can't see my blood pressure starting to go up, you're not sitting in the front row.

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The service will open with The Clown's Prayer, probably led by the pastor, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

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Humor is also working its way into the lineup of hymns. Past services have featured choir members wearing animal masks as they sung the whimsical hymn,

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All God's Critters Got a Place in the Choir, Some Sing Low and Some Sing Higher. This year's featured hymns include one called

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Sing My Song Backward and an alternative version of Give Me That Old Time Religion. I think

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Paul was a little different when he said, And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him what crucified.

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Turn your Bibles, please, to 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and I use that story as a backdrop.

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While not every church is into such shenanigans, many are.

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And if Jesus Christ has purchased this church, the universal church and every local church with His blood, it is

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His church, and He is the one who says, this is what you do for worship.

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If you haven't noticed, Jesus is precise about worship. A whole book even in the Old Testament, Leviticus, talking about the precision of worship.

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It's never left up to how people feel, how people are led, what's most popular, what will draw in a crowd.

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It's always based on how the God of the universe has told us He wishes to be thought of and worshiped.

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And this is such a good section of Scripture for us even as a church, so we can hear the heartbeat of Paul, to be reminded again, who is the object of worship?

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And it's not me, it's not you. It's never right to say, well, I didn't really like the worship service today, assuming there's biblical preaching and biblical songs.

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The right question is, did I worship Jesus Christ corporately together with the saints?

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Paul has been talking in 1 Corinthians, this church that is carnal. I don't think they were as carnal as blasphemous congregational or wherever it is, but they were carnal.

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And they needed to get their minds right, their minds straightened out to think properly. Paul says in chapter 1, it's a weak object of salvation, that is weak to the world,

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Jesus on a cross. Doesn't seem very strong there. He saved others, but He can't save Himself.

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Actually, they were technically right, He couldn't save Himself, because it was the Father's goodwill for Him to come and die for those that the

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Father had given Him. Paul says at the end of chapter 1, do you know what else is weak?

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We are weak, the ones that have been graced by God. The cross seems weak, we seem weak, and are weak, and now

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Paul moves to chapter 2 and he says, even the preacher comes, not with some kind of thunderous oratory, but he is weak as well.

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Sixteen chapters in the book of 1 Corinthians, thirteen in 2 Corinthians, twenty -nine chapters trying to get this church to think with the right priorities, to think biblically.

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So it's good for us as a church as well. I've said this many times, I'm not preaching through 1 Corinthians because I think we're carnal,

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I'm preaching through 1 Corinthians because I think this will prevent us from turning into Holy Humor Saturday or whatever those kind of things are.

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Chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4 is about one topic, what's that one topic? Church division.

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Church division, chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4. Chapter 1, 2, and 3, they had the wrong view of wisdom, wisdom according to the world, a way to see the world through unbiblical lenses, and in chapter 4, what was splitting the church was the wrong view of ministry.

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So here right now in chapter 1, 2, and 3, specifically for us today, chapter 2, we're still dealing with this issue of wisdom.

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How do we assess life through the lens of Christ and scripture, or through ourselves in some kind of egocentric way?

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Paul says in chapter 1, verse 18 to 25, the gospel of the cross is opposed to worldly wisdom.

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He says in chapter 1, verses 26 through 31, God's choices show that he's purposely not calling wisdom into, not making wisdom a factor.

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And then now Paul in chapter 2, verse 1 to 5, is he's going to say, I purposely decided not to use man's ways and man's wisdom when

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I came preaching to you. Why? Look down at verse 5. This whole section, my

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Bible has a nice little paragraph blocked off. This whole section from chapter 2, verses 1 through 5, is all leading to verse 5, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

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Paul wants this message to affect you with the power of God, so that when another smooth talker comes along, and a better speaker, and a smarter person, you're not going to be affected.

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So the outline for today is simple, kind of an unusual outline, but we pick up where I left off just before Resurrection Sunday.

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Four words that describe what Paul is saying in these five verses that will help you understand that preaching must always rest in the power of God and not on men.

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Four words to describe this. Easy to remember these four words. The first word is disregard.

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If you remember these four words, you're going to be helped in Awana, evangelism, home Bible study, preaching, ministry of the gospel.

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These four words aren't just for apostles, they're not just for pastors, they're for everyone. Number one, disregard.

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You must have a total and complete disregard for any and all human methods that detract from the gospel.

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Schemes and strategies and concoctions and game plans, they're all gone.

