Sin (Part 2)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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."

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

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Mike Abendroth here. I just was taping a show and I didn't really like it, so I taped over it. Usually after about one minute,

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I just let it ride anyway. But it was two minutes and 19 seconds in, and it didn't sound very good, and so I thought, you know what, let's just stop that.

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So I think here's what I'm going to do. I think I'm just going to open up my Puritan Golden Treasury randomly and just give you a quote and then we'll start off the show.

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Actually, you know what, I'm going to pull up the topic that I'm going to talk about today.

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All right, let's see. Let's find a good one. Some talk that the devil hath a cloven foot, but whatever the devil's foot be, to be sure his sons have a cloven heart.

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Richard Alain. Wow. Underneath the topic of sin, Thomas Watson said, sin hath the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages.

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Wow. Thomas Adams, sin is the strength of death and the death of strength.

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So today on No Compromise Radio, a wicked bestseller, the topic of sin.

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But frankly, we know we're sinful. And believers, if you're listening today, you're a sinner to the core, and you cannot please

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God because of your sinful lost condition. And so today I want to talk to you, and I also want to talk to Christians who also have to deal with the presence of sin in their life.

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The power of sin has been broken, the penalty has been broken, paid for, but there's still the presence of sin.

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And so I'd like to talk about sin, because when you talk about sin, it makes you realize the greatness of your salvation, grace greater than all our sin.

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So when you put the spotlight on sin, as uncomfortable as it might be, it helps you realize that the

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Savior, can you imagine? God knew all the sins you'd ever commit, and He still chose you anyway. That's fascinating to me.

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There's a little ditty from the beauties of Erskine, 1745.

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The Arminian Address. Arise ye dead, Arminius cries, arise ye dead in sin, unstop your ears, unclose your eyes, and a new life begin.

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Why will ye die, ye wretched souls, ye dead, why will ye die? Quicken and make your spirits whole, to life eternal fly.

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And here's the answer to that. Deluded seer, but man will lie, still senseless as a stone.

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And you yourself stand fooling by, till both are quite undone. Unless almighty power be moved by God's free will, not thine, to quicken both and make

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His love on both your hearts to shine. It's going to take

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God to draw you to Himself for you to be saved.

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There's nothing you can do except keep sinning, and even the attempt to sin more by trying to extricate yourself from your own sin is bad.

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It's sin because God says you're a sinner, and so don't try to save yourself and rescue yourself in some auto -salvation, auto -pistis,

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I'm going to try to do it myself, pistis meaning faith or to believe. No, it has to be done to you, so quit fighting and trust, quit doing and believe.

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That is the key. It does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy,

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Romans 9 .6. And when you understand depravity, then you get everything else when it comes to salvation.

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When you understand the influence of sin and how it has invaded every nook and cranny of soul, spirit, will, and mind of every person who was ever born except Christ Jesus because of the

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Spirit's ministry in that virgin conception. Then you say to yourself, you know what, we're not sick, we're dead, and therefore we need a

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Savior to do the work. The Savior is alive and He can save. But as many as received

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Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

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It's God's will. He's the one that saved us. We cannot make the clean out of the unclean,

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Job 14 .4. Who can make the clean out of the unclean? No one. And I think Pink's got it right.

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The average evangelical pulpit conveys the impression that it lies wholly in the power of the sinner, whether he be saved.

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Basically, it's God did everything He can do, now He's waiting for you to respond. God helps those who help themselves.

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And so when you are considering salvation from a biblical perspective, considering it meaning if you're a

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Christian and you're thinking through it, or if you're an unbeliever and you're saying, you know, I know I have sin and I'm going to have to pay for those.

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What are my chances? What are my options? What do I need to do? Three views of God's regeneration,

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God making people born again. The first view is God alone is the author of regeneration.

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The second view is man and God are co -authors, they both contribute.

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And then the third option is, you guessed it, man alone regenerates himself. And most people believe, at least

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Christians, that man regenerating himself is patently false, blatantly wrong.

