Theology Quiz (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromised Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we're all about what? Law, gospel, duplex, gratia, Christ-centered preaching, and the Tuesday Guy. Welcome, Steve Kupley, into the newfangled studio.

Can I talk now?

Yes, you can. All right. Free, free at last. What's new with you? Effectively, not much, but, you know, we're just getting along.

Studio Banter and the Show Setup

Well, in the old days, Steve, every show was 24 minutes and 30 seconds, every meaning 99%. And there's a little digital recorder right here that I've got at home now. I'll make a little home studio. Now, to see the show length, I have to look at that little digital thing over there.

So is there going to be a shrine at home to the little, you know, the little recorder? You know, like, is it going to make the NoCo Museum?

You know what? I should save it because maybe my grandchildren could sell it as an artifact. Probably not, but... Now, I often ask, Steve, what you're doing on Sunday mornings as you teach Sunday school here.

You finished up a sermon, not a sermon series, but a series on husbands loving your wives. And now you're into what? The Trinity... What not to believe and what to believe.

Learning the Trinity by Negation

Yeah, we're doing the book by... Matthew Barrett. Yeah. And see, I want to say Barnett, and I'm going, I know it's not Barnett. So yeah,.

Matthew Barrett. Yeah. Was there a basketball player named Barnett? Connie Hawkins Barnett?

I don't know. I mean, the sad thing is I was just listening to Dr. Barrett yesterday. I was listening to somebody else about the Trinity. Who was the other guy? Another writer. Glenn Buttner.

Yes, that was it. Yeah. All right. Good. Was it good? Yeah, it was good. I think we want to promote Credo Podcast here.

Yeah, it was very good. And, you know, I think my big takeaway was just the idea of negation, you know, that we can talk about the Trinity. We can help define it by talking about what it's not. So I found that helpful.

Kind of like even with the doctrine of election, unconditional election, it's not this, it's not that, it's not the other.

Right. So it helps, it narrows it down by, you know...

Yeah, but Steve, the Trinity is not very practical. I need to know what to do.

Well, it is practical in a number of respects. I mean, staying away from the heresy in the Trinity is very practical. And, you know what? Here's a funny thing.

How not to be a heretic. You mean that's practical?

Witnessing to Jehovah's Witnesses and the Danger of Proof-Texting

Yeah. Here was a funny thing. I had a phone call the other day, you know, you get so many spam phone calls. And so I pick it up and I'm talking to this guy and he basically says, you know, are you interested in spiritual things?

I don't remember what his opening was, something like that. And so I said, yeah. And he goes, really? And so then he started talking and I go, oh, yeah. Jehovah Witnesses are doing this now. And so I'm thinking it's probably a Jehovah Witness.

And, you know, the intro pretty much led me to that. And then he said, he said something like, well, you know, let's go to Colossians 1 15. And I thought to myself, well, a Jehovah Witness wouldn't do that, would they?

And so he says, you know, well, what does it say? And, you know, do you have a Bible there? And so I read it and, you know, and he goes, well, see, see there, it says that Jesus is the firstborn. Isn't that what it says?

Firstborn of all creation. Yeah. And so I'm like, okay, but do you know what the Greek word is? You know, and prototokos. And, you know, I started talking to him about that and he goes, well, firstborn, you know, and I'm like, okay, well,.

You obviously did. So he sounds like a biblicist. Yeah. It's a good show right there. RJW's.

The answer is yes. And I said the problem, and I basically accused him of that in a nicer way. I said, the problem is you're going to try to proof text me into a corner because you can't handle the system, a systematized Bible, you know, looking at it as a whole.

And so I gave him the gospel a couple of times and then got off the phone. Well, good for you. They used to go.

Door to door. Now they call people up. Next thing you know, they'll be DMing me on Twitter. No, thanks. Too easy to block. So Steve, today we're going to continue our redemption, reconciliation, propitiation, atonement quiz.

Reconciliation as Restored Relationship with God

Okay. All right. So this was a quiz that I gave to the men at Bethlehem Bible Church. I didn't give it to all men, although we probably should.

Be membership requirement. Universal, a universal thing, you know, give it to everybody.

No, we don't say universal with atonement. Okay. Here's the offer.

Here's my question, though. Isn't BBC just kind of like a college? You know,.

