Tim Kellers new book "Generous Justice"

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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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Today is Tuesday, and today Steve Cooley is with me in person.
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Season's greetings to all of our loyal No Compromise and some of our disloyal No Compromise listeners.
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Happy Hanukkah. Yeah, that too. I do like the new Mahdosh Yahu song about Hanukkah. Really? I haven't heard it yet.
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Yeah. I ask my kids, they go to a public school, and a couple of them do. One's homeschooled, because I'm an equal opportunity school educator.
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Yeah, because they used to go to a Christian school, too. That's exactly right. So you've done all three. So I can blast all three. Yeah. And I said to the kids, are you singing for the holiday concert?
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Are you singing any songs about Jesus? Of course they'll sing Christmas songs. Any songs about Jesus? No. But then my one daughter said, but we are singing some song about some kind of Jewish candle, minera, minera, minora.
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Yeah. I said, okay. Well, everything's free game except Jesus. We want to invite you, though, to a concert at Bethlehem Bible Church.
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If you're listening today, Bethlehem Bible Church is having a concert this Friday, December 17th.
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Today is Tuesday the 14th, Friday the 17th, 7 p .m. We have all kinds of Christmas music, classical music.
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We have children, handbell choir, gospel preaching. Bring your unsaved friends if you have them, or if you want to bring all your believing friends.
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We would encourage you to come get there early and get your seat, 7 p .m., Bethlehem Bible Church. Last year was great, wasn't it,
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Steve? Yeah, it was. It was really packed, and I would just amplify what you said about coming early.
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Make sure you get a seat, and make sure that you get a parking space. That's right.
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We're running out of room here. And we've actually had many No Compromise Radio listeners attend
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Bethlehem Bible Church. And so if you're listening today, and you have a good Bible teaching church, stay there. If you're listening today, and you don't go to church, or you're at a bad
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Bible teaching church, you need to leave that church. We'll see you on Sunday. There you go. Can I be direct? Yeah, that's pretty simple. That is pretty simple.
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Now, what we'd like to do today is, it's kind of a Popery Tuesday today.
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We like to do that. That's just what's on our mind, what we want to talk about, what we like, because the show's all about what we do, who we are,
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Mike and Steve, Steve and Mike, et cetera. And I have to clarify, it's not about Roman Catholicism today. You didn't say
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Pope -ery, but Po -pery. That's right. And the first thing we'd like to do is talk about Tim Keller's book,
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Generous Justice. And he is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church.
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He said a lot of good things, gospel -centered, excellent writer when it comes to literary skills.
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But we have seen this deviation in Tim Keller's ministry, and we just want you to ponder that.
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Well, here's my first question, and this is just a little bit of an interview with Tim Keller.
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And he says this, and I don't really know that you can defend this. It's biblical that we owe the poor as much of our money as we can possibly give away.
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What verse would you use to support that, Pastor Mike? Well, I'm looking here under 3rd
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Apollos. And I think that's right after 2nd Delphi. Well, didn't
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Jesus say to the rich young ruler, give all that you have to the poor? Isn't that the same thing as give the poor as much of our money as we can possibly give away?
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Well, I guess it's salvation by philanthropy then. Jesus is, of course, as the omniscient eternal
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Son of God who's cloaked himself with humanity, he knows what that man's idol is, and that man's idol is greed and covetousness.
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And so God, the Son, goes straight for the jugular and says, you know what? This is the issue.
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You don't think you've broke the Ten Commandments? You are a lawbreaker, and you don't understand the holiness of God. And so here's repentance number one.
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It has nothing to do with give your money away. It goes back to the whole MacArthur thing. If you do that, then the person who received the money is now in danger of their salvation.
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So it's that game where you go around the chairs. What's the chair game? Musical chairs.
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Musical chairs. And the last one holding all the money loses. This is monetary chairs, right?
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So that has nothing to do with it, and we are sliding back to this liberalism and social justice issue that we would like to warn our readers of.
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Now, he says something here. He's asked, what do you hope readers will learn about the relationship between God's grace and justice?
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And, you know, at the end of this little quote here, he says, according to the Bible, if you've really been changed by the grace of God, it will move you toward the poor.
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And I think that's true. I think as, you know, the Holy Spirit works on you, you are filled with compassion for people.