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But most people don't have much of a problem with God and man are co -authors.

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God has done everything He can do, now He waits for you to believe. But the first view,

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God alone regenerates, is known as monergism. God alone is the working one in regeneration.

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God regenerates whom He pleases with no cooperation, with no help, with no input, with no 50 -50, with no 90 -10, with no 95 -5, with nothing contributed from the person, because a person only contributes sin.

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So that's why we need to be born of the Spirit, John 3. The wind blows wherever it pleases.

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You hear it sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the

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Spirit. Now there's a little book called Bible Truths Simply Explained by Ramsbottom, but it used to be called something else.

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It was a book for children, but we had written 100 or 200 years ago.

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But we've become so dumbed down in our society today theologically, the spiritual literacy rate is pretty low for people, that it got turned into an adult book.

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So it was a kid's book, and talking about regeneration, Ramsbottom says this for children.

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The story has often been told of a clock that just would not go. Leave it a few days and see what happens, was suggested, but still the clock would not go.

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It needs oiling well, so this was tried, but still the clock would not go. All kinds of things were tried.

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Give it a good shake, put it in a different place. At least it was taken to the shop where it was bought, at last rather.

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We shall have to send it back to the makers, they said. It came back from the makers with just one comment.

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It needs a new inside. The spring is broken. Then Ramsbottom said this. What a picture of man.

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Why? Because he is wrong at heart, his mind and will and affections and understanding.

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They're all completely wrong. He is a sinner. The Bible word for man is that he has fallen.

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He's fallen. That's why, listen to what happens here in Acts 16, 14.

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And a certain woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening.

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And the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. That's exactly what we need.

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God alone. So which one is that? Monergism, synergism, or autogism? I just made up the autogism, self -working.

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Which one is it? Of course she opened her heart, but it was in response to.

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See, we're back to cause and result. We're back to cause and effect. God caused salvation and we responded with belief.

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Think of Lazarus. That's a good picture of God alone working.

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Lazarus arise. It was not Lazarus who did it because he was dead. Let's think about it this way.

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The unbeliever is not only dead in sin. Can you imagine how great your salvation is if it would be one thing if God had to save you just because you were enslaved to sin?

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That was bad enough. But can you imagine there's like extra handcuffs around you?

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One of those handcuffs is the evil world system. Has you?

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Ephesians 2, 1 talks about being dead in trespasses and sins, but it's worse than that. I mean, that's bad.

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That's damning, of course. We wouldn't have to go any farther. But to show you how great

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Christ's love is, his motivation for salvation of grace and love and mercy found in verses 4 through 10 of chapter 2.

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He says in Ephesians 2, 2, in which you formally walked according to the course of this world.

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You're running as an unbeliever according to the course of the world.

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You're walking that way. You're devoted to the world. The world is your best friend.

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And you're not running to God. You're running from him. Lifestyles of the spiritually dead.

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And here the world, the satanically organized system, as one commentary calls it, has you.

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A value system. And this is not the worldliness that the fundamentals would believe in. Don't smoke and don't drink and don't dance and don't go to the

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Passion Pit movie house. These are all the isms that the world lays out.

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Materialism, hedonism, idolatry, religionism. Have a little bit of God, but don't go too far.

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No wonder Paul says in Romans 12, do not be conformed to this world. Don't be fashioned to this world, this evil age.

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But there's another shackle that unbelievers are slaves to Satan.

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So it's going to take the power of Christ, mediated through the

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Spirit's work, to make dead men alive, to make those who are enslaved to the world system following after its course, righted.

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And then now, thirdly, according to the Prince of the Power of the Air, unbelievers follow the

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Spirit, the unholy Spirit, Satan himself. His power, the ruler of this world,

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Jesus calls him in John 12. The ruler of the demons, he's called in Matthew 9.

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The God of this world, 2 Corinthians chapter 4. The ruler of the kingdom of the air.

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And he enslaves people. It says that we are to preach the gospel in 2

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Timothy chapter 2, so that people may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.

