The Greening of the Church

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 Avendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Today is Tuesday, and that means we have Mr. Tuesday Guy with us.

Pastor. Buenos Dias. Cool. Hey, how's it going?

Glad to be here. Always biblical, always provocative, always Steve Cooley on Tuesdays.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Today, Steve's going to talk about his experiences the last week with snake handling.

Well, I look at Mark 16, and when I think about the capacity we have for handling venomous snakes with no problems,

I get all choked up. What is it? The orange on black, red on yellow, kill a fellow, is that what it's for the coral snake?

I don't know. All I remember is the shape of their head indicates something about being venomous or not.

Well, I'd just like to give a shout out. I don't usually do this very often, but John, the chef in Idaho, he regularly sends me his special recipes, and so,

John, I'd like to do two things. One, can you give me a special recipe for rattlesnake after the services and after we've handled the snake, then we could have a special rattlesnake stew.

And two, can you send us some rattlesnakes, because we don't have any in Massachusetts. All I get are

John's wonderful -looking, there was a plank salmon with some

Asian sauce on top of it, and he sent me. It looked great, but a lot of good that does me, a guy who can't really cook that well.

Yeah. Yeah. Where's the love in that? I know. It's just temptation. So, John, when last name starts with a

D, you know who you are. Quit that. Today on No Compromise Radio, we wanted to put our toe into the shallow end of the pond, but it happens to be a green pond.

It happens to be a filtered pond, and we are going to talk about environmentalism. Filtered?

Wait a minute, that would kill some wildlife. There would be some bad filters. It might kill a tick or something or a mosquito.

Let's talk about going green. Not for the Celtics. I'm just going to say the

Los Angeles Celtics. Not the Celtics going green. Let's not talk about the big green.

Let's talk about churches going green. And, Steve, should we have windmills in the church or on top of the church?

How about in the church? Sometimes when I preach, I probably think, that guy's a big, fat windmill.

Well, you know, I'm all about going green. I think anybody who reads our

Statement of Faith would see that our main plank is economic justice, and we're all about environmental justice, and we'll see what kind of justice.

Yeah, going green. You know what? The most famous quote to me on the whole topic, and I love what

MacArthur said, he said, you know, if you think what man is doing to this planet is terrible, just wait until you see what

God does to it. Well, I thought that's not going to be until October 21st by my new calculations, allegedly.

So -called. Creation care, going green. Challies quoted

Michael Crichton, and Crichton spoke in 2003. By the way, I think Crichton did some movies about dinosaurs, didn't he?

Yes, Jurassic Park. That's right, and he also did Westworld. Spend no expense. Here's what

Crichton said. Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western world is environmentalism.

Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion?

Well, just look at its beliefs. If you look carefully, you'll see that environmentalism is, in fact, a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional

Judeo -Christian beliefs and myths. Mother Gaea. Mother Gaea.

Why does that sound so funny? I don't know. I mean, that is one of the, you know, the so -called goddess of the earth.

So, you know. Mother Gaea. Crichton goes on to say there's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity within nature.

There's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge.

And as a result of our actions, there's a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners doomed to die unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability.

Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide -free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs imbibe.

Yeah. Well, I think it's so key that we live like that. Not. We are probably going to get flame for this show.

Well, you know what? I was talking to an environmental engineer the other day, and he told me he was explaining the ramifications of the

Clean Water Act that came out in the 1960s. And over the last 45 years or so, that has been expanded and expounded upon to the point where, you know, any puddle anywhere can be can fall under this

Clean Waters Act. And it's it is absolutely insane. It's why we've gotten so many restrictions, even on our own property here.

And this is not a political statement. I'm just saying this is this is kind of where we've gone as a country. Well, when you look at this movement, and of course,

Steve and I, I don't mean maybe I can't speak for Steve. But, you know, I don't want to prematurely destroy the world and and have all kinds of radiation go everywhere and just be a total pig when it comes to the earth.

I'd like to make sure we do things properly. But this idea that the earth replaces

God, that's at the core pretty big idolatry, wouldn't you say? Well, it doesn't get any bigger than that.

And, you know, I was a I was a Boy Scout. I'm now reformed of that. But a reformed Boy Scout. But, you know,

I mean, you know, the idea being that you want to leave a place better than you found it. Well, honestly, our country is already doing a pretty good job of that.

I grew up in Southern California where the the smog was so thick some days it would actually make you cough.

And the air quality actually in Southern California now is much better than it was 40 and 50 years ago.

