Preaching to Pirates

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.

Sabbatical, Coffee, and a Taco Bell Lawsuit

My name's Mike Abendroth, and Steve is still on sabbatical. So if you want to know where the Tuesday guy is on Saturdays, I think he's sleeping. You know what we require here at Bethlehem Bible Church when the pastor goes on sabbatical?

I hope to go on one next year. They need to do some project. They don't have to work full-time because they need to have rest, but part of the rest is just away from the daily interaction with all kinds of issues that swirl around the local church.

And then you can write and get something done. He is writing, and so let's see if his writing is as witty as his talking on Tuesdays. Today I have a variety of things that are sitting here in front of me, including my Peet's Coffee, cheers to Peet's, which had a five-hour energy right now.

Does that really give you five hours of energy? I have in front of me a newspaper clipping. It's fairly yellowed, so I don't know how old this is, so I can't be held accountable for its currentness. Is that a right word, Ted?

Ted never emails anymore. A Hindu man, Mukesh K. Ra, filed a lawsuit in Ventura, California in January against Taco Bell. I think I told you the last time I ate at Taco Bell, I threw up, so I haven't eaten at Taco Bell since.

That was three years ago. For causing him to do the equivalent of eating his ancestors, said his lawyer. By negligently substituting a beef burrito for a bean burrito. So he must have ordered a bean burrito because he's Hindu and he didn't want to eat beef, but he got a beef burrito and he ate it.

Now the question to me that I have initially is, did he eat the whole thing, right? You ever buy something from the store, it's no good, so you think, well, I have to eat 80 of it so I can get a little extra before I take it back to get something new.

Is that the deal? Not that I'd ever do that or anything. Raj thus required medical attention. He was forced to miss work and will have to travel to India for purification. Taco Bell offered to calm the anguish, Ra, by exchanging the beef burrito for a bean one, but according to Ra, they refused to refund him the price difference between the two.

It just shows you. What's the point? We try to have theological application on No Compromise Radio. Here's the point. Theology leads to methodology. Bean burritos. You know what? I think we could have solved this problem very quickly.

It wasn't really cow. It was a horse. Ba-dum-bum-bum. Okay, what else? Why are we called No Compromise Radio? Well, because we don't like to compromise. The problem is we do. We just don't want to.

I do. You do. We all compromise. That's why we need to all look to the one who never compromises. That's why the star, hopefully, of No Compromise Radio is the one, the hero, the captain, the author, the pioneer, the first, the last, Christ Jesus, never compromised.

Think about all the times he could have given in, and if you think of Luther's paradigm, how often he was tempted, how often other people pushed him to be tempted to go for glory before the cross. That is a common temptation even for people today.

There's a cross that comes before the crown, suffering, then glory. That is, like the paradigm, theology leads to methodology, which leads to doxology. If your doxology's messed up, go back to theology.

If your methodology's messed up, go back to your theology, because ideas, as Richard Weaver says, have consequences. That's why repentance is to change your mind. Repentance is no more than that. It means to change your mind.

But if you're going to go Dallas on me, or non-lordship or anti-lordship, I would say to you that when you change your mind, everything else changes, because what you think determines what you'll do.

That's why so much of the Bible talks about thinking. That's why when you think about the renewing of your mind in 1 and 2 verses of Romans 12, thinking, doing, feeling, thinking, doing, praising. So our particular paradigm for here, it is, well, I could give you another one, revelation response.

When God reveals himself in nature, you respond with praise and thanks, Romans 1. That's what the response should be. When God reveals himself in the Word, you respond with praise and thanks and a desire to honor him through obedience driven by the Spirit of God, et cetera.

So we have no-compromise radio for the fact that we would like to push a few of your theological buttons. I try to do a radio show that I think is interesting. You know what? Some of them probably aren't.

We've done over a thousand shows. We probably have some real zingers in there that aren't so good, and maybe there are a have been helpful. So nine out of ten emails we get are good emails, encouraging, positive.

Because if you sent me too many bad emails, I might be broken and wounded. Many people struggle with assurance of salvation. Some people should actually struggle. If you're not a Christian, you should struggle with the assurance of your salvation.

