New Devotional Bibles

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 our

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth. And yes, it is Tuesday, but sadly, we're still social distancing and that makes problems for radio shows when you have a co -host.

But we have landlines and we have the internet, and so today it's Tuesday. Pastor Steve Cooley, the

Tuesday Guy, welcome back to No Compromise Radio, your home. Thank you very much. We have to socially distance ourselves.

What is that all about? Well, it's okay if you are unloading masks and stuff like that from the

Patriots plane. You can get as close as you want for the photo ops. I noticed there are lots of exceptions, like, you know, what

I find funny is yesterday they announced the guidelines for wearing a mask and all that other stuff. Well, yesterday morning,

Janet and I, my wife and I, were in the grocery store, and the guys who work in the grocery store work in the grocery store.

They're putting things up on the shelves. No mask. They're standing next to each other, and I'm going, well, it's good to know, you know, that everything is sanitized.

Well, I'm trying not to go out very much, but today I went to pick up a prescription, and I went into the grocery store slash pharmacy inside the store, and today,

Steve, was my first day that I wore my N95 mask, and I put a hat on, and I didn't have sunglasses, although I thought of it if it wasn't raining, because I didn't want anybody to know who

I was, because I think it's kind of, you know, dopey to wear masks around until today, and then

I think probably 40 % of the shoppers had masks on, and none of the clerks, none of the cashiers, none of the stockers, none of the produce people, so it's an odd day, isn't it?

Well, I mean, if you had sunglasses on, that might have been sketchy. I know. By the way,

Steve, here's something you don't know, but if you were sitting here next to me today, one foot away, breaking social distancing laws, you would recognize that on your headphones are brand new, upgraded, brand new, brand spanking new ear deals for your headphones.

Ear covers? Yeah. Wow. You mean so I don't have to get showered with black plastic rubber stuff, whatever that is?

I think that's a new trend we could start. It's a no -co thing. So, what we're going to try to do, dear listener, is we're going to try to record some shows today and play them on Tuesday so we can keep having

Steve around. The last, I don't know, three months have been odd for me, especially because not only have we had the virus stuff, but the knee surgery, but I think we're kind of back in the saddle again, and so today, glad to have

Pastor Steve Cooley, the Tuesday guy, back. Steve, is there any kind of theological issues that are floating around in your mind, or anything you want to start the show off with, or do you want me to start?

Floating around in my mind, well, I mean, I just think, you know, I've been thinking a lot about the

Assembling of the Saints and just how much I miss it, and it really takes me back to when

I was first saved, and I was working in the jail, and you know,

I mean, previously, prior to the time I got saved, I was like the world's biggest roadblock for the captains who would come in and preach the gospel to the inmates and minister to them in various ways, because I was just like, what a waste of time.

These inmates are useless, you know, etc., etc., etc., and so the day comes when

I think I was genuinely saved, and I'm working 16 hours every

Sunday because it was a scheduling quirk, and so I had 16 -hour shifts for four months in a row on Sunday, and I was miserable.

I mean, I just wanted to go to church, and so, you know, the inmates, the guys who come in and minister to the inmates, and instead of being a roadblock,

I was like, hey, today, just when you guys are singing, would you mind leaving the doors cracked so I could just hear that?

And the chaplains were looking at me like, what is wrong with this guy? And I'm going, well,

I just want to hear, you know, I want to hear something, you know, I need something good. Well, it's interesting,

Steve, of course there are objective truths about our legal standing before the Lord, but the subjective realities are additionally true, longing for things that you used to despise and put roadblocks over.

You know, we used to always say, you know, Christians now love what they used to hate and hate what they used to love. Well, now you take down barriers where you used to put up roadblocks.

Yep. That's right. That was pretty pithy. Well, that's why we're here.

Always pithy, always who knows what. Steve, I have a Christianity Today in front of me,

April 2020, and it's fascinating because they have new devotional Bibles out, and it's on page 23, where there's a special advertising section, and you don't need to turn it to that page to understand some of these study

Bibles, these new devotional Bibles. And so I just want to tell you about a Bible, and then you tell me what you think about it.

How's that for a show? Okay. That sounds good. All right. This is, I'm not making any of this up. I'm going to just read the little tiny paragraph and what it's called, and then we'll see the

Cooley response. The Busy Mom's Bible, NIV, designed for moms on the go.

This woman's devotional Bible helps you stay connected with God and gives you a moment to reflect on yourself.

52 one -minute thought starters let you dip into God's Word for a minute of refreshment.

