Kanye and Such

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, a ministry. These headphones aren�t quite loud enough, Pastor Steve. What do you think? Crank them up. Boy, I�m seated a little higher than you are today. I feel superior.

Well, we call that the seat of Moses, so you�re.

That�s kind of cool to be in Israel and see some of those seats in synagogues, maybe even a replica, or as we say, replica, and yeah, just move that message Bible over there and you can just kind of pull that little string.

Seats of Moses, interesting.

Dogmatic statements. I�m looking at the cushy chair myself.

I think that�s officially the original ex-Cathedra seat. Ooh. No, I mean Moses�s seat.

Oh, I thought you meant yours. Was it ever blessed by the Pope? Did he ever sprinkle holy water on it?

I think I�ve got the solar Pope over there, so that might work. This show is going to play, I don�t know when, but we saw yesterday in Christiane Today, it seemed like it was the Master�s Seminary.

It was amazing, special edition. What were the cases there? Well, there was the one, the little girl who said that she was held down and got her hair cut against her will, and that turned out not to be true, and so they had Jesse Johnson, they talked to him about that, and then there was Adam Tyson.

He was a great fighter, by the way.

Yeah, I mean, Adam Tyson�s knockout, remember that?

That face tattoo, though, is kind of funny.

I mean, Adam Tyson is a little guy. You ever seen him in person? I mean, he�s just a little guy, and I�m laughing when I think about, I mean, like what, bantamweight or something, I don�t know. But hey, he�s a heavyweight when it comes to the gospel, because there he is at that Kanye West show preaching the word, so.

I know. Interesting. I read one review, a critical reviewer, I think from a black perspective, and said that his, you know, essentially, his white jokes fell flat, and he didn�t open the Bible. I�m like, well, he didn�t open the Bible in the sense he had a, like a, you know, onion skin, you know, pages, but he had a Bible on his phone, and he was talking about Isaiah 6, was he not?

Yeah, did he need to, like, fling the Bible into the audience to prove that he had a Bible?

Yeah, he has his throwing Bible and his preaching Bible. That�s W .A. Criswell, you know, that�s my throwing Bible, son. And that�s why if you lose a page, you know, Job 42, it doesn�t matter, because you can keep throwing that thing.

You know, I used to be a discus tosser. Watch this.

Hey, why is disc golf so popular? It seems like that�s, I mean, I said to somebody, what do you do in, you know, your town for fun? You know, what do you do around there? Disc golf. I just didn�t know that was such a big thing.

Is it dis-golf?

Yeah, yeah. Like, you don�t show it any respect? You dis-respect golf? It�s a sport.

Or instead of saying golf, maybe it�s like golf, disc golf.

I know somebody, there was somebody here at BBC who moved to San Diego, and who can blame him. Sorry, sorry. I said that. San Diego, the place with the most perfect weather on the planet, and he plays disc golf all over the place.

I think he�s, like, semi-pro or pro or something. I�m trying to think of his name on Facebook, Facebook friends. It�s kind of, it�s wild to see him, you know, travel all over the place to do that, so.

I guess, you know, it�s something to do. It�s a fun event. You know, you can win, you can lose.

I just want to know how you, you know, are supposed to hit the disc with your club. How does that work?

I went to the NutriShop the other day, where you can get a bunch of vitamins, GNC kind of store, and they�re expanding the store, not from just potato chips that are enriched with protein, and protein bars deriched from carbohydrates.

But next door to it, adjacent to it, in the same store, is the disc golf section. Really? Yeah, there must be money in disc golf. I guess so. I know. Just like when you go to Hawaii, and they�re selling paddles.

I guess you could probably, can you disc golf in the snow here in New England?

Yes, that would be called tundra golf.

Well, I mean, seriously, I think you, yeah, I don�t see any reason why you couldn�t.