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Satan's got our wills all wrapped up. And we're so deceived as unbelievers that we think we have free will and we're really doing

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Satan's will. We're just pawns. Jesus said in John 8, you are of the father of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.

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He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

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Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

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This is what one man says, dancing the devil's tune. And Ephesians 2 goes on to say of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

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We are so enslaved to sin, the world, Satan's clutches, that we need a great

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Savior. Where's the great Savior? And if the great Savior is ourselves, we can't get out of that prison.

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If the great Savior is some person, well, they better be perfect because they've got sin.

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If they do have sin, and we know they do, then they've got to save themselves. They can't go around saving other people.

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And you know, the thing is, it's almost, well, it is going to get darker before it gets lighter.

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Verse 3 of Ephesians 2, among them, we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

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We had cravings, we had sinful nature, and we just acted out on those things.

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The only thing that held us back was money and opportunity. And when we couldn't have an actual physical person there to sin with, or have actually physically have money there to sin with, or opportunity there to sin, we could do it all in our minds.

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Our thoughts, just uncontrolled, our thoughts entertaining anything that they wanted to.

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Romans 8, for the mind set on the flesh is death, sinfully following the flesh.

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Slaves of disobedience, slaves of the flesh. We needed help. Jesus said in John 8, anybody who commits sin is a slave to sin.

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So yeah, I got free will. Well, I guess a broken wing that a bird has allows it to be free to fly, but it's not flying anywhere.

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It's dive bombing. One theologian said, while evil men are free to do what they want, they are not free to do what they should.

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That's the real issue. You can do what you want, but you can't do what you should. Yet man is responsible.

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Man is responsible to make choices. Aren't they?

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Isn't they? We need a rescuer. We need a rescuer.

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Can you imagine God says, oh yeah, you're a child all right. This isn't the liberal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of all men.

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God's your father and you're the child. This is children language, but you're children of wrath.

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Doesn't that sound old fashioned? This controlled judicial wrath that God has.

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Not flying off the handle, not last straw kind of thing, not revenge that's arbitrary.

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It's not like God's got a mood ring on and it heats up a little bit and out comes his wrath. But as Lloyd -Jones says, this is nothing but the other side of the love of God.

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God is not George Burns. God is not by God's type of God.

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Hebrews 10 says, vengeance is mine. I will repay. The Lord will judge his people. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living

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God. Hebrews 12, for our God is a consuming fire.

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Deuteronomy 4, for the Lord our God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. A jealous

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God. And we are children of wrath as unbelievers. What are we going to do?

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John 3, Jesus said, he who believes in the son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

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What are we going to do? We're born sinners. Psalm 58, the wicked are estranged from the womb. These who speak lies go astray from birth.

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What are we going to do? God is so holy and we are so sinful. Habakkuk 1, thy eyes are too pure to approve evil and you cannot look on wickedness with favor.

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What are we going to do? We can't save ourselves. Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil.

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Jeremiah 13, 23. What are we going to do?

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We need help. How are we going to save these things that used to be gained to me? Now I've counted them as loss.

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We need Christ Jesus. That's why I don't mind talking about sin because Jesus is a friend of sinners.

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Jesus's grace is greater than all our sins. We have a savior who saves us from sin, from Satan, from the evil world system and from God himself and his wrath.

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Are you saved? Well, if you're saved, it's more than just saved from your sin's consequences, although that's a beautiful thing.

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You are saved from the wrath of God. And if you're listening today, I want you to know that every person listening, every person alive on this earth today has a personal relationship with God, a very, very personal relationship.

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That's why some people, when they evangelize, they do so erroneously. This is if I have a personal relationship with Jesus.

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And they're believers, and so they say that. Well, what's wrong with that? Well, that's only half the truth, because every person has a personal relationship with Jesus.

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And it's either a relationship with Jesus as friend, Jesus as your high priest,

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Jesus as your savior, your captain, your redeemer, your advocate, your savior, your reconciler, your friend, your brother, right?

