Pacifistic Fighting

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. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. I'm going to talk as fast as my pasta can.

Steve Cooley, welcome to Tuesday Guy. Welcome to a beautiful, smog -free day in Los Angeles. Oh wait, we're not in Los Angeles.

Actually we're recording this show on May, I believe it's 17th. It is blue skies, manifold out there.

Yeah, light. Multiplied. Majesty. M -M -M -M -M. It's interesting.

Remember that song, Majesty, Worship His Majesty? Yes, I do. Is there anything in the Bible that talks about where we're supposed to actually worship

God's majesty? Majesty, like a separate attribute of God? Yeah, I know it's a post -millennial song written by Jack Hayford, but are we ever supposed to worship a particular attribute?

Worship in different, I don't know, that's a good one. Worship his majesty? I don't know, it just strikes me funny.

You know you could change it to attribute. Attribute. Worship his attribute. Well, majesty, I mean, I think if, you know, if you say your majesty, your highness, something like that, your, you know.

Your eminence. Yes, that's right. So I don't know, just, it's not my particularly favorite song, most favorite song.

It's not even in the top 1 ,000. Steve, maybe we could sing Worship Your Majesty, Worship His Majesty in the highlights of Greece 11 -day tour.

That would be awesome. Now, Steve, I think you secretly want to go with No Compromise Radio and Bethlehem Bible Church to this cruise.

Actually people can email me, I'll send you a brochure if you'd like it, Pilgrim Tours. But what's your, you secretly want to go, but now

I hear all this drachma talk, what's all that about? Well, you know, contra some of the hyper dispensational understandings of the eschatological situation we're in, the

EU seems to be collapsing, at least they're getting ready to kick out Greece and, you know, so Greece might not be on the

Euro. So I'm like, save your drachmas. I am so glad I'm not someone who devised the plan of the

Euro, which excluded any thought of, hmm, what should we do if one of the countries actually has to drop out, then what would be our plan?

Yeah. Well, and I don't, I'm not an economist, but I don't think this is going to be the last country that they look at and go,

I think we have to give this country the boot. And I am talking about Italy, of course. Oh, the boot, very nice.

I think we should actually try to go to Greece in April, 2013, because we're going to have this strong American dollar, and it could be one dollar to one

Euro. And then if that's the case, then one Euro is going to be worth a lot of drachmas. Pack your

Kevlar. Funny. I think we should change things up, Steve, and have a little message moment.

Oh, yeah, that'd be different. How exactly? This is a regular occurrence now on No Compromise Radio, especially on Tuesdays.

We have the Eugene Peterson translation of the Bible. Does he call it that or does he call it a paraphrase?

Yeah, I don't even know if he would call it—here's what I think it should be.

Eugene Peterson dreams of what I wish the Bible said. Oh, okay. See, that works out pretty well.

I feel it's fair to criticize, but I want to make sure that I don't criticize unduly or unruly.

So let's just look at the front. The message, New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs. Now, just by reading that, doesn't it—

It seems like it would be a translation. Doesn't it make portend itself to be the New Testament?

Portray. Portray. What's portend mean? To bloat? Now, I don't think you realize this,

Steve, the New Testament exegetical consultants for the message. Now, does that make sense?

Is that an oxymoron? It is a little bit of an oxymoron. Exegetical consultants. I mean,

I'm sure it's going to be like the staff of a diner or something. Daryl Bach. No.

Stop it. Yes. Dallas Seminary. Really? Donald Hagner. Fuller Seminary. Stop it.

Uh -huh. Moses Silva. Westminster Seminary. What does that mean, consultants?

He run the script by them, and they said, well, it's not the worst I've ever read. I mean, what does that mean anyway?

I don't know. How about Old Testament exegetical consultant Robert Alden? And then they've got another guy here for the

New Testament. The Reverend Dr. Rodney Whittaker, Trinity Episcopalian School of Ministry.

Uh -huh. Located at 8th and Broad in Cleveland. Stylistic consultant Lucy Shaw.

So it seems like it makes itself out to be the New Testament. Yeah, okay. All right?

So I just opened up to Psalm 50 because I wanted to see what the message would say in our message moment.

Do we have any background music for this? Dun -dun -dun -dun -dun -dun. Are you listening, dear people?

I am getting ready to speak. Israel, I'm about ready to bring you to trial. This is God, your God, speaking to you.

I don't find fault with your acts of worship and frequent burnt offerings you offer, but why should

I want your bull -ribbon bull? Blue -ribbon bull, excuse me. Are more and more goats from your herds?

Now, here it comes, Steve. Here's the message moment. I just had to give context, though, because you know how that's important. Context is very important.

Each creature in the forest is mine. The wild animals on all the mountains? I know every mountain bird by name.

The scampering field mice are my friends. Scampering.