It's not really like a church. Yeah, it's like seminary, right? Yeah.

It's just really academic and it's not very practical at all.

One of the things that I love the most about our church is the saints that regularly move other people's furniture when they move from one place to another. 10, 15, 25 people show up, a bunch of kids, and they move people from one place to the next.

Some people have been moved three or four times. And I think if that's not love, I don't know what love is. I thought they.

Just sit around talking about the Trinity all day. While they're moving furniture.

They do. That indeed. So, I gave the quiz to the men in the preaching class because I want them to just be able to instantaneously know these. Random access memory, they don't have to wonder, hmm, what is redemption?

So, last time, last show, we looked at justification, sanctification, and redemption, and I would read some of their answers anonymously. We're not going to write their names. We're not going to list their names.

Although one guy told me, I heard you read my answer on NoCo and I need to study more. So, I think we're up to number four today, reconciliation. So, preaching discipleship quiz number one, reconciliation.

Here's what this man said, Steve, what do you think? Legal reconciliation of the human estranged by sin. Now, first of all, are you supposed to use the word that you're trying to define in your definition?

Negative.

Negative. Be a negative ghostwriter.

So, estranged by sin. Yeah. Are humans estranged by sin? Yes. Yes, they are.

Okay. And so... From the womb. So, do I... But, you know, you ought to say who were reconciled to, you know, and I'm just like, see, if he just put like 2 Corinthians 5, 21 there, I'd go,.

Hey, that's a pretty good answer. Yeah, because it could be short answers. Here's one, reconciliation, the process of being restored in right relationship. Process. Maybe he's thinking about husbands and wives being reconciled over time, but I would think...

Theological term, yeah, I wouldn't use that. It's not a process.

It's a done deal. The action of making opposing parties to be at peace with one another, when before there was only conflict.

Okay, I like that. I mean... God-centered. Yeah. Yeah, it's not bad. It's the best one so far, what do you think? I mean, I'd give that an eight and a half, maybe.

All right. What's missing, do you think? What would you like to add?

I would like to hear Christ and, you know, sin and God.

And yet you still give it an eight and a half. Well, because, you know, out of 20...

No, because I see where the arc of the answer is going and, you know, I like the arc.

And by the way, they only had about 10 minutes.

Besides that, very gracious as a greater.

Reconciliation from this man here on Preaching to Salvation Quiz. Before salvation was an enemy of God, disconnected, separated, and being justified by Christ's blood and saving us, we are brought back into a right relationship with God through Christ's death and resurrection.

So, brought back into right relationship with God is very good. He did talk about disconnected, separated, and then it said through Christ's death and resurrection. So, there's...

Yeah, I mean, that's in the high nines, so that's pretty good.

We are reconciled to God by His Son's sacrifice and turned from enemies and haters of God to children returning home a la prodigal son.

I mean, that's good. I mean, even kind of, you know, maybe goes a little bit beyond reconciliation to adoption, you know, but yeah, it's good.

We hear about reconciliation a lot with marriages, as we just talked about a second ago, and they were estranged from one another and they've been reconciled. Probably a mediator helped them, probably a counselor or something like that.

Yeah, that would be a good thing to bring into it, yeah. Now, here's my question.

Wesley wrote a song, Our God is Reconciled. Is God reconciled to us? Does He need reconciliation, or are we reconciled to God? Are we in the one... We are the ones needing reconciliation.

That's a good question because, you know, well, let's put it this way. Without the propitiation of sin, are we right with God? You know, and so I think there is a certain sense in which He has to be reconciled with us.

I mean, you know what I mean? Not that He's moved either way, but that as long as that sin remains between us, then I don't know how we could be right with Him and how He could be right with us. I probably would say it this way, Steve.

A holy God, sinful people. There is estrangement. There is a separation. Something needs to be gapped. They need to be brought together again and restored. And I think since man is the one who moved a la Adam's sin and estranged himself, he's the one that needs to be brought back into right relationship to God through Christ, the last Adam.

God, we need to be reconciled with God, but God Himself doesn't need reconciliation.

Well, I guess I understand what you're saying. I guess what I'm looking at it is this way. Before Christ reconciles us to God, is He our friend? And see, that's kind of my, that's my puzzlement here.