Sadly, some people who aren't Christians don't struggle. They think they have an assurance, but that is faulty. It's based on wrong view of the cross. It's based on a works righteousness system that says, I've been baptized, therefore I'm good with God, I'm catechized, I have a bunch of sacraments, I take the Lord's Supper, I'm a church member.

The list goes on. But real Christians, they struggle with assurance as well. You can read 1 John 1 -5, and that would help you. I like to read Galatians, because Galatians teaches me and reminds me that it is Christ's work plus nothing for salvation.

It's not Christ's works plus my feelings, am I feeling saved today or not feeling saved? No, I just have to trust fully that I believe what God says about the Son's atoning work at Calvary, and how if you look to Him, you will live, and that Jesus is a live Savior, a living Savior, raised from the dead, easy for me to say.

And Spurgeon is helpful because so many people who don't have assurance, let's say there's a sin in their life or something that's going on and they're not in the Word, and so the assurance feeling, subjective barometer, is low.

And so they want that back because, frankly, we know that's not a good feeling. When you struggle with assurance, it's not a good feeling. And you know what? It's not supposed to be. That is also the grace of God, the goodness of God, the generosity of God, that when you put kerosene in your gas tank, it just doesn't seem to run as well.

It's trying to tell you something. I'm a road biker, cyclist, and I was just reading Bicycling Magazine the other day, and it said if your bike is making some noise, it's trying to tell you something.

In other words, don't ignore the noise. If you have a sound, a squeaking, a creaking, a tweaking, I don't know another word that I could use there, do something about it. Check it out. Similarly, when you don't feel like you're saved and you don't have assurance, then do something about it.

Look back to the cross and Christ's work. Focus your eyes on Jesus and what He did and who He is and not how you're trying to measure up to this, that, or the other, comparing yourself to someone else.

Confess your sins, repent, do the things that God has prescribed in His Word as a response to Christ's death when you're struggling with sin, and then God will grant you the fruit of assurance. So, it's a good thing when you—it doesn't feel good, but it's used for a good thing when you don't feel like you're saved.

So, when people aren't saved, they want—when they don't feel saved, they want to feel saved and I don't blame them. So here's what Spurgeon said, I looked to the Lord—and he's talking about assurance here, trusting in Jesus alone—I looked to the Lord, and the dove of peace flew into my breast.

I looked at the dove, and it flew away. Isn't that interesting? Here's what Spurgeon is saying. When you hanker after, have to have, look to, strive for the subjective feeling of biblical assurance, it's hard to get.

The dove of assurance flies away. But when you look to the Lord and His Word and focus on Christ—read Galatians, read John, read Luke, read something that puts your eyes on who Jesus is—then the dove of assurance flies back and sits on your shoulder.

Good words of advice for those of you who are struggling with assurance. This book that I have here, I don't even know who wrote it, I just Xeroxed that page from Spurgeon, but I'll read this anonymous author.

Can you see Spurgeon's point? Only while we are looking to Christ in the simplicity of a childlike trust do we have peace. As soon, however, as we start looking at our peace, testing ourselves with a kind of morbid introspection and wondering whether we are this or whether we are that, we lose peace, the dove flies away.

This is the blessed assurance, as the hymn says, Jesus is mine. Everything is in the Lord Jesus. It is all in what He has done by the bearing away of your sin and in giving to you His own righteousness so that you are accepted by God on the account of all that He is.

Good words of advice for those who struggle with assurance. Look to the Lord. Don't look to your lack of assurance and try to run after that. Stop running for assurance and run to Christ through the Word.

Evangelizing Pirates with Law, Judgment, and the Gospel

Well, what else do we have here on No Compromise Radio today? It has, I have a book in front of me, it's called The General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious. And then you think, since this is a Bible show, be talking about Barabbas, right?

No of the Most Notorious Pirates. Captain Charles Johnson wrote the book with an introduction and commentary by David Cordingly. Charles Johnson. You say, why would I have such a thing? Why would No Compromise talk about this?

