Can people Repent?

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.

My name is Mina Hagen. Das. Steve is here today. Steve, good to have you here in the studio.

It's good to be here on this beautiful, warm, sunny Southern California day. I was just showing Steve Cooley the

Nina Hagen, H -A -G -E -N, video. Nina Hagen, for those of you who don't know,

Nina was a punk rock singer for many years, German, and she was extreme.

I was into punk rock, but she was too extreme for me. I'd probably describe her as sleazy and slutty.

And she couldn't sing, but she was just outrageous. And I remember four years ago in Germany, Steve, I said to the children walking past a store,

I said, look at that coffee table book of Nina Hagen. She's kind of this icon, you know, a negative icon.

And there is a picture of Nina Hagen in a book and all that stuff. Well, she's got a new album out.

It came out a few months ago called Personal Jesus, filled with hymns and songs about Jesus.

And she still can't sing. She still can't sing. Now, I'm not putting my hope in chariots or horses or her profession, but I just hope it's true.

You know, Bob Dylan, I think he wrote the album, what, Saved? Yeah, my favorite one, Slow Train Coming.

There's a slow, slow train coming. Van Morrison, you know, everybody has these kind of Christian experiences.

And I hope this one's real. If it's not real, I'll still believe in the real gospel. People make professions without owning the gospel.

There's a faith that doesn't save, etc. But I'm really hoping that she is really born again.

I talked to a friend in Germany. He said he's she's going to an OK church. But anyway, Nina Hagen, pull it up on iTunes.

Nina Hagen, Personal Jesus. And I just am so glad, Steve, that Jesus Christ saves wicked sinners.

Amen. Yeah, I was just talking about I read this survey here the other night where they're talking about, you know, again, basically, if you don't reach people before the age of 15, they're done.

I'm like, I look around our church and I think about my own life. I think about we have a lady here who was saved.

I think she was 78 or something like that when she was saved. And I'm just like, you know, surveys, statistics, studies, all very nice and good.

But God is more powerful, powerful than that. And those studies, don't you think, Steve, are very

Arminian in nature, very lowest common denominator, very, very VBS style. It applies for Methodist, Episcopalians, Draconalians and everyone else.

Yeah, I mean, whenever you're trying to apply formulas or, you know, break out the slide rule to figure out how we get people saved, you're making a sad miscalculation.

Well, dear Lord, if you haven't already saved Nina Hagen, please save Nina Hagen, because she is a good testimony of someone who is gone from having her own unrighteousness now to having

Christ's righteousness. Steve, maybe my favorite verse in the Bible. I don't think it quite is, but it should be.

Now, I'll give you two verses, maybe. Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as favor, but as what is due.

But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly.

His faith is credited as righteousness, Romans 4, 4 and 5.

And so to think we could be ungodly in God's eyes and then be now godly based on the righteousness of Christ Jesus that is credited to our spiritual bank account.

And I believe that God justifies ungodly people like Nina Hagen. Yeah, I was talking to somebody the other night about the gospel.

And, you know, a lot of people have this idea that you change yourself and then God saves you.

And that's just wrong. God saves you and he changes you. You know, does that mean let go and let

God know? It means that God is sovereign in salvation. God is sovereign in sanctification and that as he works in you, he will bring about change.

I think that's insightful. Let's talk about that for a moment, because this is we're just we're just going where the spirit takes us today.

Right. We're on a mystical journey. Well, I just need my labyrinth to walk through with my

Dallas Willard book, and I think I'll be OK. Oh, very nice. It's nice Tuesday.

It's nice to be nice today, and it's good to be good. And what we'll talk about now is when we tell some.

Well, let's start at the top. Steve, true or false? We should tell people you should tell people, unbelievers, to repent.

True. True. True or false. The root word for repentance of the definition of the

Greek word for repentance means to change your mind. True. If you really know, there's a trick coming here.

If you really change your mind, your life will also change. True or false? True. True. OK, so so far we're going very well.

True, true, true. Wow. Now back to see, I'm going to get you to say true five times in a row, and then I'm going to put the zinger in there and you're going to say true false.

When you ever took a test when you were in high school or junior high, did you ever try to combine the T and the

F and just put a make it so it looked like, you know, depending on what angle you looked at it.

It looked like true or false. No, I had more integrity than that. Oh, I was de -integrated.

That's amazing, Steve, actually. Well, what about to your earlier statement? What if we meet someone who's enslaved to sin?

They're sinful. They're unregenerate. They're not a believer. They're not a saint. They're not even, Steve, a pre -Christian. Well, then don't pre -evangelize them.

Very, very good. Touche. But somebody is an unbeliever and they really are enslaved to sin.

Let's say it's homosexual sin. Let's say it's heterosexual sin. Let's say it's with alcohol.