Well, you know what you do if you don't want to, if you don't really know the answer, we're not too sure, or, you know, this is not the pactum. We don't research things for 20 hours.

But I mean, two parties who are at enmity, right? So, it's not like God's not at enmity with us, and He's right to be at enmity with us. We're wrong, right? And so, from that sense, I get what you're saying.

But I think, yeah, I think He does.

So, you could sing the song, Our God is Reconciled. Yeah, I can sing that. All right. Well, I like it that you even say enmity, because I grew up in Nebraska, and I went to public school. So, I would often say enmity.

Why would I do that? I don't know. But I know one of your kids who picked up that little habit, too. Yeah. Because when you said that, I was like, oh, yeah, I can hear her saying that.

I can't believe it. I mean, if I were to providentially put together a preacher, I would definitely not have him grow up in Nebraska public school. What was the Lord thinking? By the way, it just shows you that God can, you know, use crooked sticks to shoot straightly with.

I would have had my mother be Jewish and speak Hebrew at home. I would have had my father speak Greek at home. I would have had them send me on a one-year internship to Shepherd Sheep, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And I would have gone to a school that only taught in Latin. Yeah.

But here I went to public school and, hey, words of God can even come through donkeys, can't they? We didn't even learn English. We learned Nebraskan. All right. There are more answers for more students, but let's go to the next one.

Propitiation, Wrath, and the Mercy Seat

Number five, preaching discipleship quiz, propitiation. Now, you made reference to that earlier. Here's a few, and then you can wax eloquently as you prefer, as you like. Jesus propitiates on our behalf to the Father.

Now, that's the third time I've seen a definitional word of the definition in the definitional description.

To quote one of my old, you know, profs in seminary, reject, reject.

Uh-huh. Now, remember, dear listeners, if you're going to define something, you're supposed to not use the word that you're trying to define in your definition. Yes.

Well, you just used the word definition to define definition, but yes, I get it.

All right. Let's look at another one. The act of Christ on our behalf to take our sins to the cross and His righteousness put on us to be viewed by God. He's confusing justification with propitiation.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I mean, I guess because, you know, we live in that world, but I listen to that and I'm like, have we not preached on propitiation lately? Maybe that's a, you know...

Well, what I did this last Sunday when we met, since so many people messed up on the definition of redemption, we went over it and over and over. So, I wanted to remind them what it actually was. So, you like catechized them.

It did. This refers to the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. Something of our sin, we needed a substitute for us.

It looks like because, maybe? Maybe because.

I'm looking for a word here, Steve, and that word is wrath. That will help us. When you think of propitiation... Satisfy the wrath. Uh-huh. We need to think about wrath. We're looking for the word that, of course, the liberals hate.

Remember the big C .F. Muell controversy and other liberals where they translated the Greek word for propitiation, they translated it expiation. Oh, yeah. Right? So, expiation means to forgive your sins, the sins go away.

Propitiation, they don't want that because that means God is angry.

God has wrath. But see, even that word wrath, which you rightly said, yeah, we shouldn't talk about that. You know, going back to reconciliation, if God's wrathful, right? And I think we both need to be reconciled.

Steve sometimes doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't let things go.

He's a dog with a bone, that guy. Should have been a homicide detective. Very funny. Yeah, all the homicide detectives out there listening are going, yeah, Cooley, Cooley could have cut it for one day out in the field.

Okay. This one's going to be good, I think. Mercy Seat.

That's the first thing this man wrote. Okay. Mercy Seat. Christ, as our substitute, died in our place. The wrath of God was satisfied by Christ's blood in our place. God's justice satisfied completely by Christ dying in our place so we don't suffer.

Satisfied wrath. I like that. I do too. Yeah. That was good. One of the things that I think helps when you think of propitiation, think of the Mercy Seat, because that's right where this comes from. It's an Old Testament idea where you have the Ark of the Covenant and inside the Ark of the Covenant, sometimes there are a few things, sometimes there's just one thing, and that was the Ten Commandments.

God sees the Ten Commandments broken by His people, the wages of sin is death, something has to die. On top of the box is something called the Mercy Seat. There's a sacrificial blood there, somebody did die in our place.

So God's wrath is, to use Bridges' language, exhausted, satiated. Uh-huh. It sounds like we're filming, we're recording in a mall.

