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Jesus Is A Historical Person
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. Mike Abendroth here. We�re just adjusting the volumes. This is December 27th in real time, 2017, but who knows, you might be listening to a rerun. This might be played in the future.
Or, I think this might be played next week, January 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, something like that. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling your friends. I don�t think we�ve had many reviews lately on iTunes or Facebook.
If you�d like to do that, you can gladly do it. I think one guy gave me five stars, and he changed it to one because I said something about mental illness, and he disagreed with that. So, our ratings are low.
They�re in the high fours, I think. So if you�d like to do business with No Compromise Radio, there�s enough likes or something like that. What else is happening? We�re working on a couple books, �We� meaning me, and there�s other men involved in terms of covers and all that kind of stuff, Stephen.
And one�s on the doctrine of hell, and the other is the S. Lewis Johnson Colossians commentary. And then there�s a compilation that I�m working on, too. Hopefully, now that the cancer is at least temporarily gone, hopefully all the way gone, we can get back to some other ministry things.
I might go back to Friday�s rerun, Monday�s sermon, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, live enough shows, you know, recent shows within the last couple weeks recorded, new information that is, and then Friday rerun.
I just think that might be better. It might be better on my mental health, my mental illnesses. Remember back in the day when you wouldn�t really tell people you had a mental illness? You kind of hid it.
You didn�t� you were ashamed of it. Doesn�t it seem like these days people lead with that? They�re proud of it. They identify themselves with some of their emotional or mental problems. Maybe it�s just me.
Although I was glad for certain medicine when I had the MRI, and they put me in the tube. I think I recorded a show and talked about this last week, and they said, �What music would you like to listen to
And I said, �How about reggae And the lady said, �How do you spell it How do you spell it? I don�t know. Oh, man. So I told her how to spell it, and then she said, �Oh, I don�t know if it�s coming up.
Because she had a Pandora option for my headphones. They give you the little freak-out button to hold in your left hand, and then my right hand, I was making the sign of the cross. One potato, two potato.
Or as they say in New England, one badata, two badata. And so I said, �How about Bob Marley And she said, �Oh, I see that channel here. So they did. I pretty much slept through it because of the medicine I took.
I�m too old to lay in some tiny tube with big shoulders, a loud magnet hot spinning around me without having some type of meds. So there you go. I�m glad for some of the meds. But I still was in the tube.
I still was, you know, having the MRI. We�ve been talking a lot here on No Compromise Radio about the book of Hebrews, and pretty much here�s what happens. I like to be honest. It�s a good trait to have.
Since I don�t have as much free time as I used to have, or I shouldn�t say that. Since the time that I have now for No Compromise Radio, I�m trying to make sure it�s really secondary, and doesn�t take over anything in the ministry at Bethlehem Bible Church, since that is the ministry that the Lord has given me, not No Compromise Radio.
But No Compromise Radio just came from an overflow, it was a spinoff. And as Happy Days is to Laverne and Shirley, what was the other one that they had? Was Lenny and Squiggy a show? I don�t think so.
Anyway, when I sit down to do a show, so for instance, today is two days after Christmas, it�s Wednesday afternoon, 1 .30. I�m here doing shows, but I�m really kind of practicing my Hebrews sermon. So this is lots of Hebrews, because I�m talking about the topic, and that�s helping me study.
Because when you talk about your passage, your sermon, you speak it out loud, you speak it into existence, faith, words are containers, and they�re all so stupid. This old Kenneth Copeland, you know, Trump�s, Dr. President, President Trump writes a letter to Copeland, �Congratulations on 50 years and Paula White is in the White House, and it�s, it�s, it�s, I could have ever thought.
But I like this option better than the other option. Anyway, we here at No Compromise Radio, I, the royal we, I�ve just been talking a lot about Hebrews, because I�m listening to myself talk about the passage, and then I cut and paste what I like and don�t like mentally into the sermon on Sunday.
So this is actually part of my study, as I�m talking about the topic and the passage and Jesus out loud on the radio. But I do it in a radio style, where there�s a little more abruptness, maybe some comedy.
