The Resurrection

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.

This is Mike Abendroth and I'm your host. Just a couple of announcements before we get into our show today.

My brother, Pat Abendroth, is also a Bible teacher. He's the pastor of Omaha Bible Church and he's going to be here in New England giving a conference and then preaching

March 27th and 28th, Saturday, 8 a .m. at Bethlehem Bible Church.

You can get this information online as well. Saturday, the 27th of March, he's going to do three sessions here at the church called

Manning Up, and that is how to be a man in society, how to be a man at the church, how to be a man at home.

What does the Bible say? And that will be here March 27th and 28th, three sessions on Saturday, and then a

Sunday school session here at the church before he preaches, March 27th and 28th, 2010.

Pat Abendroth, if you think I'm crazy, you should try to come listen to Pat teach about it.

I told him he had to wear his Robb Bell glasses and maybe wear some kind of Wild at Heart t -shirt.

That would be coming up on March 27th. If you'd like to register, men, it's a breakfast, it's five bucks with the registration.

Without registration, ahead of time, it's just five bucks, no breakfast. BBC staff at BBC Church, bbcstaffatbbchurch .org,

or you can write me at info at nocompromisedradio .com. I have a couple other announcements

I want to make before we get into our topic. I did notice that Beth Moore is coming to Worcester, at least via satellite on CCN, Saturday, April 24th, 2010.

And it says, Beth Moore, so long, insecurity, and I've been given a lot of inserts to put into my church bulletin.

Sadly, I won't be putting any of those in my church bulletin because I don't want any of the people here at Bethlehem Bible Church to go.

Beth Moore, so long, insecurity. Listen to this, kiss your insecurities goodbye and discover the joy of living with confidence.

Since Eve ripped the first leaf from a tree in the garden, insecurities have plagued the female gender.

Today's women, young and old, churched and unchurched, rich and poor are suffering from such deeply embedded wounds that most don't even know how to identify them.

And beyond that, they can't imagine living without them. Join Beth Moore for a day that will transform and liberate you.

Worcester First Assembly of God, $20 per ticket, includes luncheon, Beth won't be there.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, simulcast via CCN. Beth Moore, ccn .tv,

front slash Beth Moore 2010. Well, this is not my show to give you a critique on the teachings of Beth Moore, but even that sappy,

Eve ripped the first leaf from a tree in the garden, I don't even know what that means.

What is insecurity? And what's a deeply embedded wound?

Friends, this is just mumbo -jumbo psychology in the language and the garb of Beth Moore's teaching.

While Beth Moore is certainly a Christian lady, I think we ought to ask ourself a question, and that question is, do

I get my insecurities taken away by going to one of these conferences? So long, insecurity.

I think you should save your money and study the Bible and pick up a good James Boyce book instead, and I think you'll realize who you are in Christ.

I think you should study Romans 8 instead. Christian life many times comes down to good, better, and best.

And so what's a good thing to do, what's a better thing, and what's the best thing to do? I'm quite confident, if you have a

Bible -teaching pastor, you aren't going to need some kind of Beth Moore simulcast.

I guess this is a time to make the announcement, too. I just got in the mail today that Kay Arthur's going to be at the

CBD Warehouse in Peabody, Mass, coming up at the next sale for two hours. I mean, we have the most famous women in evangelical world coming to the

Worcester area, either live or over CCN. First, Beth Moore, then, what's her name?

Kay Arthur. I almost wanted to say Tom Arnold, but that would be a man.

And then who's next? I don't know, Joyce Meyer coming to the DCU Center with the Gaithers singing, you know,

I don't know what. So anyway, what we do at this show is we just ramble along. I don't know what we do.

I wanted to make sure I announced the one conference, give you a heads up on the other conference, I guess a heads up, kind of a watch out on that one, and then talk about the topic for today.

Today, I'd like to talk about a topic that is called, interestingly enough, hold on just one second, and I'd like to talk about the resurrection today and the consequences and the implications of the resurrection are if we deny the resurrection.

I think many people would say the resurrection is true, but they would say something like this, that Jesus was raised in your heart, or something strange like that.

Hardy said, has anyone cheated death and proved it? Second question, Hardy asked, is it available to me?

And as we approach Resurrection Sunday, Easter Sunday, I thought I'd talk about the resurrection just a little bit.

