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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. Today is going to be a horrible show. It's an acty show. It's unplanned, not thought out very well, thrown together, ramshackle, pell-mell. None of that's true.
How could I do that? Just, you know, turn off your dial now and go to K-Love or something. You want something positive and encouraging. Do they have that brand trademarked or something? Is there, do they have permission to say that?
Am I allowed to say on No Compromise Radio that if you want positive, encouraging, this is probably not the show for you? Or maybe our ad line said that. If you want to write us, it's info at nocompromiseradio .com.
We are coming up on two and a half years on the radio. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, iTunes. I think we have about a thousand people a day downloading our daily podcast. How about that? If you're one of the thousands, I applaud you.
If you're one of the hordes, the hordes of No Compromise, be praying for us because I have lots of ideas on how I would like to make the show better. What we could do for advertising, product, place, promotion, gifts, beanies, hats, slingshots.
I have all kinds, remember wrist rockets? Those were cool. I have all kinds of ideas. My problem is, here's my big problem. You ready? My big problem is I have a job. This isn't it. This is in my free time.
Although I'm actually on company time today. I think I'm always on company time because a pastor's never off the clock. You could either say that or you could say pastor only works one hour a week on Sundays.
By the way, if you're a liberal pastor, you've got a cake job. If you pray or breakfast here or there, ecumenical deals, go talk to some interfaith dialogue people, go have some meals, have a nice pension with your denomination, nice apostanage.
You got the cake job, baby. Well, yeah, we know the bishop can send you around where he wants if you don't play the political game, but you've got the cake job. By the way, one of the reasons why mainline churches send their pastors and their pastorettes from one place to the other on a regular basis is because if you let a guy stay too long, and he's actually a nice guy, and he's involved in the lives of the family.
Even I went to a liberal Lutheran church and the pastor was there to help bury my father, et cetera, and he was a kind man and will be in debt to him for that. But if you have a guy doing that a long time or a lady doing that for a long time, then they engender themselves to you in times of difficulty and then they get too much power.
You don't want to have a pastor at a mainline denomination having power because he could lead a church the wrong direction. Maybe you could take the church out of the PCA and move them into a real denomination like the PCA or something like that.
What'd I say? Take them out of the USA and put them in the PCA. I think I said that, unless it was the OPC over in the PCUSA. Maybe it'll go over to the EPC and the EPA. Ay yi yi. Some days I want to be a Presbyterian.
It's just the infant baptism stuff that kind of gets me. So if you want to write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com. Hey, if you disagree with something you want to write me, that's fine. Go right ahead.
I'll just forward it to Todd Friel. How about that? You know what? Why don't you write me and I'll give you Todd Friel's personal email. Maybe that would engender some writers. We don't have that many.
I used to have three guys answering questions. Now, you either don't like my answers, you don't listen anymore, this is all a ruse, or you know that you're learning, you're growing on No Compromise Radio.
You get it. What is happening to us? Well, today on No Compromise Radio, we're going to look at Isaiah 53. A great passage. Isaiah 53. And we've been doing a mini series here on sin and forgiveness and the substitute.
So we've talked about sin for a couple times, and we've talked about the need for forgiveness. And so now we're going to look at that person who can forgive us, the suffering servant, Christ Jesus, the Lord.
Isaiah 53. We like to do things to help ourselves, but we cannot help ourselves when it comes to forgiving sin. It has to be done to you. We are passive in salvation and God is active, hence the word Savior.
And so Philip P. Bliss described Jesus' work on the cross, which would be a great summary of Isaiah 53. Bearing shame and scoffing rude. In my place condemned he stood. Sealed my pardon with his blood.
Hallelujah. What a Savior. And that's what we're going to see in Isaiah 52, down through chapter 53. The end of 52 to 53, you see the substitute. We don't believe in a martyr theory that Jesus was an example of obedience and his martyrdom should inspire you to live for better things.