Is there ever comedy on the show? And somebody said to me the other day, I took it as a very high compliment. This particular lady said that she thought I was funny at the appropriate times, and she considers herself a comedy snob.
That means she doesn�t give out her compliments for comedy very easily. I never wanted to be a comedian. I�m sure I would bomb, but I like good comedy when I hear it, and I think if I had to pick my favorite comedians, maybe they would be last generation Stephen Wright, just because it was so dry and deadpan, and Boston, so I�m in an airport sometime ago, black leather jacket and jeans, and Brian Regan, I like him.
I guess there�s another guy that doesn�t swear, I heard him on the Lance Armstrong podcast, but I forgot the name, Bagazzi, maybe, Bagazzi, I don�t know, I could look it up. As we talk in the book of Hebrews about Jesus, this superior high priest, that�s after all the theme of Hebrews, I�ve been thinking a lot about Jesus and his actual existence.
You can have religions based on myths. You can have cults based on, you know, everybody wear blue, striped, white, Nikes, and Heaven�s Gate people, apple white, all those things. People can believe in all kinds of things that aren�t true, and they can believe and worship things about, quote-unquote, God, that are concepts, are philosophical constructs, they aren�t true, but they�re just ideas, right, that they�ve come up with and then placed on top of someone they call God.
But I want you to remember, and of course it�s a �duh� moment, but it is an important moment, that Jesus was a historical person. He really existed, right? The eternal Son adds humanity, truly man, truly God, and He�s actually on earth.
If you were to watch Jesus walk, there would be footprints. His feet got dusty and dirty, and He actually existed. He breathed the air. Now, I�m not saying He set aside attributes of God and wasn�t God in those areas.
Well, He did set aside privileges of exercising all of them at times. That�s not what I�m talking about. I�m talking about He was a historical person. He really existed. Listen to what J. Gresham Machen said, and see, here�s what�s happening with Machen.
He�s fighting the liberals, and the liberals are talking about ideas and concepts and constructs. He�s saying, �This is a historical person. Now, there�s theology involved with this historical person, but He really existed.
If you�re a real person, you�re going to need a real person as representative. Machen, �From the beginning, the Christian gospel, as indeed the name gospel or good news implies, consisted in an account of something that had happened.
Right? Good news. It�s not good fiction, good stories, good myths. Good news. �And from the beginning, the meaning of the happening was set forth. And when the meaning of the happening was set forth, then there was Christian doctrine.
Christ died, that is history. Christ died for our sins, that is doctrine. Without these two elements joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity. The coming of Jesus was understood now as an act of God by which sinful men were saved.
The primitive church was also not merely concerned with what Jesus had said, but also and primarily with what Jesus had done. The world was to be redeemed through the proclamation of an event, and with the event went the meaning of the event.
And the setting forth of the event with the meaning of the event was doctrine. These two elements are always combined in the Christian message. The narration of the facts is history. The narration of the facts with the meaning of the facts is doctrine.
Suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified, dead, and buried. That is history. He loved me and gave himself for me, that is doctrine. Such was the Christianity of the primitive church. And when you think big picture about the book of Hebrews, I want you to be thinking about a real person.
The sacrifices up to the point of Christ were real sacrifices, real blood, real flies coming to the blood afterwards, real live animals that had to be fed and watered, real live people and priests and high priests.
They were real people. When you think of Jesus, I don't want you to think of him as a Christmas concept or construct only. I want you to think of a real person. You could shake his hand. He was real. There was real blood in his system.
He was truly man, and that means he was real, right? He walked, he talked, he ate, right? His body processed food. He was a person in every way. And that will make you study history if Jesus is a historical person.
It drives you to study history, right? Because if he was a historical person, now we've got to study about history. Yes, we'd like to know the doctrine that goes along with it, and of course we have that in the Pauline epistles.
You could almost think, and this is too easy of a bifurcation, but here are the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are accounts of Jesus, and then how do we determine what those accounts mean? When the sun doesn't shine for those three hours when Jesus is on Calvary, what's happening?