Steven, I lived in Los Angeles. I would take a handkerchief at the end of the day and wipe my brow.

Now, while most people have oil on their foreheads, if you have a regular oil problem and then you live in Los Angeles and then once a day you wipe your face.

I mean, sometimes the smog was so bad, A, it would hurt my eyes and B, I could just wipe the black off my forehead being outside all day.

Could that be an energy source? I don't know. You know, it seems to me like that's a carbon. Maybe you should be taxed based on how much carbon you have on your forehead.

Well, maybe carbon forehead will replace my carbon footprint. And after the Ben and Jerry's that I've been having lately since I've had this bronchial infection,

I think my carbon footprints get a little bit bigger. Ben and Jerry's will do that to you.

So what is sin? See, if God is redefined as Mother Earth, remember the commercials when we were growing up,

Steve? It's not nice to fool Mother Nature. Totally. What was that? Some margarine commercial? Yeah, it was a margarine where it tasted just like butter.

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature. And then she'd do the whole thunder and lightning thing, you know.

So we just have different terms. So God now is the earth. Sin is large carbon footprints.

Pollution is evil. And faith is what? Hope that we can sustain the earth for another generation.

Faith is completely different than anything resembling faith in the Bible. I mean, what people are putting their faith in is not just sustainability, but this kind of ultimately nonsensical idea that we can get energy that isn't going to harm anything or do any kind of negative in the world.

So it just doesn't exist. Stealing some thoughts from Chalice and then personalizing them. I like it when

Chalice was talking about the environmentalists having their own brand of Pharisees. There's nothing worse than a

Pharisee unless you're an environmental Pharisee. Legal codes and such.

Well, you know, just to bring a little Bible into this, let me read from 2 Peter 3. It says, verse 10,

I mean, it kind of sounds pretty rough. And let's see, it goes on, verse 12, Well, Steve, that new windmill and solar panel array that we put on top of the roof by the steeple, is that, can that actually melt when

Jesus comes back? Well, probably not. It'll probably be preserved by the power of Mother Gaea.

I mean, it's all just patent nonsense. People act as if they know better than God does.

They know better. You know, I mean, that's a basic premise of man today, that we know better what men in general should be doing because we have psychology and we know in general what should be done to the earth better than anything the

Bible would say because we have environmentalism. Well, my sermon this Sunday, Steve, I don't know if you know, is going green.

And I'm going to quote one evangelical leader who said the earth is God's body and he wants us to look after it.

OK, suppress retching. Did you say suppress wretched radio?

No, no. I think they're one of our co -sponsors. Yeah, I would never say that. But the whole idea that the earth is

God's body, first of all, is blasphemy. I mean, Christ's body is the church. That was

Steve coughing, not me. But now when one person coughs, you know, when one person yawns, then you want to yawn and another person coughs in the movie theater, then you want to cough too.

I think it's the pollution in the air that's making me cough today. Steve, all you drink is water. Or it's Mother Nature in the air.

It's all the pollen. I can't be one -upped. You quote a verse, I'll quote a verse. James 4. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. So now let's tweak that a little bit.

You adulterous people, do you not know that worship of the world, if friendship with the world is enmity with God, then what would worship of the world be?

I think that would be worse. And I mean, there are literally, I mean, what is Earth Day? What is

Earth Day? I mean, people celebrate Earth Day with more passion, many people do, than they do, certainly,

Easter. But even more than, say, Christmas, some people do.

And, you know, there's a move to do away with Christmas and call it winter solstice. You know, and there's this whole, we love nature and let's just get back to our natural roots.

Well, my kids go to the local elementary school. Two of my kids go to the elementary slash junior high school in Lancaster, Mass.

And they would never sing a song about Jesus at Christmas, but winter solstice and the winter warlock, right up their alley.

Really? Oh, it's the worst. Winter warlock. Okay. All right.

How about Cheryl Smith? I thought you were going to say Cheryl Crow. What does this have to do, yeah, with the church in America?

Even if the reader does not attend a Christian church, he might at least think that such a place would generally embrace the

Bible and Jesus Christ as its main source for instruction, guidance, and the hope of the salvation of man.

One would not expect an evangelical house of worship to go to the world at large for its agenda. Cheryl is right.

Kudos to Cheryl. But that's exactly what the evangelical churches, many at least, have done.

Let's get the world's agenda and import it into the church and throw a few survivor redemption islands out there and we're fine.

Well, I mean, if you want to destroy the church, you just have the church focus on environmental justice and environmentalism and turning the world green.