I think if you had that hard packed top on the snow, then your disc golf disc would not be buried. You know what I mean? Yeah. All right, let�s talk a little bit about the whole Kanye West deal, and Kanye West has made a profession of faith, and he�s got an album out, and he�s got this Tyson thing going on, and according to Christianity Today, Tyson on Tuesdays meets with him, or flies to Wyoming or Utah, or goes down to LA, and has Bible studies with he and his, and Kanye�s, you know, what do they call him, posse or pack, or something like that, you know, group production team.

His association, the people that hang around with him. Yeah.

If, let�s just say, let�s just make it a little different. Let�s say Tom Brady starts coming to BBC and has made a solid profession of faith. What would be your strategy on how we would shepherd him, and this isn�t a slam on Tyson, I don�t, I�m sure he�s doing the right thing, we don�t just, we just don�t know what he�s saying behind the scenes.

What behind the scenes would you say to a man like Tom Brady or Kanye West?

Well, I mean, I guess I would want to treat him like anybody else, you know, I mean, I certainly wouldn�t want to say, well, Tom, since you�re Tom Brady, you know, here�s my personal number, call me anytime you have a Bible question, you know, etc., etc.

I mean, the temptation would be to do that, right? To really try to ingratiate yourself because he�s the great Tom Brady. But I think you want to just kind of encourage, you know, and stuff like that, but I wouldn�t want to treat him like what he is.

I wouldn�t want to treat him like a celebrity, like we have to put him up on a pedestal and, you know, and isolate him from other people. I would want him to be part of body life, right? I�d want to, if he could, especially during the off season, I want him to be part of a home group and, you know, put his kids in a Juana and all the normal stuff.

I mean, wouldn�t you? That�s what you�d want.

That�d be funny. I wonder if his kids would excel in that throwing nerf game. Tight spiral. Well, see, I was thinking about things like, and according to the CT, Adam Tyson was in fact doing this, and that is, okay, you want to have these services, they�re not to be in lieu of Sunday service, right?

We can go around the world and have, you know, meet in Aretha Franklin, you know, auditorium, dome, pavilion, and we can sing some songs about Jesus and have a Bible message, but that�s not the church.

So, discipleship behind the scenes, to me, Steve, that would include Kanye or Tom Brady. This is the gospel. Here�s how you preach the gospel within a minute. And when you�re asked on Jimmy Kimmel or any other late night show, or if a microphone gets shoved in your face, tell me about your views on homosexuality, or on transgender, or on the environment, or is the Bible written by people?

Here�s how you quickly turn from that question and answer, �This is what I know about who Jesus is, and this is the truth that we believe. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Well, and that�s what I meant by treating him like anybody else. What do we do here, you know? I mean, one of the first things we do when we�re interviewing people for membership, �Why don�t you tell me how God saved you

You know, in other words, we want to hear the gospel. Why? Because if they don�t know the gospel, maybe their profession isn�t genuine. And so, I don�t want to have to constantly coax them through it, but I want to make sure that they understand and that they can express it, right?

That�s what they should be able to do. So, lesson number one, here�s the gospel. Lesson number two, sacrificial giving. Would that be it? Pete and Pete laugh.

Well, you know, let�s be honest. Okay. And as, because it�s refreshing in this world, right, to be honest. One of the things I think is certainly for me, one of the first things after I realized that God had saved me was I thought, well, how I view money needs to change, right?

I mean, the first thing I think was how I speak needs to change. But the second thing was maybe how I view money needs to change. And so, it would be reasonable to expect a Kanye or a Tom Brady or whomever to say, look, I don�t want to throw my money around, but help me to think rightly about money, right?

This is how I�ve been living. What should I be doing? You know, help me to understand it biblically.

Pete. And fame and how to look at that. Right.

How to manage my own ego. And, you know. Right.

It seems to me that you�ve got people like Bob Dylan over the years. And maybe we can make the argument pretty easily that Bob Dylan is more famous or more influential than Kanye West. But not than Tom Brady.

Yeah. Social media now, I�m sure the reach of West is a lot farther than Dylan back in the day. But in terms of just influencing culture and music and everything else, and here, you know, let�s say you�re in Minnesota someplace and Zimmerman comes to you, you know, Bob Dylan comes to you and says, I�m a Christian now, dah, dah, dah, dah, he�s got the album out, saved, et cetera, et cetera.