I don't know. I think I just got transported suddenly to Disney. You know what

I mean? What's that mouse movie? I don't... Oh, you know, American Tail, and actually that was

Spielberg, but yeah. I think Steven Spielberg could actually make a movie out of that psalm.

Yeah, that was quite bad. So anyway, I just thought that was interesting that we would have

God, Yahweh, in this psalm of Aesop's fables.

I can't imagine what my Hebrew professor, Dr. Barak, would have given that one. It wouldn't have just been bleeding red as many of my papers were.

I think he would have just put it on red paper. You know what I mean? Just F minus, zero.

Vellum. Yeah. So Steve, in the evangelical circles today, do you see any trends that you like?

See any trends that you don't like? We are going to try the show for the rest of the time where we are going to have an unscripted dialogue.

Do I see any trends that I like? Yes. You know, the only trend

I really like in evangelicalism today is the trend where our attendance is going up.

Let's see. That's it. I mean, I am just amazed at how the church, generally speaking, the church has to fight for the things that should be no brainers.

I mean, I don't know why. I don't know why we have to fight for the sovereignty of God and salvation. I don't know why we have to fight for the inerrancy of scripture.

I don't know why any of these things, you know, the preeminence of the Bible over so -called science, none of those things make any sense to me at all.

And it's not because I'm stupid. It's because I think the question is stupid. We are going to answer back to God.

We're going to say, well, wait a minute. Did you really do this or did you really mean that? And it's foolishness.

Did you just call my question to you, stupid? I did no such thing. One of the reasons why we have to stand up for the faith is, the text says in Titus 1, for there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers.

And so what I see out there, Steve, is the response of Christians who need to stand up for the truth of God, God's faith that was once delivered, and to contend for it and to fight for it and to struggle for it, because there are so many false teachers, one after another after another, and they start off kind of within the camp, and then they spiral out, for instance, of Brian McLaren.

There's lots of those kind of guys around, and so we have to tell people, this guy has influence.

Don't let him influence you. It's intriguing to me, too, because what's happened is so many of the people that we have looked up to, we've read their books and all these kind of things, and they embrace these sorts of individuals, the ones who are clearly heretics, and kind of try to dampen down the expectations for what the gospel should be about, what the

Bible should be about. And it's very, very peculiar to me to see somebody like T .D.

Jacques lifted up as if he's a brother in Christ, or to see some of these other things that have happened here lately, or to even have scholars say, well, you know what, you're just stupid, and nobody's going to listen to you unless you say that Genesis 1 and 2 are some kind of parable.

Steve, when we look at the New Testament, we want to stand up and fight for the faith, contend for the faith,

Jude 3. But how do we do that in such a way where we don't break the mold of elder qualifications, that is, that we're not supposed to be quarrelsome, 1

Timothy chapter 3, verse 3? How do those two things jive, to use the message translation?

You know, honestly, I don't think so much we have to fight. I think we just kind of say what the

Bible says, and just, you know, it's like Spurgeon used to say, let the lion out of the cage, let the

Word of God do its work, because basically the Word of God refutes all these arguments that are raised up against it, and all we have to do is just let the

Bible loose, let it do its thing, which it will among God's people. Everyone else will think it's stupid, and it's folly, and it's foolishness.

But what would we expect? Unbelievers are always going to say, how can you believe that? You know, do you have a brain cell in your head?

That's just the way they view us. But that's kind of unloving, if I think about it, you know, a little bit more,

Steve, just an unloving approach. You seem to think you know everything. I have a hermeneutic of humility where I'm just not sure if the

Bible actually says that, and so we need to embrace culture, creation, animals, and renewal.

Thank you, Mr. McLaren. I mean, there are many, many things that the

Bible does not speak about. What it does speak about, it does so pretty clearly in a lot of instances, like this whole thing, you know, you sort of alluded to it about homosexuality.

Is the Bible unclear? You know, because that was the McLaren thing. Well, maybe we just don't know. Maybe we need to take a moratorium.

Maybe we need to wait. You know, is the Bible unclear on that? No. Is it unclear about creation?

No. Is it unclear about women in ministry? No. Is it unclear about Scripture itself being perfect?

No. So why do all these things come into question? Is it unclear about the supremacy of God or the sovereignty of God and salvation?

No. But we, meaning mankind, in our humanness, in our fallenness, we don't like those things, so we fight against them.

And then it's up to us, supposedly, to explain it in human terms why they're wrong.

I don't want to explain it in human terms. They're welcome to believe whatever they want to believe. But if God has spoken, then that's the reality, not whatever people believe.

Steve, that kind of sounds like battle language to me, warfare language. Let me read to you 1 Timothy 1.

I know you know the passage because you preached it not long ago. This charge I entrust to you,

Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, and here's the good part that's apropos for this morning, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith with a good conscience.