Welcome to the Solomon Pond Mall. Pastor Mike, Pastor Steve, just walking by the shoe factory.

The good news is we have new equipment. The bad news is it's really good. It picks all this stuff up. It picks up everything. It's okay. We don't care. Sometimes my favorite show is like on the White Horse Inn.

It was when Shane Rosenthal, who used to be on the show, would walk around and interview people, remember, at Christian booksellers, and they didn't know what wrath was.

I just wonder if people are going to start throwing things at us now. That, you know, sounds like we're in a crowd. But that was really a good one. That's the best one so far.

Yeah, I would say so, yeah. Assuaged, exhausted, God's wrath, Mercy Seat. The legal offering of the slain lamb in place of the simul justus et peccator saint. There's no salvation without the shedding of blood.

Nope. Maybe I mean, it's good.

I like simul justus et peccator, simultaneously just and sinful, but this is God's action. Steve, I know you know this, but just to tell our listeners, in almost every other religion, maybe, in fact, in every religion, people in the religion have to assuage or make propitiation under their God.

They have to do it. They offer fruit. You see the fruit in the Chinese restaurant with a little cat God. Virgins are given to the fire, babies given to Molech, so they receive more rain and fertility.

They, the people, make propitiation. Somebody's thrown into the volcano. Yeah. But here, and only here, God propitiates. God is the one. I'm thankful for that. Can you imagine if you had to assuage your own, assuage God's wrath on your own?

What could you give God in light of your sins to make up for those sins? Let me think. Eternity in hell. I won't do it again? Yeah, no, that wouldn't work. I think eternity in hell. I'm sorry? Eternity in hell.

I've done more good things than bad things. Yeah, the scales of justice. I've been baptized. That's good. I'm nice to my grandma. I stole Snickers bars when I was a kid, and so therefore I went and bought the 7-Eleven,.

All the Snicker bars. I thought you were going to say, so I bought the 7-Eleven.

I think some movie star just did that. He said he stole Snicker bars regularly, so he went and bought a bunch and gave the money back to the person. Would that assuage God's wrath? No. I think it'd be a good thing to do.

Yeah. But no wrath assuaged. Who would be able to assuage God's wrath? What kind of human would be able to do that?

I mean, it's almost, you know, it'd have to be the spotless son of God, you know? Amen.

All right, one more. Jesus propitiates on our behalf to the Father.

Faith Alone as the Non-Meritorious Instrument

Why do we keep... How can you... I mean, I want to give, you know, to everybody, if you did it twice on your quiz, I would give you an F plus, and they'd go, why did you give me an F plus? Because you failed, but you tried.

You know, I mean, that's just, you can't do that. You cannot define...

I mean, try that in school. You can't do it. Only God knows the answer to this question. Yeah, you can't do that either. All right. Well, here's the next one. Faith. Faith. Define faith. Faith. Uh-huh.

Okay. So, what I was after here, Steve, just to let you know, before we read the results, I wanted them to avoid things that were in the sanctification category. The living faith, loving faith, obedient faith, sacrificing faith, surrendering faith.

I wanted them not to do that.

The once for all delivered faith. Okay. So, it could be either, right?

Faith is objective. The once delivered faith, this is the Christian doctrine. I would have accepted that. Or what I was really looking for, authorial intent, is when we receive the benefits of Christ, what do we call that reception?

Right? So... A good catch.

A sweet avocado dropping from the tree.

The fruit just dropped right on our lap. That's inside scoop from 2 Peter chapter 1. We have obtained a faith. All right, let's see. Faith is the positive response sinners have when hearing the gospel.

The faith is given by God, making it a saving faith, and this faith endures.

Okay. I mean, you know, I'm going to give that a pretty solid eight.

Nothing about knowledge is set in trust, though. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, well, I didn't give it a 10.

This guy, he printed his out and stapled it. Uh-oh. We don't do the staple around here. Yeah, I don't know about that. The instrument by which we lay hold of Christ in his righteousness. That adds a good element to it.

Instrumental. Yeah, that's good. So what if they said the non-meritorious instrumental? Way better. Okay, all right. Faith, trust, hope, and conviction of things unseen. Trust, hope, and conviction. That was kind of...