They're greedy, idolatry, whatever vice list you'd like to go to. Galatians 5, Revelation 21, 1

Corinthians 6. And they say, I know I'm sinful. I know that this is wrong.

I know there's a God who created everything and he will judge me. Pastor Steve, must

I stop sinning before God will save me? C 'est faux.

A T with a little thing in the middle. Well, here's what happens. And Steve knows that there's the rub here because A, he knows me and B, he knows life and theology.

People who are enslaved to sin can't extract themselves out of that. And so if we say to them, repent from your sins and turn to Christ Jesus, that is legitimate because we are told to preach the gospel in such a way.

We are to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins to all nations. Luke 24, preach repentance.

John the Baptist, repent. Jesus, repent. Paul, repent. Peter, repent.

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. But I mean, you know, to just jump right on that, if we go up to somebody and we say, you know what, stop your homosexual activities, stop your heterosexual outside of marriage activities, and God will save you.

Well, that's that's not repentance. And that is not the good news. The good news is not you do something first and then

God will respond. You do something as the initiator and God will then be allowed so he doesn't tread on your free will.

He'll be allowed to do something in response. No, God is the initiator. And of course, we tell people stop sinning, repent, turn.

But when we say that to people, Steve, do we believe in the back of our minds? They'll never do it unless God uses these words to regenerate them.

And then in response to the effectual call, they'll then repent and believe. Yes. I mean, that's basically you've just cited

Second Timothy. You're looking you're looking it up and I've already got it.

Bible drill. Well, well, you're way ahead of me. Bible drill. While Steve's looking that up, I do want to promote something right now on the radio.

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And it is an excellent app to help you in your ministry. Well, now, I have a question. You know, you said that that ESV app is free.

Do you get a cut of everybody who downloads it? I do. And I apply that to the coffee ministry here at No Compromise Radio Ministry.

Oh, yeah. And the donut ministry at BBC. Yeah, yeah. Pizza's pretty expensive. No, no,

I don't get any cut. I should, though. Yeah. You know, what's 50 percent of free?

Okay. And the Lord's bond servant or the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently, enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.

God has to grant them, you know, repentance isn't something that you decide to do on your own.

God grants repentance. So, A, repentance is a gift. And so now for you systematic theologians out there who want to understand this, repentance is also a command.

So we are to command people to repent. That's what God told us to do. Jesus himself said, tell people to repent.

But we know as we say, repent, that they cannot repent unless God grants the gift.

So we don't say, well, I have to try to figure this out. How can that happen? When does it happen? At what point does it happen?

We say, repent, believe the gospel, the negative side, turn from your sins, think like God does, positive side, take

God's word for it that his son is the Messiah and look to him and live the risen Savior who died a substitutionary atonement.

But we tell people to repent. But it is a gift from God. Command and gift at the same time.

Yeah, that's right. And I mean, we could even go back to Jesus in John 3 talking to Nicodemus and he said, you must be born again.

Well, what does that mean? It means you must be born again and no one chooses to be born again. It's the same.

All these things kind of happen simultaneously. In other words, we wouldn't recognize the time difference between them.

But there has to be an act of God. He changes us from the inside and we respond to that.

So if you're listening today and you're enslaved to whatever sin you might be enslaved to and you can't extricate yourself and you can't get yourself out and you're in some kind of, you know, horrible, spiritual, what do you call those, straitjackets, the gospel, the good news.

What kind of news would it be, Steve? I think it'd be bad news. Get yourself out. Yeah. Shame on you. Get yourself out.

Be better. That's bad news. Improve your life. Improve your life while you're still strangling yourself. No, the good news is there's somebody who has conquered sin and death and lived a life that you couldn't live, but you should have lived, that you must live.

And here's this great God who can extricate sinners from their own shackles of sin.

And so the good news is not get yourself out. Did you say extricate from their own shekels? Hey, we're going to Israel soon and we're trying to get some new

Israeli shekels. And Steve, if I die before I wake, you're going to have to carry on this ministry.

Yeah. Steve will be the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday guy. Wow. So when we tell people to repent, we know as Bible believers, as people who follow the life and work of Christ, Paul, Augustine, Calvin, right on down through the line, we know that God does not wait for someone to move and then he responds.

God is the great mover. He's the primary cause. He's the initiator. He's the author of salvation. And so we tell people to repent because God told us to.

But we also then probably, Steve, should simultaneously pray that God grants them repentance.

So our words are saying, you must repent and think differently. Embrace the gospel. Our internal heart that says to God and prays to God, God, please grant that person repentance.

They can't do it on their own. They're enslaved. And what's amazing is that, you know, you can know the truth about the gospel.

You could have heard the gospel hundreds of times. But without God actuating that within you, it has absolutely no effect.

