An Appointment You Will Keep

No Compromise Radio on Tracts and Evangelistic Pamphlets

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. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I am glad to be your host today. We�re coming up on about two and a half years on WVNE, thankful to be on WVNE. I�m sorry they had to kick Tom Krause off for my sake.

Don�t you miss Tom engaging your world? I do. Two to three every day, engaging your world. Let�s have a �Bring Back Tom Krause� special. Maybe we should just have him on the show. So anyway, today I want to talk about tracts, and one particular tract in particular.

Does that make sense? One particular tract in particular? No. That was because I was trying to pull this out and do two things at once. I was trying to talk and look at other stuff simultaneously. And that may be easy for some to do, but on a day like today, not that easy for me.

The slogan at No Compromise Radio Ministry is �Always Biblical, Always Controversial�. No. �Always Provocative, Always in That Order. And I love tracts, not T-R-A-C-K, that when I first became a Christian and people talked about tracts, that's what I thought it was, that's what I thought they were, but this is a tract, T-R-A-C-T, and tracts are simply small little pamphlets or brochures or trifolds or bifolds or quadfolds or quintfolds, and they contain information about the Bible.

And most tracts are evangelistically oriented so that, in fact, you give them to someone hoping that they'll read it and God will use the words from his word on the tract to save them. So some tracts are kind of dopey, you know, what do you have to do to go to hell and you open it up and it's just white, just a blank piece of paper, nothing.

And then on the back, I don't think it says anything about Adam's fall, but it says something about you're a sinner by nature and you need to receive Christ. Some tracts are dopey, A-B-C, accept, believe, confess, I don't know what some of the other ones are.

Oh, Chick-it tracts, not Chick-fil-A, not Chick-fil-A tracts, but Chick tracts, J-A-C-K-C-H-I-C-K. Now try to say Chick tract, is that Chick tract or Chick tract, tick-tock. And Chick tracts are comic-like and they have pictures and cartoons and easy believism prayers at the end.

But there is one that I like, it's called This Is Your Life, and if I could just change the ending, I would like it because the tract is basically a man who, if my memory serves me correctly, who dies in a car accident or some kind of tragic accident and then stands before God and then all of his thoughts and words and deeds by date and time are replayed in front of him at the great white throne.

So it's a call to think about life and think about death. There's another tract that I like and I was given this, K .C. Schwartzel gave me this the other day. It's called An Appointment You Will Keep...Regardless, G-A-M Publications, written by John Reisinger, Ernest's brother, I think John is still alive, Ernest is deceased, John Reisinger, and originally appeared in the 1971 October issue of The Sword and Trowel, a monthly Bible study journal.

And so if you want some of these tracts, I'll say it later too, but it's called An Appointment You Will Keep...Regardless, and then it's by G-A-M Publications, 703 -450 -4121, 703 -450 -4121. The number to call is BR -549.

Now on the front, The Appointment You Will Keep...Regardless, it has a clock at 12 o 'clock inside of a door and has all kinds of people zombie-like moving towards the clock. So there's an appointment everybody's moving toward.

And this is an appointment you'll keep. And so if you're today a Christian and you'd like to know of a good tract to give to people, to put it in a bill, to put it in the hands of a parking lot attendant...When I was in Los Angeles, I was a sales rep for lasers, operating room lasers and such, and there were all kinds of hospital parking lots complete with attendants.

And I would ask for a receipt. They'd say, it's $6. May I have a receipt, please? And then I would say, thank you. And I said, I'd say, I have something for you to read. And they would say, thank you.

And I would hand them a tract. There's the Stop tract. I like that. That's put out by Grace Community Church and John MacArthur's folks. Stop, it's got the stop sign on the front. Ultimate Questions by John Blanchard.

Those are both excellent tracts. This one here is excellent and it's cheaper. And so if I had to rank them, I'd probably like Ultimate Questions the best, and then Stop, and then this one. But in terms of economy, this one might be the best one that I've seen in some time.

Death, Judgment, and the Appointment Every Person Must Keep

So let me read to you an appointment you will keep regardless, and I'll try to read it in such a way that you're not bored out of your skull. If you're an unbeliever, boring's not the issue. Boring's not the problem.