You got to serve somebody, right? Pete. Slow train coming. Pete. Uh-huh. And then I don�t know what happened to Dylan afterwards. Does he still profess faith in Christ?

Pete. You know, I�ve read about him because I read books about Tom Petty and eventually gets to Bob Dylan and they say he�s very spiritual, but it doesn�t sound to me like, you know, he�s overtly Christian.

Pete I would hate it if another Christian, a Christian leader especially, defined my life or my view on God as spiritual. Pete Yeah. Pete If it was an unbeliever and somebody writing for, you know, an unbeliever in the USA Today or something, they said, oh, he�s really spiritual.

Then I would know what they mean because it�s like I�m the Bible guy.

Pete. And yeah, because I would like Petty or Harrison or one of those guys to have said, he was so obnoxious about his Christianity, we couldn�t stand to have him around. You know, in other words, just kind of, all he would talk about was Jesus.

Okay, good.

Pete. And if he didn�t talk about Jesus, the way he lived his life was commensurate with what he believed and it exposed our dark living or something like that. Pete. Exactly, yeah. How about Tyson and the current congregation there at Placerita adjacent to the Master�s University?

How do you talk to other people and frame their thoughts about a celebrity attending the church? Because now probably people want to come, right, lookie-loos, everything else. How does that all work?

Pete. Even maybe like news people, right? I mean, how.

Pete Right, yeah, you�re in 1 Corinthians 6 and all of a sudden news people show up and then you get to verse 11, 9, 10, and 11, you�re like, uh-oh.

Pete What do I say now? Yeah, the homophobic pastor, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don�t really know. I mean, we�ve never really had that problem, but I think what I would try to do is just try to not make any more of a big deal out of it than it is, you know?

I mean, if it caused parking problems or security problems or whatever, well, you know, then we�d have to adapt. And I just generically say, you know, we�re going through some things. We�re trying to figure this out and, you know, just bear with us.

But I don�t think I would want to make, you know, put any more of a spotlight on them than would normally be. And, you know, I mean, if that were to happen here, I would hope that it would become normal and, you know, in a very short period of time that we would just come to think, well, you know, Tom Brady�s just here, and he just does his thing.

And, you know, he comes in and serves, and he�s just like anybody else.

Right. I was thinking about that passage in 1 Corinthians 6, 9 -11 that we just referenced, and I have a new way of memorizing the part that talks about how God does His work for these unrighteous people.

And it says here, �And such were some of you, but you were washed, W, you were sanctified, S, and you were justified, J, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. So, every time I see WSJ .com pop up on my Twitter feed or anything else, maybe it�s a Drudge link, and it says WSJ, I always think now, washed, sanctified, justified.

That�s kind of, that�s redeeming the Wall Street Blues, I guess. It�s excellent. Yeah. Any other advice for churches, our congregants? Hey, you�ve got this celebrity, and, you know, they�re just like everybody else, right?

Simul justus et peccator, they�re simultaneously just and sinful, and they need as much righteousness as you need, and that is perfect righteousness. I mean, any other comments before we turn the page on this?

Well, I just think, you know, with any celebrity, I mean, I�ve only seen a few in my day where I really had the opportunity to go up and talk to him, Tom Hanks, a long time ago, Wayne Gretzky, and I just think, you know, like if Tom Brady was here, I would hope that people, you know, after the service don�t just all go buzzing to Tom Brady, right?

Respect the fact that he�s just a person like the rest of us, right? And should be entitled to his own privacy and time and whatnot, but also, you know, the rest of the body shouldn�t go lacking just because Tom Brady goes up.

So, you know, I know there�s somebody hurting in the church, but I don�t care about them anymore because Tom Brady�s here, you know?

Steve, it would pose an interesting church dynamic that I think while people might say, oh, it would be great for that celebrity to be at the church, I think it�s pretty much going to be pastoral nightmare, right?