In the day of coverups, we've got Watergate, Whitewater Gate, Billy Gate, Nanny Gate, and now it could be some kind of Resurrection Gate.

We are going to live in a society that is, we are living in a society that covers up the resurrection.

Germany's Count Bismarck said, without the hope of eternal life, this life is not worth the effort of getting dressed in the morning.

And if you're listening today, you need to believe in the literal and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Certainly Satan hates this doctrine. Certainly Satan would like to dupe people into not believing it.

The resurrection happened, he can't prevent that, he couldn't prevent that, he did not prevent that, but he can certainly try to prevent people from believing in it.

Remember, this is a God, Satan's called the God of the world, who has blinded the minds of the unbelieving.

And I think he'd like to even dupe believers into not believing the gospel. People today want no accountability, and therefore they say they don't believe in God.

And that's really the issue. If you watch the show, if you watch the show, if you listen to the show today, if you're within earshot, you believe in God.

You believe in the powerful God that created everything by divine fiat. You said, no, I don't,

I'm an atheist. No, Romans chapter one makes it clear that you know things about God, and it is evident within you and within your own being, within your conscience, you know there's a

God. The text says in Romans 1 .9, for God made it evident to them. Secondly, you're not an atheist because you can see what

God has done. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen.

Being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.

You see that there's a God by looking at the hydrological cycle, by looking at the moon, by thinking about your body and how if you had blood that was any thinner, you'd cut yourself and bleed to death any thicker, and you would die by having it clogged up in your arteries.

Now you believe in God, but you want no accountability. So Romans 1 says you suppress the truth about God in unrighteousness.

And so what many people do when it comes to God and Jesus being the God -man, they wanna suppress the truth of the resurrection.

We don't want the resurrection because if the man, Jesus, really was raised from the dead, then he would tell me about the life afterwards, life and death, the power of life and death, and I don't want that because I like to live my own life.

And American Idol's on tonight, and I've got other things to do, and I love my job and my possessions and sex and all kinds of other things, and I've gotta fill my life up with things.

Have you ever wondered why you have to fill your life up with things that just never seem to last? The answer is because in Ecclesiastes 3, the

Bible teaches that eternity has been set in your heart. Every person has eternity set in their heart, and anything on this earth, everything on this earth, cannot fulfill, cannot satisfy.

And so what people do when it comes to the resurrection, they want to suppress the truth of the resurrection in unrighteousness because who wants to have

God reign on your parade when you're in the middle of sin and sinful activities? People don't like that.

Jesus was raised from the dead, and we need to be very, very bold in that proclamation because if Christ has not been raised, 1

Corinthians 15, 17, your faith is worthless, you are still in your sins.

And so if Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, literally, physically, then you're still in your sins and you're gonna have to pay for those sins before God.

Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me shall live even if he dies.

And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? You must believe this.

We have a society full of modern -day Sadducees. The Sadducees were a sect like the

Pharisees or the scribes, and the Sadducees did not believe in resurrected bodies.

They didn't believe in afterlife. They believed that when you die and breathe your last, that's it, so live it up now on earth because when it's done, it's done.

And they were the ones promoting this idea that there's no resurrection at all.

And if there's no resurrection at all, then there's no resurrection of Jesus. So today we wanna look at some of the crazy things people will do when it comes to denying the resurrection, denying the resurrection.

There are popular theories that have been set forth for many years in many different languages, from PBS shows,

From Jesus to Christ, which was a bunch of lies. By the way, that is something very interesting. Around Christmas and around Easter, you'll see

Time Magazine, Life Magazine, Us Magazine, you'll see the National Enquirer kind of magazines,

PBS, Frontline, CBS, they're all scurrying to sell you information about Jesus.

Why do they do that? Answer, follow the money, because it sells.

And the whole time CBS is doing these shows and PBS, they're giving you the wrong Jesus with wrong scholars.

So many times I see these scholars from Princeton and Yale and Harvard and some of these other schools, and I think, you're not even an evangelical.

Oh, you call yourself a Christian, but you deny inerrancy, you deny infallibility of the scriptures, you deny substitutionary atonement, you deny the physical resurrection.

And so we need to make sure that we believe in the empty tomb and proclaim it.

Jesus is the good shepherd, he is the God -man. And when someone comes along and tells you, this is the first kind of kooky thing that people talk about, that it was telepathy.