If you're an unbeliever listening today and you are not born again, that's the only kind of Christian there is, the born-again Christian. There's no other kind of Christian. It's just made up. And so what you need to be is born again and you need to think about Christ's all-sufficient atoning work confirmed by the resurrection, and your response to that needs to be repentance and belief.

And so I'm going to read this to you, and if you're a Christian, then you can either use this cassette, not cassette, you can use this iTunes download that you can get at www .nocompromiseradio .com, or you could rehearse your salvation, thankful and happy and glad and joyful that God opened your eyes.

John Risinger said, well let me just preface it a little bit more. It says on the very front, Hebrews 9 .27, It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this, the judgment. And so then it says, it is appointed, and then in parenthetically, by God himself, unto men without one exception.

Once to die, you know that is true, but after this, that is after you die, the judgment. Read it in the Bible. Hebrews 9 .27. You may do all in your power to put the thought of death away from you. However, you can't escape the fact that you must die.

You know that you must die and face God. Maybe the reason you are reluctant to think about death is that you also know that judgment follows death, as surely as night follows day. In all seriousness, could I possibly press a more sensible or important question upon you than this?

What is going to happen to you when you die? Conscience, common sense, and the Bible all declare to you that there is an eternity that which you must face. As I read you these lines, you know I speak the truth.

You know that the above text of Scripture is as true as it can be. If you and I were talking over a cup of coffee, you might grin and say, ah, come on, John, you're just trying to scare me. However, as you think about the words, death, judgment, all men, your heart of hearts deep inside of you is saying to you this very moment, sure, man, he's telling it like it really is.

I must die and face God, my Creator. Honestly, now, what is so fanatical about earnestly considering the most definite appointment you will ever keep? It is appointed unto you to die. And it is just as certain, and judgment before Almighty God will follow, and you know it.

I fail to see anything either funny or stupid about honestly facing such awesome facts. If you refuse to face them or to think about them, it is you who are playing the part of the fool. Did you ever ask, why is death inevitable?

Why must men die? Where did death come from? The Bible teaches us that death is the penalty of sin. The wages of sin is death, Romans 6 .23. But our sin earns wages, and God is honest. He pays those wages.

In the day thou eatest, thereof thou shalt surely die, was no empty threat by God, either unwilling or unable to carry out His oath. The very existence of death itself is proof that God will keep every one of His curses as well as every promise.

The fact that you are personally certain to die establishes your personal guilt. You have been disobedient to God your Creator and Lawgiver. God's law justly demands perfection or punishment. Law without any penalty or without the enforcement of the penalty is not really law, it is merely advice.

God's law is not just good advice, it is the voice of authority from our sovereign Creator and Judge. By disregarding, despising, yes, and deliberately disobeying God's law, you and I have earned God's curse.

God is no liar. He is holy and just. He will execute judgment where it is earned and deserved. Physical death, followed by eternal death or damnation, is the earned wages of every man. Death and judgment are certain, and you know I am not putting you on.

You know I am telling God's truth. There is another person's death that you ought to think about. It has already taken place. It was also by divine appointment and was a direct result of the just and holy judgment of God.

The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, was delivered, bound over to die, by the determinate counsel of God. The death of Jesus Christ was no tragic accident of history, nor was it its real cause in man.

It was God Himself who appointed and delivered Christ up to death as victim of justice and judgment, and it was God Himself who administered that awful judgment upon the head of His own beloved Son. Hear what the early apostles said, For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.

Acts 4, 27 and 28. Now that is really amazing. The very Son of God not only died, but He died under the wrath and curse of His Father whom He loved and who also loved Him. Why did the Holy Father so deliver up His Son to such awful treatment?

And why did the Son so willingly give Himself up to such a sacrificial death? The answer, my friend, is the very Gospel itself. Jesus Christ died under the Father's curse so that guilty sinners like you and me might be righteously forgiven.

The just judgment of God fell upon Jesus Christ in order that the holy love of God might righteously fall on poor lost sinners like us. Yes, that is the Gospel message. That is what Christ died for our sins means.