And so we are in a war. If God's truth is true, Francis Schaeffer would say true truth, then of course

Satan is going to attack it. Instead of Satan talking personally, he uses hypocritical lie speakers.

He uses, in other words, men to say these things. And we have to stand up and teach all sound doctrine and refute those who contradict.

I don't really... And the truth has always been, you know, under assault.

I mean, all you have to do is go back to the very beginning of Genesis. Satan comes into the garden and says, you know, did

God really say? And that's been the source of the attack ever since. Did God really say this?

Did God really... Now, did he really mean... I was just talking to somebody last night about, you know, the whole women in ministry thing.

And this person was saying that when they brought this up to someone else, the quote was, well, that's just Paul.

As in, that's just Paul's opinion. Now, the same person that said women could be in ministry also believes in speaking in tongues.

Well, Jesus never said you should speak in tongues, so where did she get that idea? You know, that we should all speak in tongues.

And my response would have been, if I was there, of course, that's just the nature of me. I would have said, well, wasn't it just Paul who said...

who was talking about speaking in tongues? Just Paul. Steve, what I see in Christianity, it's the attack from the inside.

And B .B. Warfield wrote of this when he talked about, you know, Buddhism isn't going to swallow up Christianity.

Muhammadism isn't going to swallow up Christianity. It is the attack from the inside. And so it is

Jude 3, 2 Peter kind of language. They are among us. And then we're the ones called out by people saying, that's not loving if you expose

T .D. Jakes or Joyce Meyer or Joel Osteen. No, it's not loving for them to say what they're saying.

And it's not loving if we are silent. And so we have a broadcast format here.

And so we're going to tell people, this is what the Bible teaches about Christ. And we want you to think about Him as the

Son of God and worship Him. And these are the things that attack. And so they both go together. Well, just imagine, run along those lines, just imagine that, you know, after the

Trojan horse was opened up and all the soldiers came out and killed all the Greeks. Just imagine the next time this sort of thing came along and another horse was brought up outside of the besieged city.

And they said, you know what? We know the story of the Trojan horse, but we're going to take that horse in anyway. And we're just going to kind of, we're going to wait and see.

And so what's going on in evangelicalism today is we are taking the Trojan horse, the false prophets, we're bringing them inside the city walls and we're going, you know what?

Maybe they won't be as bad as the last time. Maybe it'll be okay. Maybe it'll turn out differently.

Maybe we can influence them to our side of the aisle. And it's just, it's so, it's worse than foolish.

I mean, it borders on, in some cases, I think evil. I mean, because if as pastors we are to protect the flock, if we are to really, we're going to give an account for them one day.

So how can we stand before the Lord and say, you know what? We just didn't want to seem unloving. We were tired of fighting.

And so we just kind of thought, what's the worst thing that can happen? Steve, don't you think this is true?

A lot of people say, well, you're hyper -Calvinistic because you're a five -pointer and you're this Calvinist, an extreme

Calvinist. I think people who don't want to stand up for the faith because God is going to win in the end anyway, they are acting hyper -Calvinistically because God will win and all false teachers will be squashed.

There will be a day of judgment at the white throne, judgment, the great white throne. But God uses secondary means and He uses the means of people, specifically elders and church leaders, to show others the faulty nuances of a false gospel.

Listen to what Irenaeus said in his book Against Heresies. Error indeed is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, thus being exposed, it should at once be detected.

It is craftily decked out in attractive dress. So isn't it our job to say to people, just like back in the garden in Genesis 3, better watch out, you don't really understand what they're saying.

This is what they're really saying. Yeah, I mean, can you just imagine T .D. Jakes showing up here some Sunday morning and he says, hi,

Pastor Mike, I'm T .D. Jakes, I'm a lying heretic dog. I wonder if I could just borrow your pulpit for a few minutes.

He would never say that, right? I'm somebody who's going to preach a different gospel. Could I just have a couple minutes?

I mean, come on. They're wolves in sheep's clothing. That's what it is.

And so part of the gospel ministry, people say, well, I want to be known what I'm for, not what

I'm against. Well, part of the gospel ministry, if you are for something, you have to be for the truth.

And part of the truth is exposing error. If you're going to protect the people under your charge, you have to be willing to point to things and say that's wrong.

It's just like with kids. If you have kids in your home, you just go, we're just going to stress the positive and never the negative.

See, one of the reasons why they call elders overseers is because they have to oversee things.

Right. So if you're the leader at home, you oversee your family as the leader. And if you're a leader in the church, you oversee things and you say, oh, you know what?

That was a really good job. Way to go. I see your ministry behind the scenes. You preach the gospel.

You encourage evangelism. You go evangelize. And you oversee even when there's error around the church.

You have to try to say that's not good for you. You're eating rocks. I don't know how long people would let their kids eat rocks before they'd tell them no.

Yeah. Here's a couple. I'm just thinking about book series. How about this? The first book, hands -off parenting.