Well, I want to read something to you from the life of Major Bonnet, B-O-N-N-E-T. And I find it fascinating because in our culture, I'd call our culture a post-evangelical culture. I wouldn't call it post-modern, it's post-evangelical, and of course, whether it's the gay marriage issue, whether it's who believes in supernatural events, this is just where we are.

And so I find this account fascinating. The Lord Chief Justice's speech upon the pronouncing sentence of Major Steed Bonnet. So we have a captain who has been sentenced, and then we have the Lord Chief Justice's speech pronouncing such, or said, sentence.

Major Steed Bonnet, you stand here convicted upon two indictments of piracy. So the pirate has been caught. And now here is the reading. One by the verdict of the jury and the other by your own confession.

Although you were indicted, but for two facts, yet you know that it is your trial. In your trial, it was fully proven, even by an unwilling witness, that you practically took and rifled no less than 13 vessels since you sailed from North Carolina.

Interesting. So that you might have been indicted and convicted of 11 more acts of piracy since you took the benefit of the King's act of grace and pretended to leave that wicked course of life. Not to mention the many acts of piracy you committed before, for which, if your pardon from man was never so authentic, yet you must expect to answer for them before God.

You know that the crimes you have committed are evil in themselves and contrary to the Light, capital L, and Law, capital L, of nature, as well as the capital L Law of God, by which you are commanded that you shall not steal.

Exodus 20, and the Apostle St. Paul expressly affirms that thieves shall not inherit the kingdom of God, 1 Corinthians 6, 10. But to theft you have added a greater sin, which is murder. How many you may have killed of those that resisted you in committing your former piracies, I know not.

But this we all know, that besides the wounded, you killed no less than 18 persons out of those that were sent by lawful authority to suppress you. So they sent people to stop them, him. And put a stop to those repines that you daily acted.

And however you may fancy that that was killing men fairly in open fight, yet this we know, that the power of the sword not being committed into your hands by any lawful authority, you were not empowered to use any force or fight anyone, and therefore those persons that fell in that action in doing their duty to king and country were murdered, and their blood now cries out for vengeance and justice against you.

For it is the voice of nature confirmed by the law of God, that whosoever sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed, Genesis 9, 6. So what's my point here as I read this indictment of a pirate, I just want you to see how Bible-oriented this society was, so you realize how Bible-oriented we are not today.

Therefore when you do your evangelism, then you'll go straight to God as Creator, Judge, then Savior instead of truncating it and saying Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. And consider that death is not the only punishment due to murderers.

For they are threatened to have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death, Revelation 21, 8, see 22, 15 as well. Words which carry that terror with them, that considering your circumstances and your guilt, surely the sound of them must make you tremble, for who can dwell with everlasting burnings?

Chapter 33, 14. Now, don't you find this fascinating when you watch something about a death row execution? Someone is gassed, someone is hung by the neck until dead, someone is put in the shock chair, what do they call that, electric chair.

What do people say? Well, they usually have a priest that comes over, reads the last rites, maybe they have an evangelical pastor that comes over, but we don't usually talk like this. This is for a pirate.

And the testimony of your conscience must convince you of the great and many evils you have committed, by which you have highly offended God and provoked most justly His wrath and indignation against you.

So I suppose I need not tell you that the only way of obtaining pardon and remission of your sins from God is by a true and unfeigned repentance and faith in Christ, by whose meritorious death and passion you can only hope for salvation.

See, you can't even earn it, you can't do anything about it, but you can hope for it. You being a gentleman that have had the advantage of a liberal education and being generally esteemed a man of letters, I believe it will be needless for me to explain to you the nature of repentance and faith in Christ.

They be so fully and so often mentioned in the Scriptures that you cannot but know them. This is the chief justice speech pronouncing the death sentence to a pirate. Therefore, perhaps for that reason, it might be thought by some improper for me to have said so much to you, as I have already on this occasion, neither should I have done it, but that the considering of your course of your life and actions, I have just reason to fear that the principles of religion that have been instilled into you by your education have been at least corrupted, if not entirely defaced by the skepticism and the infidelity of this wicked age, and that time and that what time you'd allow for study was rather applied to polite literature and the vain philosophy of the times than a serious search after the law and will of God as revealed unto us in the holy Scriptures.