Christ, the just One, was judged and condemned so that we, the guilty ones, might be delivered from the judgment we have earned and be accepted as God's own sons. The Apostle Peter put it this way,. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.

1 Peter 3 .18. God completely forgives and fully accepts every guilty sinner who turns from sin and believes the Gospel promises. God is rich unto all that call upon Him, and He turns none away who seek Him with their whole heart.

We cannot escape death. It is an appointment we must keep, and we will keep it whether we are ready or not. However, by God's grace and power, we can escape our just judgment and condemnation. How? By bowing to the Lord Jesus Christ in true repentance and faith.

I urge you to read the Gospel of John and the book of Romans. Pray that God will open their pages to your heart and bring God's grace and forgiveness to you. If you desire help in finding the truth of God's saving mercy, feel free to contact those who gave you this tract.

And if that is not possible, please write to the publishers. May God the Holy Spirit be pleased to bring you to understand and believe the Gospel as set forth by Isaac Watts in his great hymn. Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die?

Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I? Was it for crimes that I have done He groaned upon at the tree? Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree. Well might the sun in darkness hide and shut His glories in, when Christ the mighty Maker died for man the creature's sin.

But drops of grief can ne 'er repay the debt of love I owe. Here Lord I give myself away, tis all that I can do. If this little tract and Isaac Watts' hymn are not true, then how do you explain Jesus Christ?

How do you understand His death and resurrection? What do you suppose will happen to you after death? And what authority gives you assurance that Christ and the New Testament lie, while your ideas about death and judgment are the real truth?

However, if this tract is the truth, and in your heart of hearts you know it is, why have you not sought the forgiveness of the Lord Jesus Christ, and received Him as your Lord and Savior? May the grace of God and power bring you this very moment to call upon His name in true repentance and genuine faith.

John Risinger, October 1971. The very back it says, in John chapter 1 verses 11 and 12, He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.

You can order these tracts at GAM Publications, 703 -450 -4121, 703 -450 -4121, GAM Publications, an appointment you will keep regardless. Well, my name is Mike Abendroth, and this is No Compromise Radio Ministry, and I love to see sinners repent.

I love to see unbelievers lay down their arms, lay down their weapons of warfare against God, and their shaking fists, and their doubts, and their clinging to false faiths like evolution and sacramentalism, and then yield to the gospel, to the God of the gospel, to surrender, to believe, to stop being self-sufficient, to stop being the captain of your own ship, and say, Lord, I am undone.

And before I used to think about myself as pretty good, I might lie once in a while, and I might deceive some, I might have some lust. But now the more I think about it, I've lied and had lust, and I've done other sinful things that don't just make me a bad person, they don't just make me a bad citizen, they just don't make me a bad spouse, they make me rebellious against the Creator of the universe.

See, that's the real problem. People try to minimize sin, and minimize God's holiness, and minimize, therefore, His holy wrath, and they forget that the sin that they commit is against the God who made them, and against the God that they'll answer to on judgment day.

And so John Reisinger has done the church a favor, and he is an excellent writer anyway, but he's getting people to think of two deaths. And so if you ever have to speak at a funeral, and then you talk about the one person who's died, and you are sad, and you are eulogizing that person, and you're thanking God out of His good grace and common grace, even to give us our friend, our relative, for such a time as this, then you talk about the death of another.

So death makes you think about death. The death of your loved one, or death in general, should make you think about the death of Christ Jesus. So here's the issue. If you're a believer today, why don't you just say to the Lord, thank you today for saving me.

Thank you for choosing me, having your son die for me. I didn't deserve any of it. If it was up to me, I would have gone to hell merrily until I got there, and then realized what a tragic mistake that would have been.

But God, you interrupted me. You intercepted me, and you bought me, and you made me your own. And you adopted me into your family, and you put my feet upon a rock, and you gave me a new mind, and you gave me a new will and a new nature, and I am now following you because of what you've done, in the light of what you've done.