And then the second book, hands -off eldering. You know, we just kind of show up on Sunday morning and whatever happens is laissez -faire.

Laissez -faire eldering. I think the book would sell a lot, especially, you know, in NAV press probably.

Well, I think it would be huge. I think people would love it, which is exactly what makes it wrong.

Steve, that's another reason in my mind where elders cannot be chosen by the congregation because then the elders think, you know what, if I need to get revoted in,

I have to play to the whims and the liking of the congregation. It turns into a political football, and people then compromise.

So an elder has to be appointed first by God, given the qualifications that are there in 1

Timothy 3 and Titus 1, and then he is to shepherd the flock of God and will report to God on that day, that last day.

But he's not going to say to himself, you know what, people don't like it if I criticize Joyce Meyer, so I better not do it because I've got to do the three years on, one year off, and then get reelected in.

Yeah. Imagine the massage, not even the message, but the massage version of 1

Timothy 3 where the people get to decide what an elder should look like, and they go, well, question number one, is he cool?

Question number two, you know, is he somebody who kind of just goes with the flow and doesn't get too wrapped up in all those technical doctrinal thingies?

He lets me do what I want. Amen. Hey, you know what? You talked about cool, so I turned it open to the

Message Bible, 1 Timothy 3. If anyone wants to provide leadership in the church, good, but there are preconditions.

A leader must be well thought of, committed to his wife, cool. No, it doesn't say that.

And collected. It doesn't say that. Cool and collected. Accessible and hospitable.

He must know what he's talking about, not over fond of wine, not pushy but gentle, not thin -skinned, not money -hungry.

He must handle his own affairs well, attend to his children. But it does say cool, not with a comma, but cool and collected comma.

What was that? Not overly fond of wine but given to a little whiskey now and then?

Is that what it said? He must be cool. Calm, cool, and collected.

It's here in the Message Bible. So it must almost be true.

Yeah. You know what? Let's just for fun, I'm going to just randomly open it, and then I'm going to just read you a verse, okay? And this is going to be

Steve's life verse for today. If God doesn't build the house, the builder only builds shacks. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

Of course we want to tell you the positive things about Christianity. I'm very encouraged that there are positive signs.

The Reformed faith, I think, is really blossoming. There are, you know, some young restless

Reformed nuances that need to grow up into old, mature Reformed.

Reformed and not restless. Yes, but I think about those who are embracing the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

I think it's a lot more popular than what it used to be, and since I think it's the biblical mandate and the biblical presentation, then

I'm glad for that. I'm glad for the increase in elder rule, even through Southern Baptist churches, where it's kind of congregational polity who votes for the elders, but still, with the

Dever Deal, I'm encouraged that there are more elders now who want to live up to what the elders' passages say.

Those are two things that I really like. I'm encouraged that some of the newer music is very biblical and God -centered and Christ -exalting.

I mean, I really love a lot of the Sovereign Grace stuff. There's a lot of good music out there, but, you know, again,

I just am so— I mean, it's almost oppressive to me that what comes out of a lot of churches would be this, you know, instead of Isaiah 6 being holy, holy, one angel cried out to another saying holy, holy, holy, it would be like one angel cried out to another, well, he's mostly holy.

I mean, there's just a loss of the transcendence of God. People no longer want to look up to God.

They want to look kind of at eye level with him. They want him to be their pal.

Steve, I think you're exactly right, and there are exceptions to this Mike's Maxim here, but this is my new

Maxim, or it's a possible Maxim. Mike's Maxim. Yeah, that's pretty good. But I would guess that the larger the church is in general, the lower view they have of the transcendence of God or, to quote

Machen, the awful transcendence of God because when you're talking about the transcendence of God, it doesn't really give you the warm fuzzies except the kind that is

I'm scared warm fuzzy, but that's not so warm. So when you want to have a man -centered church, a lot of people show up for that because it's attractive to the flesh, but when you talk about the transcendence of God, you get the typical

PCA, OPC, Reformed Baptist Church of 50. I want to be comforted, not afflicted.

I want a hug, you know, not some kind of beat down. Well, it's like for Mother's Day.

I'd love to know what those seeker -sensitive churches taught on Mother's Day, and I'm sure it was therapeutic, moralistic deism with a heavy dosage of maudlin sentimentality of Mother's Day.

It was all about the mothers. What about the single ladies who are 50 and who will never have children? What do we do for worship for them?

Well, they can come back the following week and maybe get fed. I like S.

Lewis Johnson. He was preaching Mother's Day, and he said, good to have you all here. If you're a visitor, I'll see you at Christmas. So anyway, if you'd like to write, you can.

And make sure you say at the top of the subject line, Tuesday. And they all get forwarded to my dear friend,

Pastor Steve. Don't do it. Put Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Be glad. Monday sermon. To answer it.

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