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I think that's, you know, the essence of what he's trying to say there. But then he goes on. Here's the next question.
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Many Christians hear justice and think about issues like sex trafficking, HIV, AIDS, and so on.
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Would you include those in your definition? Now he goes on and he says, we are not just talking about helping the poor, but helping those who—helping people whose rights are being violated.
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And first of all, I don't know really how you determine that. In other words, if people live under a different constitution in a different foreign land, how do we decide if their rights are being violated?
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But then he goes on and he says, what people are due is not an easy thing to determine from the Bible. Okay. So then how would we determine it?
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Gizzard? You just have to go with your gut, right? We're not talking about just helping the poor, but helping people whose rights are being violated.
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So then what? I'm compelled by virtue of being saved to go to Thailand and unchain those four -year -olds from, you know, working all day long.
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I mean, how far can I—how far can I take this? I don't like it when, you know, things that are wrong in different cultures are done.
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But I can't change that. You know, not me myself. Well, Steve, this is what
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I see. And I guess I'm directly talking about Tim Keller, although I don't know his motivations. And so I want to somehow distance myself from some direct accusation.
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But here's the way I feel. Here's the way I kind of emote through this. When you are in a large city like New York City, where Keller is, and when you have now opportunities that I'll never have in terms of public discourse, dealing with people in mainstream media,
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New York Times, all these other places, you have a worldwide platform now. I think the temptation is—and whether Keller is bought into it or not, it seems like he has—the temptation is to try to round off some of the edges of Christianity, the rough edges, so we seem like we are not some kind of crazy, moral majority, white, bigoted, anti -homosexual people.
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So then we'll have a platform. And so, Steve, to me, this is the same issue as with his stance on theistic evolution, to try to somehow make everybody think that we're not some kind of bigoted, myopic,
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Christian, right -wing, fundamentalist, born -againers, so then people will finally listen to our message.
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And I think that's the wrong way to go about ministry. Yeah, you have to establish your credibility so that people will listen to the gospel wrong.
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You know, it's exactly the fact that I have no credibility is what makes the gospel credible if you follow that.
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In other words, it's not me. It's not about me. It's not the messenger. It's the message. Listen to this.
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He says— Before you say that, Steve, let me just say this, because my mind's not thinking well, but I did immediately, as you were saying that, consider 1
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Corinthians chapter 1. Paul says to the church of Corinth, you've got a wrong wisdom, and that wrong wisdom says you're trying to make the gospel palatable to the
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Jews and to the Greeks. They're going to think it's a stumbling block and stupidity, so just continue to give them the crucified
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Messiah as the only substitution for sin, of course, raised from the dead. Then what does he say in verses 26 to 31?
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God not only uses the foolish gospel to save people, He uses foolish people. That is, it's not really foolish gospel and it's not really foolish people, but the world thinks they are.
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Not many mighty, not many wise, not many noble, not many great people, but He uses people like us, thankfully, and our listeners, thankfully, to preach the gospel.
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So that's where we have the real problem when we try to outsmart God in how to deliver the message to unbelievers.
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So I'm sorry I had to go on that little rant. No, that's good. And he says, he goes, many Christians say that the best way to do justice in the world is to be a
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Democrat. Others say it's to be a Republican. I'm trying to shake people loose and say that you need to be involved in your political party without that kind of triumphalism.
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And I think he just gave us the essence of the whole thing there. Listen, political activism,
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I guess, has its own place. The question is, is that place within the church in any form?
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You know, we've talked about this before, but political activism doesn't really, it doesn't lead to anything other than political activism.
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I wonder what all the political activists did in the days of Nero. You know,
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I, of course, you say, well, you know, I want to be politically active. And if we can change the laws on killing babies in the womb, that would be good.
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I'm not denying that there is a place for some people to vote and Christians in politics.
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But listen, we believe that this is a salvific agenda for the church. And the church always goes south when she begins to do this kind of thinking, where if we only do ministry this way, we can have a better platform and then eventually get to the gospel.
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Because sooner or later, the gospel then goes and these kinds of people often turn into liberals, social gospel people.
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My problem, Steve, is these people, just like Machen said when he did his doctorate over in Germany, the liberals are super nice.