You didn't study the Bible like you should have, for had your delight been in the law of the Lord and that you had been meditating on it day and night, Psalms 1 and 2, you would have then found that God's word was a lamp unto your feet and light to your path, Psalm 119, 105, and that you would account all other knowledge but loss in comparison of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, Philippians 3 .8, it actually has a typo, it says Philistines 3 .8, but it's Philippians 3 .8, who to them that are called is the power of God and the wisdom of God, 1 Corinthians 1 .24, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world, chapter 2, verse 7.

You would have esteemed the Scripture as the great charter of heaven and which delivered to us not only the most perfect laws and rules of life, but also discovered to us the acts of pardon from God wherein they have offended those righteous laws.

For in them only is to be found the great mystery of fallen man's redemption which the angels desire to look into, 1 Peter 1. And they would have taught you that sin is the debasing of human nature as being a derivation from that purity, rectitude, and holiness in which God created us, and that virtue and religion and walking by the laws of God were altogether preferable to the ways of sin and Satan, for that the ways of virtue are ways of pleasantness, and all their paths are peace, Proverbs 3.

Can you imagine such a letter? It just goes on. But you could not learn from God's word by reason of your carelessly or but superficially considering the same. I hope the course of His providence and the present afflictions that He hath laid upon you hath now convinced you of the same.

For however in your seeming prosperity you might make a mock of your sins, yet now you see that God's hand hath reached you and brought you to public justice. I hope your present unhappy circumstances hath made you seriously reflect upon your past actions and course of life, and that you are now sensible of the greatness of your sins, and that you find the burden of them is intolerable, and that therefore, being thus laboring and heavily laden with sin, Matthew 11, you will esteem that you have the most valuable knowledge that can show you how you can be reconciled to that supreme God that you have so highly offended, and that you can revel to Him who is not only most powerful advocate with the Father for you, 1 John 2, but also has paid the debt that is due for your sins by His own death upon the cross for you, and thereby made full satisfaction for the justice of God.

And this is to be found nowhere but in God's word, which discovers to us that the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world, which is Christ the Son of God. For this know, and be assured, that there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, only by the name of the Lord Jesus.

Can you imagine to a pirate? But then consider how He invites all sinners to come unto Him, and He will give them rest. For He assures us that He came to seek and save that which was lost, and He hath promised that if He cometh unto Him, He will be no wise cast out.

And then He talks a little bit more about repentance, and then He says at the very end,. But I shall not pretend to give you any particular directions as to the nature of repentance. I consider that I speak to a person whose offenses have proceeded not so much from his not knowing as his sliding and neglecting his duty.

Neither it is proper for me to give any advice out of the way of my own profession. You may have that better delivered to you by those who have made divinity their particular study, and who by their knowledge as well as office as being ambassadors of Christ are best qualified to give you instructions therein.

In other words, I don't really know that much about the Bible. There are other people that know more about the Bible, the pastors, the divines. I only heartily wish that what in compassion to your soul I have now said to you upon this sad and solemn occasion by exhorting you in general to faith and repentance may have that due effect upon you, and thereby you may become a true penitent.

Therefore, having now discharged my duty to you as a Christian, by giving you the best counsel I can with respect to the salvation of your soul, I must now do my office as a judge. The sentence that the law hath appointed to pass upon you for your offenses, and which this court doth therefore award is, that you, the said steed bonnet, shall go from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, where you shall be hanged by the neck till you are dead.

And the God of infinite mercy be merciful to your soul. Then at the very bottom of the page in this book entitled General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates, Captain Charles Johnson, at the bottom of page 79, it has a picture, drawing, sketch, engraving of steed bonnet hung over a mast dead.

And the God of infinite mercy be merciful to your soul. If you're listening to this today and you're not a believer, the same is to be said of you. And you're just as bad as a pirate. You just know how to make your sins a little more sophisticated.

I'm so glad we have a Savior, Jesus Christ, who seeks and saves all kinds of sinners, including steed bonnet.

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.