Because I'll tell you what, if the next generation gets the message that the main point of our lives is to preserve the world, the physical world, which is passing away, the

Bible tells us, then guess what the next generation is going to be focused on and what they're going to hand on to their kids.

And it's not going to be the gospel. It's the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine.

Cheryl Smith goes on to say, But churches, emergent churches, social agenda churches, liberal churches, they have the exact same thing.

So as the theologian Mr. T would say, pity the poor fool who walks in to a liberal church, a social justice church, wanting to know about salvation, forgiveness, justification.

How can I be right with God? How can I go to heaven? Because they're not going to find it. Well, you know, we can deal with those things quickly and then move on to the more important things like preserving the planet.

I mean, what is more important than knowing God and worshiping the God who exists? Yet, you know, and we're not going to sit here and say this morning that or this afternoon, whenever you hear this program, that we should be part of destroying the planet.

Nobody is, you know, suggesting, well, you know, now that you're a Christian, go ahead and dump sludge all over the place.

Throw your trash out the window. We would be all about being good citizens. However, the focus of the church is on the gospel and on creating disciples.

It is not on greening the environment, on making the world nicer.

You know, a cleaner, brighter future for our kids is heaven. It's not earth and environmentalism.

Steve and Mike on No Compromise Radio today talking about going green in churches. Steve, here's how

I look at the situation. God has built into the fabric of every human being the desire to stand up for a cause, to have something bigger than himself or herself to live for.

That's exactly what we do. We're born worshipers. The problem is we should be worshiping the triune

God, the great God and Father who has planned salvation, the great Son who has executed salvation, accomplished salvation at the cross and with His life confirmed by the resurrection.

And then the Spirit of God who applies the Father's, the Son's work. And so, what do we do?

We want to have a cause. And now people have a cause for something and they have something to live for.

This is just raw, or as we say in New England, raw idolatry. Well, instead, you know, the world that we live in, what do they do?

They don't worship, I won't even read it, but what do they do? They worship the, as per Romans 1, the creation and not the creator.

The focus is all wrong. And if you go to a church where it seems like they're more concerned with the creation than the creator, and that would go for, you know, if they're more concerned about self -image or anything else, that would be wrong.

But it's just as wrong to be more concerned about the earth and its environment. You know, what is more important than the gospel and the

Bible and Christ and salvation and justification and all these things? You know, doctrine, as we call it sometimes, but the truth that Scripture teaches, what's more important than that?

And to even, if we even wasted one Sunday here at Bethlehem Bible Church on the environment and greening the planet,

I would have real trouble staying here. Well, Steve, to take this approach and apply it differently, but maybe hitting home to more people.

We don't want to have a whole service focused on the planet, yet we'll have a whole service.

I don't mean we, Bethlehem Bible Church, that God has taught us to know better. But you'll have a whole service revolving around mothers, a whole service revolving around fathers, a whole service revolving around Independence Day, July 4th for Americans.

And even though you're going to think that I'm not patriotic and that somehow I'm against veterans, a whole service, you know,

Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Can we say thank you for the vets? Thank you for a free country.

Thank you for what we have here. Yes, but why would you have a whole service revolving around that?

Last time I checked, Jesus Christ is the center. And so, mothers, we love you. Buckle up.

It's time to learn about Jesus. Veterans, we love you. Buckle up. It's time to learn about Jesus. Yeah.

And, you know, should the Hallmark calendar or should the, you know, constitutionally approved holiday calendar, should that dictate what the church does?

You know, is the church here to celebrate the culture or to confront it? And, you know, I mean, the truth claims of scripture are the truth claims of scripture, and they don't lend themselves towards conforming to the culture.

Now, back to the going green in just a moment. But when I walk into a church, what if I was an Iraqi Christian and I'm over here in America and I walk into a church hoping to hear about Jesus, but I see a huge flag in the center of the pulpit area, the podium area, the platform.

And I say to myself, from an Iraqi Christian perspective, I think

America is imperialistic. I think they are after oil. I think they deposed of Saddam Hussein the wrong way.

And I don't like any of this. Don't we want to have worship in our local church that is reflective of heaven, that is to say, all kindreds, tribes, tongues, nations, et cetera?

Well, and that's why we only fly two flags at Bethlehem Bible Church, the U .N. flag and the environmental flag.

I think we have the Iwana flag and the U .S. flag, but it's in the back and it's not really for my liking. Back to going green.

We are going to talk about the Green Bible. Steve, it's actually called the Green Bible. Yeah, and I've got the

MacArthur Study edition of that. And you can get it at CBD right up the street here in Peabody, Mass.