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They're friendly, they're kind, they're articulate. And so I'm not calling Tim Keller some theological liberal, but it seems that he's leaning towards that kind of liberalism with theistic evolution.
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Genesis 1 is poetry. Now we've got to be generous in our justice. And I'm not denying
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James chapter 1. Should we be nice to poor people? Should we feed the poor? Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. What good does it do if we just say, be warm, be filled?
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But now, and this is spot on to what you were saying, he says, but the heart of what
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I'm supposed to do is preach the word. Correct. Win people to faith. OK. And then to disciple them, the
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Great Commission. Right. And then he says, but I can't disciple people without telling them, help the poor.
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Really? That's a key part of discipleship. It's not become more like Christ. It's not be obedient to the word.
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It's not study and learn more about God and think greatly of his grace to you. It's help the poor.
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Well, I would love to tell people about how to help the poor and how to consider the poor. But if you look at the book of Ephesians, let's say, let's just take a big overview of Ephesians.
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This is not some book written to a church riddled with all kinds of problems. And Paul had to correct them and spank them like the churches at Galatia.
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Paul writes to this church and he says, you know, God has a great plan. He works that plan out through Christ Jesus. He does it to the praise of his glory.
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Look how he does. Look at how he reconciles the church. I mean, the Gentiles and the Jews. Look at how he reconciles
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Christ with his sinful people, sinful people. And it goes on and on and on. And here's my question,
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Steve, you know what I'm leading up to, because you know me. Where does it say anything about ministry to the poor in Ephesians chapter four, five and six?
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It doesn't. It talks about how we need to interact with one another in church and in our homes.
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It talks about how we need to look out for the world, you know, when we get into the believer's armor later on, you know, spiritual warfare and all that kind of thing.
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What it doesn't do is tell us, you know, to go conquer the the culture for Christ in terms of poverty and other way.
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It doesn't do that. And see, what happens is if we teach a congregation, let's say you get 50 new believers and you set them down and disciple them, which
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Keller would like us to do and we would like to do, and we taught them only Ephesians, don't you think their hearts would be so changed by the gospel and then changed by the word of God, understanding how to love other people and the second great commandment that their hearts would naturally be with some affinity to poor people?
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Absolutely. Absolutely. But I mean, there are just so many issues here. He goes on, and the last quote here, he says, talking about idols, he mentions first race that we that we like to look down on other people.
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But listen, this is a quote. He says, another idol would be money, which serves the idol of security. In Deuteronomy 15,
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God says that if you care for the poor, he will provide for you. You know, some people don't really want to trust that.
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And they say, quote, I need a lot of savings. But God is saying, quote, that's distrust.
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You're looking to money to give you a feeling of confidence that I should be giving to you. End quote. Well, maybe he gives all his money away.
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That would be my first comment that comes to my mind. And if he does, I guess he's consistent. I don't know.
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But I think it's probably good if you're able to save and have a pension. You could have an IRA 401k.
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Should I cash in my 401k? Give it to the poor. And, you know, here's the question. Do you solve people's problems simply by giving them money?
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Do their lives become transformed because, you know, you see somebody who's homeless and you put them in a home?
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And the answer is no. For the vast majority of people, and I was in law enforcement for more than 20 years.
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The vast majority of people who are in situations like that are there not because they don't want to be, but because of choices, because of sin.
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It's because they won't work or because they've, you know, given their lives over to drugs or alcohol or some other sin.
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Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. We're with Steve Cooley. Info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. You can get our shows on iTunes.
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You can listen here on WVNE, our proud local station. I'm pretty proud of them because this is fairly...
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I'm very proud. I'm very proud of them. I mean, when they asked us to do another season, you know, I just go, wow.
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And if you'd like to listen to shows, you can get on iTunes or the radio podcast is on www .NoCompromiseRadio
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.com. And we just wanted to talk about this book because it's an influential book. And we purposely pick different books to put in our bookstore at Bethlehem Bible Church and to promote.
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And I haven't seen any Tim Keller books in the bookstore, have you? Zero. Well, even if you disagree with us, here's our paradigm for you then.
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Good, better, best. Why read good books when you can read the best books? You could pick 50 theological great books, magnum, the magnus opi books.