Each is followed by an option for a five -minute reflect and pray, or 10 -minute study.

Hey, 10 minutes, 52 times a year. Wow. I mean, dude. Hey, well, you're busy.

Yeah, well, you know, right when you said the Busy Mom's devotional Bible, I'm just like, okay, show me a mom.

Let's take a room full of moms. How many of you aren't busy? What does that mean?

The busy moms, that's redundant. If you have kids, you're busy.

That's all there is to it. I don't care if you're homeschooled, you know, public school, work, don't work, whatever.

You are busy with those kids, and so that's a duplication.

It's not a blessed duplication. And then, you know, so you can reflect on yourself.

I'm sure that these are, you know, just meant to burnish one's self -image, and I'm like, the last thing anybody needs,

I don't care if she's a busy mom or anything else, we don't need to feel better about ourselves, right?

We were even, we had the email exchange I won't go into earlier this morning, but roughly, here's the problem.

The problem is, what the world says is, feel better about yourself, and what too many of our churches say now is, feel better about yourself.

I don't think the Bible says that. I think the Bible says, focus on Christ, you know, think about who you are in Christ, but that's not feeling better about yourself, that's loving

Christ more and being thankful for what He's done for you. And, of course, the fruit, you'll think to yourself, oh,

I'm so glad now I'm acceptable to God in light of the work of Christ, and maybe there are feelings of feeling better then, but I thought,

Steve, we might make a sequel to the Busy Mom's Bible. NIV, why don't we have the

Busy Body Mom's Bible, RSV. You know, when

I was a kid, I don't think my mom ever said busy body, but she would say nosy. They're sure nosy.

Well, I mean, as a young person, I can just remember listening to people ad nauseum talk about other people, you know, and I'm just like, so the busy body

Bible, devotional Bible would be this. Talk poorly about other people so you can feel better about yourself, you know.

That is so true. So, 1 Peter 4, 15, make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer or thief.

I mean, those are pretty bad. They're really bad. Or evildoer, and then he adds, are a troublesome meddler, some translate it busy body.

That's right. Well, let's talk just for a second, Steve, when we're dealing with this busy mom's Bible.

There are seasons to the life of a Christian and especially young mothers, and I commend their desire to have their

Bible studies and their quiet times and their times of reflection as they're reading a lot of the Bible. But I think there are probably times in the life of a young mom where she can't sit down like she would like to and read the

Bible, but she probably prays while she's doing dishes and prays while she's changing the diaper and feeding the child and all that stuff.

I would hate to have godly young mothers beat themselves up because they couldn't get up an hour early and study

James chapter 2 in the Greek. Do you know what I'm saying? Is that right thinking or am I off base? No, I think that's right on and so perfect for the busy body moms, whatever it is.

Devotional study Bible, right? They can get their one minute in. No, I think you are right. And I think anytime we're trying to, and I don't mean we, but anytime somebody else is trying to impose some new rules, regulations, or as we would like to say, laws upon them, it's not really helpful.

We have enough that we are guilty of. We don't need to invent new ways to be guilty, right? Wow. That is so true.

And you know what? I would just say to busy moms out there, you already have a Bible, right? Whatever the translation might be, you have a

Bible and read your Bible. And for me, after I read my

Bible in the morning, and I'm not a busy mom, but I'm a busy person, but after I read the Bible in the morning when I'm getting ready and taking my vitamins and doing all these things that I have, my little routine,

I just have the Bible on. And regularly these days, Steve, I've been listening to the ESV Audible Bible, John 7, 8, 9, and 10 is what

I try to listen to over and over and over to see kind of the themes and what's going on and how chapters tie together.

And I don't think anybody needs to have a particular kind of Bible besides a study

Bible. And does it have the missing verses there? Well, yeah, actually the

ESV, when it reads it, they do read the missing verses. Interesting. Yeah, 8, 7, 53 to 8, whatever, 10 or something like that.

8, 11 or whatever. Yeah. All right, we're talking to Pastor Steve today, the Tuesday guy on No Compromise Radio.

You can always still write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com. And we're planning, I don't know if it'll happen or not, but we're planning to go to Israel February 24th through March 4th, 2021.

Maybe we'll get some cheap flights. At least we'll plan. If you need more information, go ahead and write us and we'll send you the information.

Steve, in the Christianity Today special advertising section, April 2020, page 23, we not only have the

Busy Moms Bible, but we also have the New Morning Mercies Bible.

So let me just read a little blurb and then you can respond. It's a daily gospel devotional, by the way.