We don't believe in the accident theory of the atonement on No Compromise Radio. It's a big accident that he was crushed in the process as he got caught up in this messianic fervor. We don't believe in the ransom to Satan theory that Satan had to captive Jesus and then he broke the grips of Satan by giving Satan the ransom, paying off Satan.
No, we don't believe that. Those things are bogus. It has been said that Phil Johnson, when he edited MacArthur's books, he always tried to put in the word bogus. And when I had dinner with Phil Johnson, I asked him about that.
But I'm so tired today, I can't remember the answer. So let's just say it's true. Let's say it's apocryphal. Let's say it's pseudepigraphal. Let's say it's, what's another word? Econoclastic. I'm so backed up.
I got to go shopping today. It's Christmas Eve Eve. What am I going to get? I'm going to get my faithful listeners. How about the sovereignty and supremacy of King Jesus? Maybe I could go to the website on No Compromise Radio and click on that thing.
By the way, if you click on that thing and we get the info, you're not going to get it by Christmas. We send it slow boat to China. Is that an ethical slam? Do people not like that anymore? Can you not say that?
Sometimes I don't know what you can say, what you can't say. I'm just a country bumpkin from Nebraska. We believe the substitution of Jesus Christ at its pinnacle. And without this, there's no substitution.
It is a penal substitution, P-E-N-A-L. Penalty, we get the same word. Jesus paid the penalty that we deserved. He didn't deserve anything. This is a word that the Latins have used, vicarious. Latin, that's where we get the word vicar.
One in place of another. You see some of the prepositional phrases in the New Testament. Instead of, on behalf of, in place of, or sometimes just the preposition for. Jesus dies for sinners. And he is the one through whom this legal transaction is taken care of.
Jesus is the substitute for all those who would believe. Actually, he was the substitute, let's just make it clear, the elect. He wasn't the substitute for people that are in hell now. In what way would he be substituting for them?
He's not the substitute for Judas. He didn't die for Judas' sins. It was better for Judas never to have been born. We know Judas is not in heaven. And we know Judas was a sinner. So what do you do with Jesus' blood applied to Judas?
He didn't accept it. What kind of language is that? That's just modern-day Pelagian, semi-Pelagian Arminianism. Jesus died for the elect. You mean Jesus died for somebody who the Father didn't choose and the Spirit didn't regenerate?
The Father picks some, not all. The Spirit regenerates the same some, not all. But Jesus dies for everybody? You're not thinking about the Trinity properly. Substitutionary atonement by definition. Now, the Arminians and the four-and-a-half-pointers will try to get around it in one way, shape, or form.
But penalty, who did Jesus pay the penalty for? Answer, the elect. If he would have paid it for everybody, they'd all be in heaven. It'd be universalism. Jesus could have died for everyone. His death was that wonderful, that awesome.
But when it comes to substitutionary atonement, he died in the place of his church. The believers, those who would eventually believe. If he died for your sins, you're going to heaven. You say, well, you have to accept that first.
You have to believe that first. Well, that means there was a time he didn't believe? Yes. His unbelief was sin? Yes. Did Jesus die for all your sins? Are all your sins besides and not belief? Substitutionary atonement.
And even here, when we see in Isaiah chapter 53, the us and the all, we're going to see who those us's are and who those all's are and who those we's are. We's, us's, and all's. I think that's a new commercial.
Manny, Moe, and Jack, maybe for the Pep Boys. I'm not sure. Pep Boys still in business. First Peter 3, 18, substitutionary atonement. The just for the unjust that he might bring us to God. Christ died for the sins once for all.
Second Corinthians 5, 21. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Galatians 3, 13. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.
It is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Hebrews 9, 28, more substitution language. So Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await him.
Man cannot pay for his sins to be forgiven. He can pay for his sins in hell, receiving the justice of God, but to receive the grace of God is something that he is not able to do. He can only receive it as a gift.
A .W. Pink said regarding substitution, at the cross, all our iniquities were laid upon Christ, and therefore he did, and therefore did divine judgment fall on him. There was no way of transferring sin without transferring its penalty.