Is it a solar eclipse? Is it really cloudy? Were they having a lot of rubbish fires and the smoke went out? But if we read the New Testament, then we'll understand because we have doctrine that's applied to the history, so we can correctly read, understand, identify those historical markers and what they mean.
Machen said, additionally, the student of the New Testament should be primarily a historian and historian. The center and core of all the Bible is history. Everything else that the Bible contains is fitted into an historical framework and leads up to an historical climax.
The Bible is primarily a record of events. Isn't that amazing? We're studying this high priest in the book of Hebrews. You worship a risen Savior. Give up history, Machen said, and you can retain some things.
You can retain a belief in God, but philosophical theism has never been a powerful force in the world. You can retain a lofty ethical ideal, but be perfectly clear about one point. You can never retain a gospel, for gospel means good news, tidings, information about something that has happened.
In other words, it means history. A gospel independent of history is simply a contradiction in terms, end quote. That's one of the reasons why I love to study the book of Hebrews. There's so much from Leviticus and so much from the Old Testament and so much about priests and systems and sacrifices and what they need to do.
It drives me back to remember this is history. It really happened. Now there's a meaning to what happened in history, as Machen would say, and you would believe, and that is there are doctrinal implications.
It is real hard to speak sometimes. Now if you're on 1 .5 speed, I'm going to try to mess you around. I hate this Diet Pepsi, but I'm going to drink it anyway. I didn't drink Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi for a long time.
I didn't want to get cancer. Then I got cancer. Maybe it's related. Then I didn't drink it. No, I did drink it because I thought I already have cancer, what's it going to hurt? Now that I'm, at least for the moment, cancer-free, I'm going to stop drinking it.
This was just left here. It says aspartame-free. It's got Splenda. That's almost as bad for you, but it does have caffeine. One of the things about Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Pepsi more so, reminds me of my mother.
I miss my mom, although when I look at my sister, I think of my mom because they look alike. Since Jesus actually existed and actually did what the Father commanded Him to do, and Jesus did it perfectly, and He earned our salvation, He bore our sins on His body on a tree, then we don't have to scurry around and try to figure out, how can I be right with God?
What pleases God? We already know what pleases God, and that is perfect obedience. Since we could never do that, but God in His grace did it for us through the person of Jesus Christ, we can now rest.
That's the section we're at in Hebrews chapter 4, rest. There's different rests in the Bible. God rests on the Sabbath day, the seventh day. God told Israel they could have rest in the promised land if they would believe, and they disobeyed and disbelieved.
They did not believe. There is a rest that you can have in heaven forever, and then the rest that's talked about a lot here in Hebrews 4 is the rest that you can enter into now as you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's almost like a different word for believe, but it's resting in and trusting in who Jesus is. When you look at this passage, Hebrews 4, 1 to 11, it starts off with the idea of entering into rest, verse 1, and it ends with the same idea, verse 11.
We call that an inclusio, inclusio, and it's basically bookends, and you would know everything about this passage from 1 to 11, everything in the inclusio would be about the same thing that it's talking about here.
It's entering the rest. Let us fear, let us make every effort, let's see what it says, Hebrews 4, 1, therefore while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.
Now 4, 11, the other side of the inclusio, let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. Everything in here is about rest. Jesus is the high priest, and you must believe in him.
So, I think what I'll do is I have a little outline. Sometimes I don't give outlines, sometimes I do. Sometimes I have to keep you guessing. The outline is, four facts you must acknowledge to understand your salvation correctly, four facts about your salvation, so you can just understand this and parse it.
Don't we like parsing things? I don't think we like parsimonious things, but we like parsing things. Don't be parsimonious. I think that'd be a good series. Miriam, maybe she was parsimonious. I just got the latest CBD catalog.
Is there anything more wasteful of paper? It's amazing to me that behemoth of a building, and now it's just, it's a wreck. You know what it's going to be one day? It's going to be like a mall. I read something about malls the other day and how they're shutting down because people can order things online, so you need to put things in malls that people can't get elsewhere.
Dry cleaners, fitness clubs, coming to a mall near you. I saw in a mall by our home, a paramedics training class in a mall. How about that? Then I guess you could walk next door. There is a Best Buy there and a TJ Maxx still, and then, I don't know, some place to get your ears pierced and eclairs and stuff like that.