There's no transformation. Steve, don't you think this is specifically geared towards people who have been in churches that have taught the

Bible, maybe alter call kind of Bible and decision regeneration, decisional regeneration.

But just as you were saying that, I thought of churches where people say they're a

Christian because the pastor has pronounced that Christianity. You've come up. Welcome to the family of God.

Don't let anybody ever tell you anything differently. But they know their lives aren't changed. They know their conscience still is guilty.

And they say, you know what? I want to become a Christian, but I prayed the sinner's prayer 100 times and it just doesn't work.

Can you help me? Right. Because they've they've experienced what we've been talking about, which is, you know, that outwardly they may make a profession of faith, but inwardly they still sense that they are enslaved by the bonds of sin.

They're still slaves of sin. They they don't they haven't experienced any kind of freedom because there's been no regeneration.

And so we would continue to pray and to preach the truth, hoping that God would enlighten their eyes.

Steve, I think you remember the story I told you when I was in Los Angeles teaching the Bible study and we had you at the

Bible study. Let's see how many famous people were at the Bible study. You were at the Bible study, Mr. Tuesday. Yes. Your friend

Tony was at the Bible study only one time. Tony was there, the lawman. Yeah, yeah. What's what's his last name? Miano? Yeah, Miano.

Yeah. I think I taught on hell that day. Yeah. And you should have seen his eyes. I remember what he said.

He goes, we don't have anybody in our church who could teach like that. I said, you need to be at a different church. And by the grace of God, he is today.

There was a guy who came to that Bible study and he was very disturbed. And I preached that night and everybody knew it.

Steve, you knew it. And it was just par for the course. Unbelievers show up. We throw out the current Bible study verse by verse, and we just preach the gospel the whole night.

The jugular gospel. Totally. May I say. And so I said, of course, what I always said to young men's young men's young men, because I know what they struggle with.

And I said to them that fornicators and adulterers and drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But you say it in this voice, young man. Yeah. In my Al Martin voice, young man.

I'm not even going to tell you what young man said right after that. We'll gloss over that. And so do we gloss?

Is that like a marginal gloss, a manuscript gloss, a manuensis gloss?

So I said to this guy, you know, fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God. And I thought I knew he was living with his girlfriend or whatever.

And so a few nights later, he showed up at my door at four in the morning, knocking at my door. Insert knock button here.

Wow. We've got the best sound effects department. Wow. On the planet. That is a great sound effect.

And so what happened was he said, you know, I'm slave to sin. I'm stuck in sin.

I'm sleeping with my girlfriend. I ran out of the house. I'm not going to do it anymore. And he hadn't slept for a few days and he was really hallucinating.

And I asked him about his faith, who Jesus was, to make sure he has the right object of his faith. And he told me, you know,

I've accepted Jesus in my heart and prayed the sinner's prayer, whatever the number was, 20 sometimes. Well, that showed me, not just pragmatically, because I think

I could back it up theologically as well. But that system doesn't work. Now I'm not saying God can't, through a faulty system because the word was preached, save somebody through some altar call because the call was the real gospel.

But he'd accepted Jesus in his heart so many times. What do we tell somebody who's at the point of suicide and I need to be forgiven, but I can't forgive myself because this other gospel, you repent first, is a different gospel because you have to do it.

Well, and ultimately what you wind up with is some kind of, pardon me for saying it this way, Jesus as laundry detergent gospel, you know, may, and I've heard this at funerals, you know, try

Jesus for 60 days or whatever. And when you realize that trying Jesus superficially for 60 days, 90 days, 120 days, doesn't change your life, you're even more depressed than you were before that.

What if you tried him for 40 days purposely? And 40 nights. Steve, over in Sterling, I ride my bicycle through Sterling, Massachusetts, home of Mary Had a

Little Lamb, and there's a sign and I drive by it all the time on my bike. Try Jesus, if all else fails, dot, dot, dot, try

Jesus. And I just want to pull the hair out of my helmet if it would be long enough.

If all else fails, try Jesus. Yeah. We're not talking about, you know,

Neptune or some kind of God like that. If all else fails on your journey on this open seven seas, try

Neptune. Yeah. Last resort, you know, when you, when you've tried self -help 12 step groups and nothing else works.

Well then. See, every other religion is just like that though. And I know you agree with me, Steve, where you say,

I'll do something for this God, and then he'll do something for me. And I call that scratch my back deism.

You do this for me. I do this for you. You do this for me. And so you say, well, let's see, we are going to go on a journey on the

Mediterranean and we better offer some things to Neptune and we'll do for Neptune. So then

Neptune will keep us safe and he'll do for us. But Steve, here's the best part. Uh, this isn't the best part of this.

I'm almost there to the best part. We can't do anything to please God without faith.

It's impossible to please God. We're dirty, rotten, vile sinners. So there's only one religion where God acts first and he does something for us and he assuages his own wrath by pouring it out on his own son and raises him from the dead.