Both sin and its punishment were transferred to the Lord Jesus. On the cross, Christ was making propitiation, and propitiation is solely God words. It was a question of meeting the claims of God's holiness.
It was a matter of satisfying that of man's of his justice. Not only was Christ's blood shed for us, but it was also shed for God. He hath given himself for us an offering and as a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.
Ephesians 5, 2. And so Isaiah 53 highlights this in the Old Testament. It is the pinnacle, maybe 80, 85 references in the New Testament to Isaiah, and most of them are from this passage, Isaiah 53, the last, what we call, servant song.
Isaiah 53, Substitutionary Atonement, and you need to believe in Substitutionary Atonement. It says in Isaiah 52, 14, to kind of get us there. As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.
So shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him. For that which has not been told them, they see, and that which they have not heard, they understand. Here's what the writer is saying.
Here's what Isaiah is saying. The nations are gonna be dumbfounded with the Savior. They're going to be startled. They're going to be speechless with God's servant. Because of who he was, because of the shame and humiliation and disfigurement, because of his then exaltation, people are not going to know what to do.
It's shocking is the best word. Something so insignificant, something so small, something so irrelevant, seemingly, could accomplish something so great. Nations, they're not gonna know what to do. They're gonna end up shutting their mouths.
That this little lowly infant born in a manger, a stable with an unknown mother, this little baby, that he is God himself, excuse me, and he is going to be on the throne, right hand of God. It's just gonna make people go, really?
And the text talks about sprinkling. You notice that in Isaiah 52, verse 15. He shall sprinkle many nations. Well, you can either translate that word sprinkle into sprinkle, which is kind of amazing, isn't it?
Sprinkle or to startle. So if it's sprinkle, the Hebrew word is going to be conveying Levitical kind of language, that he does priestly cleansing. And so that would be true that this person could do that.
The other way to translate this word is to startle. That probably is going to be the way it should be translated. Some commentators even think it's supposed to be both. And you would kind of have a double entendre there, meaning both to sprinkle as a priest would for forgiveness and to startle, because who's going to understand this?
Who's going to get any of it from Jesus' first coming to the second coming, coming as a baby in a manger to then coming the second time as an exalted king? They didn't get it. So much so that chapter 53, verse one, starts out in what way?
Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Who's going to figure this out, that the deliverer has to stoop so low to rescue us? This is not really Jesus the baby, the meek and mild savior, the arm of the Lord, what God has promised Israel in Isaiah 40, Isaiah 48, Isaiah 51, Isaiah 52.
If you want a fireman to rescue out of a building, I think you want the biggest, toughest fireman. You don't want the littlest guy, the shortest guy, the guy that's on crutches. Who could imagine this?
The mighty arm of God is Jesus in a manger. The mighty arm of God is Jesus on a cross being tortured, rejected. He saved others, he can't save himself. That's the mighty arm of God. Behold your king, that's the mighty arm of God.
This is language so that you'll be shocked because the nations are shocked. Isaiah 53, two, for he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no former majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him.
More shocking, do you have a tree in your yard someplace? Sometimes next to the tree somewhere, a little shoot, a little sprout will come up. What do you do with those things? What do you do with an unwanted shoot or sprout?
You just cut it, just cut it. He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of the ground. That's exactly right. It's unwanted, it's unwanted little sprout. What we don't have coming out of the scene 2 ,000 years ago in Israel was some cedar, some redwood like man, some mighty oak, huge pine.
You get just a little sprout. How long does it take for a gardener to just cut that little sprout? Little snip, snip, sprout, gone. Listen to what Oswalt said in his commentary on Isaiah. The Christian thinks inevitably of Jesus Christ, a baby born in the back staple of a village inn.
This would shake the Roman empire. A man quietly coming to the great preacher of the day and asking to be baptized. This is the advent of a man who would be heralded as the savior of the world. No, this is not what we think the arm of the Lord should look like.