There�s a lot of potential problems that could come up. And of course, God�s sovereign, and so how did God sovereignly bring Kanye West to Placerita? You know, the person that knew him, invited him, hey, come to church, et cetera, et cetera.

I think it�d be similar to, you know, what if a president started attending, right? You�d have to deal with secret service, you�d have to deal with extra security, you�d have to deal with, you know, people who are lookie-loos, and then you just go, well, I�m going to make sure I keep preaching the word and preaching the gospel, because then if these visitors do come in for wrong motives, they�re still going to get the truth as I deliver it.

Pete God can use it for good, and you know, I would just say that if Tom Brady or the president are listening and, you know, God saves them, you�re welcome here at Bethlehem Bible Church. We�ll adapt.

I�m trying to find the Message Bibles WSJ here, and you can just imagine what might happen for the passage. I wrote to you earlier in the letter something about sexually promiscuous. I didn�t mean that you should have nothing at all to do with the outsiders of the sort or with crooks with blue or white collar or with spiritual phonies, for that matter.

You�d have to leave the world entirely. That�s chapter 5.

Pete. You�re making this up, aren�t you? I mean, he didn�t really write that. Blue or white collar?

Tom Yeah, blue or white collar, spiritual phonies. He talks about somebody who�s flip with God, are rude to friends, gets drunk, or becomes greedy and predatory. You know, I think Flip Wilson, I think the devil made me buy that dress.

Remember that? Pete Yes, I do. Tom. So, now we move to 1 Corinthians chapter 6, and what does it say? You know, they don�t have the little verses here. That�s my problem. You ever notice that with the Message Bible?

Pete Yes, I do.

Tom. It�s so hard when I preach. Pete. And it�s one of the things I thought I might take on, you know, as a sidelight. You know, I�d be the Mazarites for Eugene Peterson since he can�t do anything.

Tom. Here�s the slaughter of the message from Eugene.

Pete. Actually, I�d call it the butcher, but go ahead.

Well, I would call it being spiritual phony. And I would say that if Kanye West walked in with the Message Bible, I�d quickly give him a real one. But it would only be like bonded leather, because these celebrities don�t need genuine leather.

I want something that will fall apart after they use it. Now, by the way, I never understood that. You get a Bible that says leather on the back, but now what you need is an adjective to say genuine leather, like leather isn�t leather, right?

There�s a fake leather and bonded leather is essentially a bunch of leather bits put together in some kind of big swirl of goo and then bonded, glued together. Bits glued become bonded. I don�t like that.

That�s not leather. Pete. I want genuine Teflon. Tom. Well, now what do they make this? This ESV Bible is made out of something.

Pete. It�s close to Teflon. I think it�s Teflon infused.

Tom. Don�t you realize that this is not the way to live? Unjust people who don�t care about God will not be joining in His kingdom. Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don�t qualify as citizens in God�s kingdom.

A number of you know from experience what I�m talking about, for not so long ago you were on that list. Since then, you�ve been cleaned up, given a fresh start by Jesus, our Master, our Messiah, and by our God present in us, the Spirit.

Is this sexual rehab or something?

Pete. Well, you notice there�s not anything about heterosexual, homosexual. It�s just you abuse sex, right? And I thought that�s interesting. The ESV and NAS, you have washed, sanctified, and justified, WSJ, and those are three, what we call divine passives.

Aren�t those good? You can�t wash yourself, you need to be washed, right? Because you can�t wash yourself on the inside, Ezekiel 36. Sanctified, set apart, clean. We�re not talking about progressive sanctification.

You are just clean because of God�s righteousness through Christ Jesus. And then justified, you know, totally declared righteous, sins completely forgiven. And then here, instead of WSJ, we get what? Cleaned up, so that�s a C, given fresh start.

So, what�s that? Cleaned up and given, that�s a CG. So, CGI, what do you know?

Hmm. I know that I really don�t like the message.

Well, we don�t want to be a slave to our whims.

I think it�s unfortunate when people, you know, somehow idolize Eugene Peterson or make.

Him out to be more than he was. So, okay, let me ask you, Steve. He writes books on being a pastor, and some things he writes aren�t bad. But how can I ever read.