This devotional by bestselling author, Paul David Tripp, offers daily encouragement through 365 gospel -centered meditations focused on encountering the living

God, giving you the good news that you need to trust in God's goodness, rely on His grace, and live for His glory day in and day out.

New Morning Mercies, a gospel devotional. Hmm. Morning by morning,

His mercies I see. Yeah. Is that a Cat Stevens song? No, although I just did.

I just did hear Cat Stevens a little while ago on the radio, Morning is Broken. And I was marveling to myself that that was once in our hymnals.

It was right next to Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Unitarians. Well, people still probably don't understand that one.

But, you know, having a song by Yusuf Islam, there was a great deal of irony there. But, I mean, it doesn't sound terrible.

It doesn't sound as bad to me as the busy mom's devotional Bible. But I could also see where that could be.

I mean, again, when something—I think a thematic devotional

Bible like that is always going to be problematic because it's not going to give you the full scope of the

Bible, right? All this wants to talk about is God's mercy. You know,

I think God's mercy is wonderful. Is that all he is? You know, do

I want to spend a full year focused only on that? I don't know.

I think I want to study more about God than just one attribute.

Well, Steve, I had never—I didn't even know that existed until I just read it to you today. I didn't know what

I was getting myself into. I didn't even know it was Paul David Tripp. My guess is it's a theologically sound work.

Whatever kind of issues I have with Paul Tripp, it usually is not his theological understanding of who

Jesus is. It's his classes. Or I thought you were going to say mustache or something like that.

No, it's more like how the ministry is run and some other things and charging for things. My guess is they're thinking that our default is law.

Our conscience is basically giving us law only. We kind of live in this pragmatic how -to

American world of individualism and get your to -do list done. And that it's good to remember the

Lord Jesus. My particular style, though, would not be read that kind of devotional.

It would be to get my mind in the Gospels and think about who Jesus is. I know Kim regularly in her morning devotions, she'll read through books, 365 -day devotionals, kind of like Spurgeon's morning and evening.

Except I think she is reading the John Newton one now. And to your point, Steve, it's not all just gospel stuff.

It's a mixture, right? There's a variety of things between who God is and then our response to him.

And so it's just not all gospel, gospel, gospel. But this devotional might really be good.

I don't know. Right. All right. Let's do another one. Pastor Steve here today.

No Compromise Radio. The Artesian Collection Bibles. N -I -V -N -R -S -V.

Exquisite. Pardon me? It must come with recipes. Whenever I think of artesian,

I'm thinking about artesian water. But we'll see what it says here. And it starts off with a pretty good description.

Exquisite from the inside out. The newest editions of the Artesian Collection Bible will delight you with gorgeous covers created with a layered alcohol ink painting technique.

Now available in both the NIV and NRSV, these journaling Bibles have thicker pages with lightly ruled wide margins for journaling, taking notes, or creating art.

Well, I'm looking for the sequel, which is the paint -by -numbers artesian.

I don't know. I think journaling, taking notes, all that stuff is fine.

I just think some of this is just a fad. What does the Bible mean to me? Again, so the more introspective thing.

I think it can be great. I mean, if you're writing down sermon notes in your Bible for the layperson, maybe you're writing down those notes so you can share them with somebody else, or maybe you're going to preach at the rest home, and suddenly you've got a quick little message in your

Bible scratched out or whatever. Great. I don't know the value, for example, of I read something.

How does that make me feel? I write it down so that I can look at it five years down the road and think,

I don't even know what that scribbled junk on my page is. What did

I write that for? I don't know. Well, Steve, I was very impressed, and I don't mean—I mean,

I was jolted. I guess that's a better word because I'm trying to think of artesian kind of words because this is talking about gorgeous and artesian and stuff.

I was jolted by Sinclair Ferguson when he described his interaction with a friend of his who liked to journal, and he was reading,

I think, through the book of Ephesians, and he said, as you're reading Ephesians and journaling your thoughts about the book, if I, Sinclair, pick up your journal, would

I learn more in the journal about who God is, the Lord Jesus Christ, or would

I learn more about you and your inner workings? Exactly. And if you do journal,

I don't have any problem with that, but it's not necessarily the best idea to just talk about who you are.

Is that your call waiting? Nope. This isn't me. Huh. That's weird. Okay. By the way, I look,

Steve, on the definition of artesian, a person skilled in applied art, a person or company that makes high -quality distinctive products in small quantities, or pertaining to artesian beer.

So this, the new one, the new artesian collection Bible, it has, you know, probably thicker pages, so if you spill hops on it, it's okay.