We were expecting a costume drum major to lead our triumphant parade. Our eyes are caught and satisfied by superficial splendor. This man says Isaiah will have none of that. As a result, our eyes flicker across him in a crowd and we do not even see him.
His splendor is not on the surface and those who have no inclination to look beyond the surface will never even see him, much less pay him any attention.". End quote. You go down to the police department to pick out a criminal in a lineup.
You say, yeah, that's the guy. Well, let's get a lineup of messiahs and let's go down to the courthouse and ID the messiah. You'd never guess it was Jesus. You would never guess it was Jesus. The mighty arm of God, just like a tender plant, a little bush, humble.
That's some great kind of tree. Where's the purple? Where are the crowns? Where's the entourage? Where are the peacock fans? Where are the people that feed the grapes to the king? Where's the gold? Verse three of Isaiah 53.
He was despised and rejected by men and a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed him not. Two times, despised, despised. Now, if you think in an English fashion, despised is going to have emotion.
Oh, I despise that person. Very emotive, contempt, but the Hebrew word doesn't have so much emotion. It just means something that's worthless. You don't pay attention to it. No time or day doesn't move you in any way, shape or form, no significance.
You say, here's the messiah, baby born, dying on the cross, irrelevant, insignificant, not practical. That's the kind of language here of despised. Two times, special attention for him. This is a society full of winners.
This society isn't for losers. We're not gonna spend time with the loser messiah. The arm of the Lord that's powerful. No, they were looking for the stereotypical king, the stereotypical messiah, strong, powerful.
And here, despised, I'm not even gonna think twice about the guy. This guy's acquainted with grief and acquainted with sickness. No, Moyer said, when all that the human eye saw and the human mind apprehended was added up, the result was zero, zero.
This is not who the messiah is supposed to be. The new commentary said, people turned away as if he were a leper so as not to be contaminated. Messiahs who were crucified, sorry. Messiahs who are beaten, crown of thorns, not likely.
Messiahs, no entourage, stables, no room at the inn, baby, mom's not married. No, people aren't gonna do that. The mighty arm of God. So in No Compromise Radio Ministry today, here's what we're doing.
Here's what we didn't do. I have 11 descriptions of substitutionary atonement found in Isaiah chapter 53, but this was just all intro, but it was a cool intro, wasn't it? Not cool because I made it cool, but interesting and cool because of the text, Isaiah 53.
Here's your homework, No Compromise listeners. Read the book of Isaiah before next week, if you can, and see some of the sins that were indicative of the people in Isaiah's day. And then you'll see much more how great this messiah's salvation is going to be.
But be thinking to yourself, this is the messiah? This is when Jesus showed up, no way, shape, or form. Did anyone have any clue from externals, from the outside? We need a savior. And by the way, if you're listening today, you need a savior.
You either have to pay for your own sins because every sin will be punished, either on you, in hell forever, or upon Jesus. Every sin's going to be punished because God is just. You're not gonna like a judge that just lets the criminal go.
Oh, you raped and killed people? All right, just go, dismissed. No, justice must be done if the judge is just, righteous, correct, and right. So what do we have? We have a just judge who's seen every sin you've ever committed, and therefore, you need someone to forgive you of those sins.
And the way God forgives is this. He just doesn't say, forgiveness, granted. No, he says, justice is upheld when someone else takes your place. And as lambs used to take the place of Israel, now Jesus takes the place of all those who would ever believe.
And so you need to believe, repent, to trust in Christ Jesus alone for your salvation, to believe that he's the risen king and the messiah, and he was the mighty arm of God. You say, well, it didn't really seem like it, and I read the New Testament, and it seems like lowly origins, stooping down low to mankind.
That's true, Philippians chapter two. But I want you to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God today, not later. You're gonna stoop sooner or later. You're gonna bow sooner or later. You're gonna confess sooner or later.
But today would be a good day, and the next time we'll talk about more substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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.