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Let's see what Paul did. Paul, in chapter 2, verse 1 says, and I, when

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I came to your brothers, when did he come to them? Chapter 18 of Acts, he was there for 18 months.

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Before I got there, before I traveled to where you were, I had a game plan and before I got there,

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I thought of these things. I'm not going to be led. I meet people all the time. I'll say, well, what are you going to speak on? And they'll say, well,

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I'm just waiting to be led. Translation is you haven't done your homework yet and you don't have a study ready, so you're waiting to be led.

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I'm just going to kind of go on my feelings. I'm going to kind of assess the crowd. Paul didn't do any of that.

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He said, I'm going to get there and before I get there, it's going to be stuck into my mind. My father used to say, son, don't be bullheaded.

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In a good sense, Paul is going to be bullheaded in a direct determination. So he says,

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I'm going to go do what I'm supposed to do instead of what I could do, maybe what I want to do. And he says, when

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I came to you brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.

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Paul says, I don't care about the how, I don't care about the method, it's the what, it's the whom, Christ, Jesus, the

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Messiah on the cross. Paul says, when I got there, I tried to make it so that I wasn't the star of every one of my stories, that I wasn't the star of every personal illustration

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I gave. I've got one person to preach about and that is Christ. It's kind of interesting.

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He starts with first person singular again here. He stopped with first person singular in verse 17 of chapter 1.

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And so really, 18 through 31 of chapter 1 was kind of a parenthetical statement.

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So if I read 1 17 and 2 1, it just flows perfectly with this first person singular.

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Let me read verse 17 and then chapter 2 verse 1 and it all just flows together. He picks up where he left off.

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Chapter 1 verse 17, for Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel. And not with words of elegant wisdom, eloquent wisdom or elegant for that matter, but the text is eloquent, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

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And I, verse 1 of chapter 2, when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.

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See how that's just tied in perfectly? He picks up where he left off. He said,

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I purposely didn't come with erudition, lofty speech. I've listened to some people talk and I don't even care what they're talking about, but they're just good speakers.

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I remember once I went to the Massachusetts, USS Massachusetts, that's a destroyer here locally,

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Fall River or someplace. And this guy was telling stories and he was telling stories about, we did the sleepover.

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You don't really sleep on those things, but you just lay there and listen to everybody else, you know, try to control their unruly kids while you try to sleep.

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And it's this overnight sleeping kind of Cub Scout, Iwana, whatever we did here.

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And he said, I have no idea why I'm going to tell this story, but it's an interesting story nonetheless.

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I'm camping out and all of a sudden they say, you hear the bell beep, beep, beep, beep in this ring.

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And they say down in the mess hall, there's the storyteller and he's going to be telling ghost stories about ghosts on ships.

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And I thought, well, as the pastor of the church, I definitely am into the exorcism ghost story. So let's go church.

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No, I took my son, there was a few other church people there, but I said, let's listen to this man tell stories.

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And I kid you not, I've never heard anybody tell a story so wonderfully. There's an issue today we have in society.

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People can't tell stories. This guy could really tell them. I didn't even care. It was about ghosts. Because if he could tell great stories about subjects

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I don't care about, then I just say, well, he's just a great storyteller. The focus is not on the wrong person. It's not on Christ Jesus.

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Paul could talk high brow language. He was trained, but he didn't want to display himself.

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There's an old Puritan saying that talks about a peacock that prides himself in his gay feathers, but ruffling them up.

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He spies his black feet. So then he soon lets his plumes fall.

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I'm so great. I'm so wonderful, says the peacock. Oops, my feet are black. Spurgeon said, this is allowed his people to have.

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God has allowed his people to have black feet, black from their own sinfulness so that they may not glory in any of the graces which

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God, the Holy Spirit has given them. But that while they have those graces so bright and beautiful, they may still look down on their own natural depravity and humble themselves before God.

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Isn't that good? That is good. Paul says, I have the cross, Jesus on a cross, and I'm not going to use my words to somehow decorate the cross with Armani fashions, with some kind of Giorgio cologne.

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I don't even know what cologne is popular now. I have no idea. Some kind of floral arrangements, some kind of mascara for Jesus on the cross.

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He said, I preach simply, plainly, and regularly about Jesus. You say, that's what chapter one is.

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That is chapter one. That was their problem, not looking upon Christ. That's often our problem, where we look to ourselves, we look to others.

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You've got to meet my needs. The church has got to meet my needs. Other people have to meet my needs. And they're forgetting that Jesus Christ is the one.