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Or you have a personal relationship with Jesus who is going to be judge, jury, and executioner.

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And Jesus takes sin against him very, very personally. It is a personal atrocity when

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God the creator does not receive homage from his creation.

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That he has blessed you in so many ways, physically, sun and the moon and the stars and rain and food and pleasure and a wife and children and work.

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And there's a thousand things that God has done in his good pleasure as creator to give you as a creature.

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And then to rebel against him, to have a son, his only son, the son in whom he's well pleased, and you go against him.

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God the king does not like that. If you want to get in good graces with the king, you don't spit on the son with your lack of worship and honor and adulation and living for the king, the king

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Jesus. So everyone has a personal relationship with Jesus.

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And the only thing that can help you, save you, is

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Christ Jesus. He's the only one. And so Paul, the Christian persecutor and maybe even

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Christian killer, at least approving the death of Christian, meets Jesus one day and Christ's righteousness is greater than Paul's sins.

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And that's our only hope today. If you are a sinful person, and I know you are, it doesn't even matter how sinful you are because there's enough grace for you.

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I've met people before and they think they have been beyond forgiveness. They've done too many heinous things.

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They've done too many horrible things, and they don't think there's forgiveness to be found. But we have a great

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Savior. And if you are not believing today because you think Jesus's death somehow couldn't cover your sins because of the horrible, heinous atrocities that you've committed with your hands and body and mind,

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I want you to know that there's free grace for you today. Stop thinking that God's grace isn't great enough and believe what the

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Bible says. Believe that God's grace is sufficient. And here our just God lays on Christ all of our sins, past, present, future.

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And Jesus pays for those. And then God the Father takes all of Christ's righteousness and lays it on us.

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We were sinful. Jesus was not sinful. Yet Jesus is credited with our sins, and we are credited with Christ's righteousness.

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And there's our representative Christ on the tree. He lived the life we couldn't live but had to live. And we have our substitute on the tree.

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Someone had to be punished for the sins we committed. And that great double imputation was confirmed by the resurrection of Christ Jesus.

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And so there's a Savior that can save you from your sins. If you think they're too bad to be saved from, then you have not studied

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Christ Jesus. You need to pick up the Bible and go to the front table of contents. Scroll down there to New Testament, Mark.

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And here the gospel of Jesus Christ according to the servant Mark. And we learn about Jesus, how he came to give his life a ransom for many.

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And he was the ransom price. He was the high priest and the sacrifice. He made reconciliation because his blood, his vicious, brutal death was the ransom price.

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He's the one who not only preached about God and the kingdom, but was

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God himself preaching about God and the kingdom. And so when Paul says in Philippians 3, whatever things were gained to me, these things

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I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. I think about these. I regard these things with deliberate judgment.

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All my achievements I now count as failure. All my credit side, it's transferred to the debit side.

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He used to put confidence in the flesh. Now he doesn't. And why is that?

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Because he realized his sin and he realized how great Christ was. And said then in chapter 3, verse 8, more than that,

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I count all things to be loss in the view of the surpassing value of knowing

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Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them, but rubbish in order that I may gain

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Christ. Can you imagine Paul seeing Jesus on the

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Damascus road? And you're not going to be able to see Jesus. But if you're an unbeliever today, you can call out to the same

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Jesus that saved brutal Christian persecutor, Paul. He's the same

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Jesus. And you know you're sinful. Let's not fake it. It's like the lady at Walmart.

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She said, I know I'm a sinner. I just don't like to admit it. And so you're wicked to the core and you need to give

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God honor. And it's not too late. Today's the day. There's only one Savior, Christ Jesus. And there's only one time to repent.

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That's now. That's now. Today's the day. You ought not to be thinking, I'll do it later.

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You should ought to be thinking there's only one time. That's now. Don't pass go. Don't collect $200 as a slogan says.

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Today's the day to repent and believe in Jesus Christ, the God -man who was raised from the dead and who's coming back.

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He's going to come back as either your Savior or he's going to come back as your judge. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.