And then lastly, this one I can give a hearty thumbs up to, and I think it's the best thing that I've seen from Crossway, and something

I use every day, actually. ESV Scripture Journals, great tools for taking notes during a sermon, recording prayers, or creatively engaging with a text.

ESV Scripture Journals are made with thick journaling paper and have a blank page next to each page of Scripture, perfect for personal

Bible reading and reflection, available as individual volumes and complete sets.

Do you use those, Steve? No, I do not. I guess I've been so, like, non -journaling, you know,

I mean, because of my wanting to stay away from the subjective, you know, the negative side of what

Sinclair was talking about there, you know, and so I hadn't really thought about it the other way.

Yeah, I could see where that would be good, especially, like, you know, I've been studying through Isaiah, just kind of keeping in mind that I might need to, you know, preach one of these days.

Yeah, that's right. Well, what I do, Steve, is I have the Hebrews ESV Journal, and then in the morning

I just try to walk through the Greek of the passage I'm going to preach, and then with the journal, that ESV Journal that's talked about here,

I have on the left side the English, and on the right side it's just blank, and so I can write a lot more on that blank side than I would feel free to write in my

Bible, because they're just ideas, right? I'm not doodling. I'm not doing artesian creative, you know, drawings or anything, but I'm writing down thoughts.

Oh, here's a thought. Is this the main idea? What about this? Kind of an outline, and then

I can circle things in words, like in Hebrews 12, the word discipline is used, so maybe in my real

Bible I might not circle all those, but in the study journal Bible, I can.

So I really like those products, and I said to Justin Taylor, I said, Justin, you and I might have some differences on methodological approaches and philosophy of things in life, but I said that thing by Crossway, the

ESV Scripture Journals, is the best thing you guys have done. And he said to me, well, who would have thought, right, just the

Bible on one side and a blank side on the other? It works. Yeah, sometimes

I find myself just grabbing a legal pad of paper.

The problem with those is, well, I mean there are a lot of problems with them. One is I occasionally lose them, but another one is sometimes it's months between my messages, and so, you know, it's not always the handiest thing in that sense.

But, yeah, maybe I'll get one of those. It sounds like a good idea. Yeah, ESV Scripture Journals and New Morning Mercies, Busy Moms Bible, Artesian Collection Bibles.

I guess you can get all these on Amazon since you can't go to the local store. I don't know how they pick stores to stay open and how they decide to close stores,

Steve, but so far when I drive by stores, most of them seem open, except I drove past JCPenney's the other day in the mall, and it seemed like no one was in the parking lot, but that was happening before COVID too.

Well, it's not a great time to be in retail. I mean, I don't want to get, if we start talking about the economy and politics and all that, we'll just get really dragged down.

But it does strike me that it really is kind of odd the way some stores, some restaurants,

O 'Connor's is closed, some restaurants are open, so I don't understand all that either.

I know the government's bailing some businesses out, and it's just a very odd time.

I have no idea. If I didn't know the Lord Jesus, I'd probably be like everybody else and scrambling trying to figure out where my toilet paper was coming from.

Well, I can attest to the fact there's still no toilet paper in the grocery store that I went to today, because I just thought

I might as well wander over there just to see. I would never imagine in America we would see these depleted shelves, but that's the way it works.

I don't know, Steve, whether to, on some days rather, I believe, well, you know what?

This is overblown. Look at the flu. Look what it's done. Look at these bell curves. What's happening?

How many cases? We don't have as many people in ICU as they had predicted on this particular day in April 3rd.

And then on the other side, we know of people at the church whose sister -in -laws have died and other things from this.

And therefore I kind of alt tab between the two. But like you said, we're thankful that we know who's in charge and we can now have a practical application of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

Well, I mean, I just look around there are just a lot of hopeless, and I don't mean hopeless as in these people are useless or anything like that.

Just hopeless people, people who are scared and just, you know, I mean, if there's ever been a time when, you know, we need to figure out how to get the gospel to people, it's right now.

Amen. Well, it's 24 minutes into the show. That means we have 30 seconds left. Pastor Steve is back on No Compromise Radio for Tuesdays, and I hope we'll be able to keep doing this,

I guess, through April and maybe through May, maybe through June. I don't know what's going to happen in the fall. We probably have to redo all this again when the flu season is back, but we'll just see what happens.

Pastor Steve, thanks for being on the radio. I think they can get ahold of you, the Tuesday guy, at NoCompromiseRadio .com

if they want to email. If you can, let's stick around for another half hour, and we'll record another show. Okay.

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.