That's not Peabody. It's Peabody. That's right. And the product description says this.

The Definitive Green Movement Bible shows that God is green. The Green Bible equips and encourages you to see

God's vision for creation and helps you engage in the work of healing and sustaining creation.

Can I tell you what the main problem is with the Green Bible? The main problem. I have a different name for it.

It would be called the Ipecac Bible. No, the main problem with the

Green Bible is it decomposes in the first year. So it's that environmentally friendly.

It just kind of disintegrates right on you. No, I mean, anything again.

I mean, what's in the Green Bible? And by the way, there is no MacArthur Study Bible in the Green version. What's in the

Green Study Bible? I don't know. Maybe something in the Green Study Bible would be this.

Chapter 1, God created the earth and it was good. Chapter 2 and 3, the curse.

And now through our efforts, let's undo the curse of Adam. All we are saying is give us a chance.

Jim Greenpieces. Well, think about it. The curse. When the federal head,

Adam, ate of the forbidden fruit. By the way, when Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, she was cursed and she was sin affected.

But she was not the federal representative designed by God to represent mankind. It was Adam. So when

Adam ate, it affected him, all those in him. That is to say every person from here on out besides Christ Jesus.

And it affected the earth. And so the earth is cursed. Doesn't creation groan?

Doesn't creation long for the day of redemption? With personified language in Romans Chapter 8?

Is that in the Green Bible? That's what the Bible says. Well, my Bible says. That's not what my Bible says. We're talking about creation care.

We're talking about Earth Day. We're talking about Green Bibles. What are our

Bibles made of? I think they're made of the, what do

I want to call it when I think of timber and lumber and trees. Those are recyclable products.

Those are not recyclable. What do I want to say, Steve? When you plant trees, it's a crop. Yeah, it's a consumable.

That's what I want. That's why we have you on Tuesdays. Wednesdays through Fridays, I typically know what I'm saying.

But on Tuesdays, I need a crutch. Yeah, that's why they call me Mr. Crutch.

1999 for the Green Bible. Yeah. And how's that working out? So far,

I don't think I'm going to do it. Is it getting market share? You know, I didn't do my research.

I thought I should know these things. Steve, how should Christians who are listening today to No Compromise Radio, how should they interact with the world when they've got a friend who's into the green thing?

I mean, unbelievers act like unbelievers. So how should we approach this? Because there's a bigger issue than the greening of the planet.

They have a bigger issue. So how does a believer talk to an unbeliever who's all caught up in green earth?

Yeah, I mean, I think for some of us, maybe the tendency would be to argue, you know, that what they're doing is dopey or what they're doing is a waste of time or, you know.

And really what you kind of do is just kind of set their jaws all the more to press on with their, you know, important environmental issues the way they see them.

And I think what we need to do always with anyone who is an unbeliever is to drive them to the point, present the law to them and drive them to the point where they understand that they're a sinner.

You know, they need to understand that they are a sinner, estranged from God, really standing under condemnation and that any moment, you know, to borrow kind of a visualization of what

Jonathan Edwards said, at any moment, God could withhold his grace and they would go instantly into the pit of hell.

That's what people who are environmentalists or any kind of unbeliever, that's what they need to understand, that they're in danger.

Every single moment they are in danger. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe Earth Day. Wait, wait, wait.

Did you just slip me a Mickey? You've got one of those green Bible. A green Bible Mickey in my own studio.

Sorry about that. Lo siento. There's a book I think out by my friend in South Africa, Mark Christopher, that talks about this.

And I wish I remember the name. I don't know. I might have even given him an endorsement.

It's a terrific book. It's a seminal work.

Everybody should read it. But my good friend, what's his name? This is just so ridiculous.

You have been given energy, time, and everything else. And if you want to—Steve, when

I ride my bike, I see this lady picking up trash along the side of the road. And I think, you know, good for her. She's doing a good deed. It's good to give blood.

It's good to pick up your yard. It's good to be good. It's nice to be nice. That's right. Don't dump the paint in the back of the church campus or something, you know.

So I get all that. But we could have a very clean Earth. And you could be involved in Earth Day celebrations for an entire year,

Earth Year, and still not go to heaven when you die. You need forgiveness of sins. God will take care of the

Earth. There will be a new heavens and new Earth on this, you know, here. And so don't worry about what

God's going to do. People need to be made aware of their plight apart from Christ.

His perfect life in exchange for their life of sinfulness. His death on a cross and His resurrection.

That's what they need to know. No Compromise Radio. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Avendroth 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.

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