So close. That was a little Hebrews 11 put in there. That's not bad. Intellectual assent to gospel truth and the knowledge of the gospel and trust in Jesus. Intellect, knowledge. Yeah, put it all backwards, but yeah.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, because it's hard to make a cat out of that, K-A-T. Yeah. Uh-huh. Intellectual assent to the gospel. That actually is wrong. It would be intellectual knowledge and assent and trust.

Yeah. Because assent is agreement, and you can't... Yeah, it's an intellectual agreement, but it says the same thing twice. I know, I agree, I trust.

But the words are all there, and so we're going to call that a 9 .5 salad.

Faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's biblical. A reasoned trust in the Lord's promises and true word. Well, that's... You know what I would say to that?

How reasonable do you have to be? Well, I thought it said reasoned. A reason. How reasoned? How much reason goes into that? I think he's trying to... Say knowledge and assent. Yeah, just kind of mash them together.

Okay, not bad. We have faith in an object that is true. Use the word, though, again. I mean, as soon as you do that...

Right, you can just say trust. As soon as you do that, I'm just kind of... I'm circling the word in red and giving you back your paper.

Rest in knowing His work has done what is necessary to execute our freedom.

Didn't you tell the men, you know, like one of my seminary profs said, he looked at us, you know, after we all bombed his first exam, and he looked at us, he said, men, just for your knowledge, this is a graduate school.

Well, no, these are lay people at the church. And to their credit, I just told them there was going to be a quiz about the work of Christ. Okay. That's all I told them.

So they had to study that on their own. So you didn't look at them and just give them that stern kind of men.

When I was taking the doctoral class at Southern Seminary, and Daniel Block was the professor, somebody got caught cheating. And our group was, I don't know, our cohort with a couple spillovers, eight people maybe in that room, 10 people.

He asked us to shut off all our recording devices and laid in the entire class. I felt like I was cheating. I didn't cheat. I wasn't the one. It was another guy that got kicked out. But this is a doctoral level class.

And quit whining about how much work you have to do and everything else. It was intense.

But I didn't do that to these guys. And see, if he was wise, the cheating student would have raised his hand and said, but I paid a lot of money for this.

Well, now they can just go to Jarvis Williams class and learn a little bit about critical race theory. Yikes. Wow. Listen to the crowd. The crowd goes wild. We are so dumb. I'm so dumb. All right. A little bit more.

Faith is rest in Jesus Christ. We simply rest in the work of God. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. You look at some catechisms and they'll say receiving, accepting, resting. Believing.

Believing. Receiving, believing, achieving. Oh, wait.

I didn't give him some trick, you know, assurance is the essence of faith or something. Just what's faith? Shouldn't men who are learning to preach know what faith is? Steve, why do you think so many people want to add to saving faith, right?

There's a lot of folks out there that maybe are slacking and we want to jam some stuff in. Why can't we just keep saying it's knowledge, assent, and trust? It's belief. It's non-meritorious.

Why can't we just keep saying that? Because, you know, for some of us, it doesn't satisfy us. Like Pastor Bob used to say, we're worksy people and we can't stand the idea. Even though we profess it, we believe it, we embrace it.

But when it comes right down to just saying faith alone, we go, wait a minute, because we know faith's not alone, therefore, we want to add works to it. So, I just think it's kind of reflexive. Wasn't that one of the solas?

Sola fide. Yep, yep. But, you know, it's like sola fide asterisk, you know, so, because it just doesn't sound, it doesn't sound profound enough. It doesn't sound strong enough.

Interesting in history, those Reformers who taught sola fide, they knew that the opposite was bad and was Romish, right? It was faith plus all these other things. But now, so many people, probably good, wonderful, kind, humble people who write evangelical books, they're making the same error.

It's maybe not of the same degree, but it's the same error they're making because they need to have final justification, you know, without holiness, there's no heaven and all these other things doing, making something else besides faith the non-meritorious instrument.

Well, can't you see, Mike, that if you just make it simple faith, that people are just going to live however they want to, and they think they're just going to saunter into heaven? Oh, no, no, my friend.

No, no, no. That's like Thoreau, we saunter.

You've got to be wrapped in the robes of your own righteousness to enter into heaven.

Well, thanks for listening today. This is Mike Avendroth with Steve Cooley on No Compromise Radio. You can go to www .nocompromiseradio .com to listen to the show and the other recordings. I messed up what I didn't know how to say it with this background music.