And so it's not, we do this for God and he does something for us. How great is Christianity where God does something for those who are ungodly, unloving, helpless, and doomed.

And it's mind blowing because it is so opposite of the way we think. And we go, well, why would

God do all that for me? And ultimately the answer is because he's glorified in doing things that way.

When God takes wretches and transforms them over time into the image of his son.

And as it were, there's the inner Trinitarian gift from the father to the son, and then back to the father.

He is glorified in that. He gets all the glory, not us for our, you know, great decision, our wise decision.

And even more, Hebrews 2 .10, for it was fitting for him, Jesus, for whom are all things and through whom are all things in bringing many sons to glory.

So he gets the glory, the father does, the son does, the spirit does. And then Jesus brings us to glory.

How about that? To think of glory. Boy, that, I mean, you hear that phrase, Steve, oh, that'll be glory.

Yeah, but it's, but it's usually applied to some kind of breakfast or something like that,

I mean, people don't really get it. And, but, but, you know, I, I, again, I was just talking to somebody and listening to them talk about the things that they knew they had to change in their life before they could get saved.

Listen, when God saves you, those things will be the first things that you want to get rid of.

You know, it may be painful, it may be difficult, but you'll jettison them because you'll think, I love

Christ and I want to please him. There, there's a, when we talk about a change of mind, we don't just mean, you know, that somehow, uh, things go from fuzzy to clear or we mean that the things you formerly loved, you now hate.

There's a, there's a complete, we view things as Christians differently than we did before, because we're being conformed to the image of God and we think his thoughts after him.

And that has to be a spirit wrought work because how can you begin to love things you used to hate?

And this is a thing that, uh, uh, requires a change of nature. And so if you know tigers,

I know tigers who like to eat meat and I think most tigers like to eat meat, Steve. Yes, they do.

I don't purposely know, personally know. Although a few like salad. Yeah. How do you make tigers love

Twinkies? Uh, that'd be difficult. That would be very difficult. And so anyway,

I was just reading Hebrews chapter two, verse 17. Therefore, Jesus had to be made like his brethren in all things so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God.

Now here's how God does the work. He's the initiator. He's the starter. He's the primary cause to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

He's the one who acted. Do we reconcile ourselves? No. Do we redeem ourselves? No. Do we defile ourselves?

Yes. I tried to trick you, but I was actually listening and that was fast.

Thank you. Thank you. See, this is, Steve is one sanctified dude. I'm telling you. Well, you know, it's pretty hard to pull the wool over my eyes unless you hold my arms.

Here at No Compromise Radio Ministry, we want you to know that if you're a slave to sin, there's someone who has conquered sin and you need to look to him.

Maybe the first thing that you should do is stop thinking the way you're thinking. That you have to save yourself, extract yourself, extricate yourself.

I sure hope extricate is the right word. Yes, it is. That you have to get yourself out of the trouble. You can't do that.

Adam, your first father, got you into the trouble and you can't get out. You need the last

Adam, Jesus, to get you out of the trouble. But I'm not trying to save myself. I just want to be better so that, you know,

Christianity will seem more attractive to me. Well, if you're looking for a better marriage, don't try Christianity. Because it might cost you your marriage.

Don't you hate it when people do that, Steve? Come to Jesus and your marriage will be all fixed up. You'll get a lot of money and you'll drive a nice car and you'll have a nice church and you'll even get a good parking spot.

Well, there was a church right down the street from Grace where we used to go in Los Angeles that used to say, and this was another sign that I really hated.

It would say, Jesus is the answer to your problems. Yes, he is. But not in the way that they, he's the answer to one problem.

That's sin. And that's the biggest, biggest problem you have. You have no problem like this. This is the gravest, the one with the most gravity.

You have a problem that you've offended the God of the universe. And you're living in his universe, breathing his air.

And you're sinning against him and against his son. And the Spirit of God is grieved for that.

And so you've got a major problem and your problem is not marriage. Because boy, you could have a great marriage and still go to hell.

Unbelievers can have great marriages. Oh yeah, I've seen it. You can have a lot of money and go to hell. You can have a lot of grandkids and go to hell.

But you can have no higher, what do

I want to say, purpose. There's nothing higher in your life, no higher goal than to make sure you're right with the

God of the universe. And you can't make yourself right. It has to be done to you. Yeah. I mean, what you're saying is, you know, sometimes people, when they say,

I'm not accountable to anyone. I'm not responsible to anyone. I'm going to live my life. Well, you're exactly right.

Because this is God's universe. We have to play by his rules. He has set the boundaries for which we're accountable.

And we're glad he's merciful and kind. And he calls on every person today to repent and believe in the substance, free death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.

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 bbcchurch .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.