It has been 30, 27 years since I had my ear pierced, and since I don't put things in that ear piercing anymore, it's grown back over. So the other day, I picked up one of the girl's earrings and I was going to, it was pretty big.
Not the gauge of the earring itself, but the stuff that dangles down. I think it was a Frisbee. They're the new style. No, it was just something, and I was just being dopey, and I put it in. I couldn't push it all the way through.
I didn't know if that was godliness or that was just a bummer. I tried to push pretty hard, but I didn't want it to bleed again. So anyway, there you have it. Four facts you must acknowledge to understand salvation correctly, and everything about this has to do with entering God's rest.
Fact number one, we've talked about this before, but for our little sermon series here, for our little just-between-us-girls time, enter rest or work for it. That's the first fact. You either enter God's rest or you're going to have to work for it.
The promise of entering his rest still stands. Let us fear lest any of you should seem to fail to have reached it, or should seem to have failed to reach it. I read, this week matter of fact, in Psychology Today magazine.
Pretty dopey magazine, but good for sermon illustrations. The surprising reasons why we dislike photos of ourselves. Now the thing is, it's not that surprising, but I know where they're coming from. Here's the article.
We tend to dislike our photographs, but there are ways to like them more. Then they say reason number one, we dislike our own photographs. You ready? We think we're more attractive than we actually are.
I mean, that's so true. Wait a second. That's a bad angle. That's bad background. That's bad lighting. It's a bad face, earring man face. Here's what the psychologist says, when we think about ourselves, we are prone to a bias called self-enhancement, which is the tendency to evaluate our own traits and abilities more favorably than is objectively warranted.
We look better than we actually do. Maybe this explains why, and I'm sure men do it too. Maybe I just don't notice them as much, but I see, I don't know, maybe it's more of a New England thing maybe than a California thing.
I don't agree that if you have a attractive body that you should hardly wear anything around the beach. I don't agree with that. I'm not a prude. I'm not a crazy King James only fundamentalist. When my daughter says, can we wear a bikini?
I said, yes, on your honeymoon. And B, you can wear one underneath the wetsuit when you're surfing, you know, that kind of stuff. But I don't know. It just seems like when you're not having one of those, like, you know, finely-tuned bodies and you're going to wear the bikini anyway, I don't mean my daughters, but just people in general.
I just think, wow, people just, people have, how can I get out of this self-enhancement bias? Oh, man. This is not good. This is bad. This is going to give me a lot of trouble. But you see the tie-in.
You know where I'm going to go. The same thing happens spiritually. We're not as bad as we think we are. No, we're not as, we don't think we're as bad as the Bible says we are, and therefore God isn't as holy as the Bible says he is and that he is.
So you have to enter God's rest. Here's the point. Stagnation isn't good. Inertia needs to be involved. You can't stay where you are as unbelievers. Oh, I'll just die. That'll take care of it. Not that bad.
Just kind of coast. No, you have to enter, enter into the rest. It assumes what? It assumes you're not in the rest. If you're an unbeliever, you're not in the rest of God, spiritual rest right in God's sight based on the perfect righteous robes of Christ Jesus, based on Jesus dying for your imperfections, sins, iniquities, transgressions, trespasses, piccadillos, boo-boos.
No, your sins are covered because they're paid for. You not only have paid for sins, you have perfect righteousness of Jesus. You can't just do more right than wrong. You have to enter. You can't be nicer.
You have to enter. You can't be kinder. You have to enter. Spiritual rest isn't achieved. It's accomplished by someone else. I mean, you will not trust in Christ Jesus. The only other option is work. What's the opposite of rest?
Toil. Anyway, we'll talk about that next time. This was just a lengthy introduction with some comments in there from yours truly. Info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. If you'd like to go to the website, there's a couple of books there.
If you order any book in the next couple of weeks and just say, buy one, get one free, you buy two, you get two free. That's the point.
Buy two, get two free. Mike Abendroth. No Compromise Radio. 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.