Here's what happened. The tomb is empty, Jesus is not really around, probably just stolen the body, and God, the

Father, sent some telepathic images. God sent mental images into the minds of the followers of Christ.

So whether it was Mary or whether it was Peter, whether it was Thomas, whether it was

John, whether it was a 500, James, a whole list of people there in 1 Corinthians 15, no one else saw

Jesus because God the Father didn't send some kind of telepathic ray into the brains of those followers.

And so people say, well, Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, it was telepathy. That makes God a liar and a deceiver.

Titus 1 says there's a God, this God, the only God, and he's an unlying

God, is literally the text in the Greek. The NAS reads, God who cannot lie.

When you think about the road to Emmaus discussion over the dusty roads, what kind of image was being beamed into the brains of those people on the

Emmaus roads? What kind of thing did the image eat? What was the image really eating when the image was eating with those folks?

It's just really stupid. And I guess if you sell the big lie big enough, long enough, people end up believing it.

And see, by default, people want to believe that. Oh yeah, that was probably it. And then off to your sin and off to your loving yourself with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving just you like you should be loving your neighbor.

See, that's what happens. People want to have some kind of easy out so then they can push the blame to some thing or someone, receive no blame from God and live their lives without a conscience bearing down on them.

That's why people love evolution so much because they can then in their minds, sin as they please without having a conscience that says, you will pay for this, you are a lawbreaker, you stand before God as guilty.

People don't want that. So they come up with things with the resurrection. This is Mike Abendroth with No Compromise Radio. You can email me at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

I get a few emails here and there, some days more than others. Most of them are actually positive.

Can you believe that? Most are actually positive and say thank you for the ministry here. If you want to go to the website, www .nocompromiseradio

.com, you can find all kinds of downloads. Our t -shirts are on the way in, $10 for a t -shirt.

It's kind of got blood on the front, NoCo. And then on the back, it's got Galatians 2 -5 with a bunch of blood.

And we're going to see a bunch of those black t -shirts with the red blood around Worcester. Hey, I have a great idea.

I think I should give one of those t -shirts to Beth Moore. Oh, I can't because she's telepathically beamed in to the

Worcester church there. Or maybe I should go give one to Kay Arthur. How much money would you donate to No Compromise Radio Ministries if I could give a shirt that said

No Compromise Radio to Kay Arthur and have her wear it during her book signing at CVD Peabody Mass?

That would be quite a thing to do. All right, well, what other kind of images, theories rather, are promoted?

Another one's called a seance theory. A seance theory. Some medium, some kind of witch, conjured up the spirit of dead

Jesus through occult power. Now see, if you won't believe the real thing,

Jesus said, I'm going to raise myself up, then you'll believe anything, telepathy, seance theory.

I wonder how you touch one of these conjured up spirits. Luke 24, see my hands and my feet, that it is

I myself, touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.

Verse 41 of Luke 24. And while they still could not believe it for joy and were marveling, he said to them, have you anything to eat?

And he gave him, and they gave him, Jesus, a piece of broiled fish, and Jesus took it and ate it before them.

Maybe that was some kind of special telepathy seance. You have these theories that ignore the evidence.

You have theories that say, well, we know Jesus was probably raised from the dead, but we don't want a guilty conscience when we sin.

We want to sin, our deeds are evil. You say, Pastor Mike, why do you keep harping on this whole thing about resurrection and judgment?

Let me read you a couple of verses. Therefore, Acts 17 .30, Acts 17 .30,

having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent.

And so I'm telling that to you today. If you're listening to the radio, you must repent. If you're not a Christian, you must be born again.

If you are a Buddhist or a Muslim or anything else in between, you must repent.

You must believe Jesus, the God -man, believe that He was a sin -bearer. Why? Acts 17 .31,

listen to the tie -in between judgment and the resurrection. Because He has fixed a day in which

He will judge the world in righteousness. Some would wish He judged the world unrighteously and let a few people off here, there, and somewhere else.

But Jesus will not have any of that. There's a day fixed. He will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom

He has appointed. The Father will have this world judged through Jesus, the man. Having furnished proof to all men by raising

Him from the dead. By raising Him from the dead.

This is a very, very important tenet for Christianity. Without the resurrection, you don't have anything.