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He is the object of our faith. He is the one who shows up in the death of Lazarus and shows up with Mary and Martha.

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And what does he do? Well, there's some consolation, but he basically says, I'm here now to talk to you about me.

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You've lost a loved one. Have you ever walked into a room when somebody has died and then say, I'm here now and I'd like to talk about myself?

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For us, it would always be wrong. For Jesus, it's always right, because it's about Jesus and his glory.

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And so he shows up at somebody's death, at their funeral. He talks about himself. I'm the resurrection and the life.

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Paul said, I just kept proclaiming. I just kept proclaiming to you the testimony of God.

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You see it in verse 1. Now, that word can either be testimony or mystery, depending on the ancient manuscripts.

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If it's testimony, that's a good translation. Paul's witness according to what Jesus has done.

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You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Acts chapter 1. But the UBS text in Nestle -Alan 27, two trustworthy sources say that it's mystery.

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And I think that's right. Paul says, I'm preaching to you the mystery of God. Not this mysteriousness, but the mystery of God that once was not revealed, but now

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God has revealed. We couldn't concoct it. We couldn't come up with it. It was a mystery to us until God told us.

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And when God told Paul, this is what's going on. When the truth found Paul out, he proclaimed it.

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Thomas Goodwin was a preacher who liked to show himself off before he was saved.

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Cambridge University, 1613. He wanted to be witty. He wanted to be the great preacher.

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Then he got saved. And then he adopted this principle. And he said,

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I came to this resolved principle that I would preach wholly and altogether sound and wholesome words without affectation of wit and vanity of eloquence.

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I have continued in that purpose and practice these three score years. I have preached what

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I thought was truly edifying, either for conversion or bringing them up to eternal life. That's the idea here.

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Disregard. I'm going to disregard methods. Do you know? Maybe I could say it this way.

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If you give me your little kids, I can lead them to the Lord. I personally can lead them to the

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Lord. And you're like, get rid of this guy. What do we mean by that? I can get them to think this way, to scare them with hell, to talk to them about grandmas in heaven and all kinds of other things.

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And I can manipulate their hearts and minds and try to seal the deal. Now there's no conversion in their heart, but I can convince them of that.

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There's other ways I could do it. I could put this service here together at the very end saying the Lord is impressed upon my heart.

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There's four or five people that really need to come to the Lord. And by the way, Bernard and Andrew get the mood music going.

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Bernard locked the doors. I've been in those kinds of churches. We're just going to stay here until those five people come to Christ.

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And everything is focused on the speaker, the doors, the lights, the music, the organ, everything else.

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And they're not just saying, this is who Jesus is. This is Christ Jesus. I'm going to disregard these other things and give to you the only

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Savior, the only captain of the church, Christ Jesus. For those of you that are visiting,

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I can't lead anybody to the Lord. And I praise the Lord that in the front of my Bible, whether new or old, I have no tick marks.

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If you're kind of a poor speaker, you have stage fright, you're not eloquent, you're kind of mousy personality, you're introverted, you're something like that, this should help you.

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Because the message is not about you. You go, well, you know, I'm not really like the Marlboro men with all my buddies and they don't really kind of listen to me.

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And I'm just, you know, weak and frail and, you know, can't really hang with the guys.

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Ride on. Because then your testimony about Christ Jesus proclaiming the mystery of Christ revealed to you through the scriptures is going to have power.

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This is not going to be you. Show me the people like Paul, who, as far as we knew, had some kind of funky thing going on with his eyes.

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How many times does it take you to be stoned unto almost death without you having some kind of crooked back full of all kinds of scoliosis and everything else?

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When you would look at Paul, you would not just say, yeah, that guy's personality is so dominant, so domineering.

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We better believe what that guy does, because if God can give that guy success, I want that kind of success.

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Now, if you're attractive and you're a Marlboro man guy, fine. But that could be your worst asset because you're going to rely on your personality.

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Paul said, I disregarded all those things because the spirit of God saves. John Stott said we must never resort to the use of human pressure techniques or attempt to contrive a decision.

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Our responsibility is to be faithful in preaching the word. Isn't that good? When you go down and do evangelism in Worcester, you can be the weakest, frailest.

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I don't know why I keep saying mousiest. I don't know. Are people mousy? Kind of just, you know, like this or something.

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You can be all that and you have the words of life. You know, Christ crucified the

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Messiah who dies a substitutionary atonement on the cross, who is raised from the dead. He's your only hope.