Christ's Substitutionary Death, the Covenant of Redemption, and Christian Gratitude

See, Jesus Christ's substitutionary death on Calvary was not for his sins. Jesus didn't have any sins, therefore he wasn't dying for his sins. Maybe other people thought he was dying for his sins, but he was not dying for any of his sins, because he had no sin.

No sin, blameless. And so Jesus dying for the sins of others. That's why 1 Corinthians chapter 15 says he died for our sins, not his own sins. And so since he was divine, he could have enough righteousness, a divine amount of righteousness, an infinite amount of righteousness, to bestow on those who would believe.

It wasn't like he was just man who had no sin and then could give his righteousness to one other person. He was divine, so he could give divine righteousness to many, to thousands, to millions, to people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

And this is the great God of the universe who consistently demonstrates his love towards people that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And so when you think about eternity, when you go to a funeral, you ought to think of not just the person's death, although that's fine to do, but you should also think of Christ's death.

The wages of sin is death. Jesus never sinned. Why did he die? He died because it was part of the triune plan of God in eternity past called the covenant of redemption, covenant of peace, where the Father, Son, and Spirit all decided to rescue a people and rescue them through the Father's choosing, the Son's death, and the Spirit's application, the Spirit's regeneration and sealing.

And so I think if you're a Christian, you ought to say, thank you, Lord, for saving me. Can you imagine that he chose you? He chose you out of anybody, and he did it because he wanted to make you a trophy of his grace.

This is what the grace of God looks like in a person. Doesn't that want to make you live for the Lord? I want other people to see me, even the neighbors and friends and other people who don't like my faith and don't like my God and don't like Jesus, don't want to talk about Jesus, we don't like to come to your house to hear about Jesus.

I want them to say, you know, the God that that man serves, he's a good God. He's a great God. I wish I had a father like that. I wish I had a God like that who bestows so many blessings upon the person.

And I don't mean finances, although God regularly bestows financial blessings. Most Christians I know have a house, shelter, cars, food, all kinds of things. Oh, they may not be millionaires, but those blessings come from the hand of God.

And since Romans 8 is true, that if he's given us the greatest gift, his son, won't he give us all the other smaller gifts too? And so this God who has stretched forth his love, a straining kind of stretching by having his son cloak himself with humanity and to live among sinners, the response to this love is, should be, must be repentance and faith and trust and following God.

And what faith is, is faith says, I have no resources of my own, and I'm looking to resources outside myself. I thought I was self-sufficient. I'm not sufficient at all. I thought I was able to run the universe, and I don't run it at all.

And I have knowledge of this God and his son's substituent death and resurrection. And I have assent. Yes, in fact, Jesus died not just for other people, but he died for me. And I have a trust. I have a volitional, willful trust in the promises as they have been revealed in the word of God.

And so that is what it means by taking God at his word, believing what God says. There's a knowledge and assent and a volitional trust. And so I leave you with this today on No Compromise Radio, some words from John Reisinger.

It says at the end of this tract, it says, why have you not sought his forgiveness? Why have you not received him as Lord and Savior? My question to you is, since you're going to die, why aren't you making sure everything is good between you and God?

I personally don't like to have problems between myself and my wife or my kids or other people or friends. Who likes to have a barrier between them because of an argument, a disagreement, some ruckus?

Nobody likes that. At least I don't like that. To what greater degree should we not like it? Especially all you unbelievers out there. You might not be mad at God, but God's mad at you. You might not think you're an enemy of God, but God sees you as an enemy.

And that should frighten you with a holy God who is powerful and wise and just and can see everything that you've ever done and will do. You're undone unless you run for the cover and run for the protection of the cross.

And then Jesus bears your sins, so you don't have to bear those sins. Then God's just law, the soul that sins will surely die. And then you have a representative, a man who lived in your place, but much more than a man, the God-man who dies in your place as substitute.

You need Jesus Christ as representative and substitute. And we know this is all true because Jesus raised himself from the dead. So in light of that, in light of that good news, repent, believe, follow, trust, forsake, receive the Lord Jesus Christ, confess in your heart, confess with your mouth and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is Mike Abendroth, NoCompromiseRadio .com.

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 bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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