With the resurrection, you have it all. You have the risen Jesus, just as He said.

You have the Jesus who paid the sins, paid for sins of all the people who would ever believe. And God the

Father confirmed that it was an excellent payment. It was a true payment. It was a payment for other sins, not

His own sins. And Jesus was therefore raised from the dead. Confucius, still in the tomb.

Buddha, still in the tomb. Muhammad, still in the tomb.

Jesus' tomb, empty. You've got to have the resurrection for justification.

What if Jesus wasn't raised from the dead? That would mean that the Father did not accept Christ's death in our place.

Substitutional atonement would be gone. Substitutional atonement would be obliterated. Jesus dies for sins, even though He didn't commit those sins.

We get credit for Christ's righteousness, even though we didn't act righteously. I wonder if God confirmed and affirmed that transaction, where our sins get placed on Christ's, He gets credited to Christ's account, and Christ's righteousness gets credited to our account.

Did it work? Did the Father find it acceptable? Did the Father say, yes, that's pleasing in my sight, the

Son always does what pleases me? The answer is yes, and Jesus was then raised from the dead, proving that God had accepted that great substitutionary atonement, and that He would justify people who were unrighteous,

Romans 4 .25. Jesus was delivered up because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.

If you're a Christian, you have the hope of eternal life, because you have placed your faith in the one that has borne your sins, and has given you

His perfect righteousness, and God has confirmed that by raising Him from the dead. Sometimes do a study on the resurrection in the

New Testament, and you'll find that it is sprinkled all over. It is a sign for unbelievers in Matthew 12.

It should alleviate your doubt in Luke 24. It should affirm to you that what

Jesus taught was true. If He taught something that wasn't true, then God would just leave

Him in the tomb, but He raised Him from the dead. What He taught was true. It is a critical component for evangelism.

I won't even say who it is, because I actually like the guy, but people can go through their whole ministries.

They can preach to 40 ,000 people at certain outdoor revivals and forget the resurrection.

You need to make sure you remind people that Jesus was raised from the dead, that Jesus Himself was raised from the dead.

That is in 1 Corinthians 15, verses one and following. When you think about the resurrection, it is the basis for forgiveness.

One man said, it is the basis of our hope of life beyond the grave. Christ is alive, and the evidence is overwhelming.

That is true. Jesus, did you know, predicted His resurrection? Matthew 16 and Mark 9,

John 2. Did you know the Old Testament prophesied of that resurrection? Did you know that when people saw the resurrected

Jesus, they looked at Him, they touched Him, they heard His voice, they saw Him eat?

It was not some kind of telepathic seance, kind of CBN, beam in of some person.

No, not at all. Did you know that after the resurrection, weak disciples turned into super spirit -filled ministers of the gospel?

The disciples' lives were turned right side up, instead of fleeing Christ, instead of denying

Christ. Did they fear anyone? Practically no one, and they would stand up and proclaim the risen

Christ. Here's some homework for you. Why don't you go to the book of Acts, the Acts of the

Holy Spirit, the Acts of the Apostles, and see how they preach the resurrection. Acts 2, resurrection.

Acts 3, resurrection. Acts 5, resurrection. They preach the resurrection. Stephen, Acts 7, the resurrection.

The resurrection was important, and that's why even though in the church calendar in the Bible, there's no such thing as some kind of Easter service,

Monday, Thursday on Thursday, then Friday, good Friday service, and then

Sunday, Easter service. But you'll see churches all around the world celebrate the real resurrection.

The tomb was empty. The grave clothes had no one in them. And Jesus Christ proved that He was

God, the Son of God, by raising Himself from the dead. That's Romans 1, verse 4.

That's Romans 1, verse 4. We now have a great intercessor in glory, the risen Christ.

He is the one who's interceding for us because He's been raised from the dead. And we see

Peter preach this great Jesus who's raised from the dead. Maybe you should preach Him like Peter preached

Him. God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death since it was impossible for Him to be held by its power.

Friends, Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead. Up from the grave He arose in a literal body, not some kind of spiritual seance deal, but the real body.

And so we wanna make sure as listeners to No Compromise Radio that we don't compromise when it comes to the resurrection.

Jesus Christ is risen today. And you could probably sing on Easter, Alleluia, God bless you.

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 six. 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.