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So Paul says, before I got there, I had that determination. Congregation, the next time you say to yourself,

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I'm going to Worcester to evangelize. Get it stuck in your mind that I'm not going to do some kind of duck and jive, some kind of, you know,

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I've seen this in books before. Get the person to look at the Bible, say you should pray and ask Jesus in your heart now.

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And then with your hand on the back of their shoulder, push down real hard to get them to kind of, you know, bow to the word of God and bow to Jesus.

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Just get it in your noggin. I have a message and his name is Jesus who died on the cross for sinners like you and you must turn from sin.

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You must place your faith in Christ Jesus and believe in this God or there's no hope for you. Talk about Jesus.

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That's why you don't hear a lot of personal testimonies of this church, even in a public worship service.

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Why? Because too often the public testimonies become, I was such a bad guy and I was so much of this and that and it turns into focusing on the person.

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That's why we tell people in baptismal, I want to hear from you about what you were like before God saved you.

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Use generic terms. How God saved you and now what

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God has made you live for as a Christian. It's all about God because if you get up and talk about yourself, that doesn't do me any good.

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That's why when you preach the gospel, never say, well, you know what? You ought to believe in Jesus because I believe in Jesus and my life has changed.

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Mormons have changed lives too. People who study Peter Drucker and business books, they have changed lives too.

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You can watch Tony Robbins and have a changed life too and walk over Kohl's all you want. You quit drugs when

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I wasn't even a Christian. My life has changed. It's not about my life. It's about Christ Jesus. He can forgive sins and no one else.

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And Paul told Corinth, you're forgetting about Jesus. Isn't that an odd concept? Churches that forget about Jesus.

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I mean, come on, all this blood, nothing but the blood washed in the blood, the cross.

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This is kind of this monotonous refrain. I need something to get me through the week. I'm going to work tomorrow.

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Help me. I've got help for you. He's a captain of your salvation. He's the author of your salvation.

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He's a sin bear who runs the universe and he runs the universe never with consecutive thinking, but with one eternal decree, no flow charts, no plans, no backups.

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God has one thought and now the universe is existing from one thought. We need more of that kind of thinking then.

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Well, you know, I got, I got a really bad life and I got a really bad marriage and I got a really bad work and I've got a really bad this.

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Maybe you have all those things and they're really bad. And maybe like I think five people here at church are, they have cancer, some dying from cancer.

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What's the answer? The answer is I have one message for you. There's a

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God who has been raised from the dead, who is a savior over sin, death, hell, and cancer.

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And you can trust him. What am I going to say? Trust me, the elder board will never let you down.

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Deacons are good people. People in the nursery are really good. Second word, determination.

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The second word that describes what Paul is saying in first Corinthians chapter two, one to five is determination. First of all, a healthy disregard of any kind of method.

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Second of all, a determination to keep Christ central. You must be determined to stay focused on the message of the

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Messiah crucified. This is Paul's reason for his method.

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Verse two reason, verse one method. Why do you do what you do? Why did you talk that way?

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For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, the

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Messiah and him even crucified. Frankly, clearly, regularly, simply,

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I preach Christ Jesus. He said,

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I made a resolution. I was unshakable. God, give me the resolution to keep preaching who

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Jesus is. I want to be in a spiritual way. Stubborn. This is holy obstinacy right here from Paul.

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I'm not going to waver. I'm not going to say, well, these kinds of people want this and these kinds of people want this.

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And you know what? I'll tell them these things first, get them to like me. And then on another day of the week,

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I'll give them the real demands of the gospel. He didn't do that at all. Unyielding.

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Paul was such a man of purpose. Remind me of John Bunyan. He said,

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I'm not going to stop preaching Jesus Christ. All right, Bunyan, in you go to jail. Mr.

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Bunyan, you can come out of prison whenever you will promise to cease preaching the gospel of Christ.

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If you let me out of prison today, I'll preach Christ again tomorrow by the grace of God.

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Well, then you must go back to prison. Bunyan, I will go back and stay there if need be till the moss grows on my eyelids, but I will never, never deny my master.

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I like John Bunyan. If you know yourself, you should be determined not to preach yourself.

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I know myself. I'm not a very good Savior. Settle it in your mind that you're going to preach

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Jesus Christ. Settle it in your mind. The only church you should ever go to in your life is not the one that makes you feel good or has, you know, good potlucks.

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Do they preach the crucified Savior? 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 6. 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.