Those in light of this? I couldn�t. I mean, if somebody gave me a quote of Eugene Peterson, I�d go, and it was good, I�d say, well, that was a good thought he had, right? I can be honest about it. But I think, you know, if you look at.

The body of work, you have to go, hmm. I know, and see, here�s my problem. I look through the body of work, through the lens of the message.

And I think that�s right, and I have no problem with that. I mean, it�s like if somebody gives me a John Calvin quote, and I go, well, that�s not so good. Okay, I�m still looking through the body of work and go, okay, even if I don�t think he had this right or he had that right, I look at the totality of things and I go, the Lord used him more than he�s ever going to use me, you know, so, and he was greatly gifted and super intelligent, and how can I deny that?

Yeah, okay, that�s good. That�s good.

What are you doing these days in Sunday school? Repentance. No, I mean, after you repented, what are you teaching in Sunday school?

I�m teaching about repentance. Very funny. Very funny, Todd.

Maybe you�d be repenting about your repentance, right?

Some people need to because their repentance is so unlike biblical repentance that it�s not recognizable as repentance.

Now, when I watch Sinclair Ferguson and he talks about a repentant faith and a believing penitence, what are your thoughts on that?

I like him. Pete and Pete laugh. I mean, it�s important, it�s impossible to separate belief and repentance. Otherwise, you wind up with a, you know, a worldly sorrow, a sorrow that doesn�t save. It�s just like, it�s the sorrow that says, I�m sorry I got caught.

I�m sorry I did something, but not I�m sorry for what I did, right?

And doesn�t Ferguson rightly say in that little video we�ve watched several times, Hendiadus is a figure of speech, and it�s the two, the one meaning the two. Because if repentance is the view to sin and how it views sin against God, faith is how you view the Lord Jesus Christ, well, you�re going to have both, right?

If I say believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that means stop believing in your own righteousness. You have to think about sin rightly and trust in the sin bearer. And if I just say repent for the kingdom of God is at hand, well, stop thinking about your sin that way, because implicit in that, in that Hendiadus, the two becoming, you know, the one into two, I�m talking about trusting in Yahweh.

Yes. All right. Have I ever said Hendiadus on this show? Probably. How about people who think that repentance is strictly a human work prior to faith, something they�ve got to do on their own and, you know, change their life before faith, and it�s just, I got to make some amends first so that I can be more savable.

Well, they can�t do it. I mean, we can look at 2 Timothy 2, you know, where it says God grants, God may grant them repentance. We could look at, you know, Ephesians 2, the fact that they�re dead in their sins and trespasses.

They don�t have the capacity to do that, to actually repent, to actually change their mind, to have a change of heart, because they need a new heart. You know, we can look at 1 Peter 1. I mean, there are all kinds of places we could go to, and ultimately it has to be God.

Who causes you to be born again. Peter Steve, is it an overstatement to say that most every theological problem could be solved or it could be helped in being solved if you properly understand anthropology, comma, i .e., depravity?

Absolutely. I mean, if you don�t, well, I mean, I think there�s a reason why the T comes first in the tulip, right, of Calvinism. If you don�t understand total depravity, you won�t understand virtually anything after that.

You can�t understand salvation, you don�t understand the gospel properly, and you won�t preach the gospel properly because if you think that people aren�t really as bad as they are, you�re going to soft pedal.

And then if they�re not really as bad as they are, then they can use their own will to exercise it, so they take the first step, God does the second, God chooses them because they first chose him.

And the next thing you know, you�re on this co-regeneration plot where really, instead of, you know, God takes 99 steps towards you, you just have to take the one step towards him, it ultimately becomes you take 99 steps towards him and you just wait for God to take that one step toward you.

Dear listeners, you can write us info at nocompromiseradio .com. 2021, February, I think we�re going to go to Israel, and I think by now probably the R. Scott Clarke audios are online at bbcchurch .org.

Pete Don�t miss them, they were fantastic! Pete And they were!

Announcer. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. 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.

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