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Is that the right word? I don't know. Sounded kind of interesting. You could pick the best books, the 50 greatest books of all time theologically by some newer authors and older authors as well.
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And I wouldn't find any Tim Keller books on the top 50. I mean, my book wouldn't make it on the top 50 either.
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So pick 50 great books and start working your way through those. Don't read all the newest stuff. Read some older books as well.
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And we just want you to watch out for these books that lend themselves to cut the corners off the gospel, put secondary issues primary.
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You know, somebody gets saved, the first thing you're going to tell them, this is how Jesus died, substitutionary death. Here's some nuances.
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Don't forget about the literal resurrection. And B, feed the poor, help the poor. That's not how I disciple people.
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That's not how Paul discipled people. Of course, it will come out of an overflow of love for people that are needy.
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But we are well, I mean, even even this idea of savings being bad,
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I need a lot of savings. That's a bad thing. Is it really bad? Not only for retirement purposes, but, you know, especially in times of economic turmoil.
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If you have a job out there right now, shouldn't you be saving as if you might lose your job?
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Because guess what? You might. So wouldn't it be prudent? You know, is it a lack of trust in God or is it being a good steward of his resources?
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You know, we talk about giving and that sort of thing. Well, it's also wise to be a saver. It's wise to look forward.
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I mean, we don't live in days of food famines anymore, but we can live in times of economic famines.
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And we need to look at that. Well, and when it comes to famines, I think of Amos 8. It's a famine for the preaching of the word of God.
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Preach it. All right. Let's go to the next one. We have an emailer and she is named
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Christy. And Christy says that she found out. And where is she from? Christy is from.
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Yeah, yeah. She's from British Saskatchewan. Again, British Saskatchewan.
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She's from Saskatoon. Sorry. OK. I found you guys through Wretched Radio, et cetera, et cetera.
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I recommend you to all my FB friends. Is that F .B. Meyer? No, that's Facebook. Oh, yes, of course.
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He's not very up to date. I have one suggestion. OK, one here. Here's the drum roll.
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Yeah. Your podcast doesn't seem long enough. Oh, come on. I'm accustomed.
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I'm accustomed to two hours of wretched radio. And this is over so quick. Well, she could have said quickly, but that's all right.
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At least she spelled it right, even though it was. Would this be a good time to talk about our end of your budget troubles? We don't have any.
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I just, you know. I love S. Lewis Johnson when it comes to money. He said, we will never ask for money.
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We don't ask for money for the tapes. We don't say we've got to put the show on the Dallas stations.
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We need money. If you write us and ask for some of the booklets for Believers Bible Foundation on Genesis, which
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I did 20 years ago, they send it for free. They never mention anything. And he said, we don't ask people for money.
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And and he says that not many people send us money. But the
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Lord provides for the ministry. And so that is so good. I think we have a link on our
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Web page that people could donate if they want. We should probably just take that off. So we're just anti that. And then we just, you know, in spite of it all.
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OK, here's one by Sarah. Sarah is writing. Hello. Where's Sarah from? Sarah is actually from a small.
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She is. I have a question about something you touched in your broadcast on October 20th regarding complete sufficiency of teaching, preaching, worship.
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However, you mentioned let's not use Psalm 150 when it comes to exhibition of dancing in worship.
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Could you please expand? What is the proper hermeneutic for Psalm 150? What would be the right understanding of dancing for God in praise in his care?
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Sarah. So when it comes to dancing, how do we figure dancing? Because dancing is in the
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Bible, isn't it, Steve? Yes, it is. Dancing for praise unto
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God is in the Bible, isn't it, Steve? Yes, it is. And here I am on. I'm talking about we should not have some worship dance team in a
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New Testament church. How can I reconcile? Sarah would like to know this kind of hermeneutic.
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Doesn't Paul talk about that in the book of Colossians where there needs to be dancing in the church? Well, let me just read this here.
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Answer, he doesn't. Psalm 150, praise him with timbrel and dancing.
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So is it OK to praise God with dancing? Only if we have a timbrel. I've met a lot of timbrel players and that's not timbrel playing.
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Praise him with stringed instruments and pipe. So what do we do?
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Well, that means you have to have a pipe organ. And the only reformed instrument that we can use.
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And strings would be violins, cellos, basses. Praise him with loud cymbals.
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Praise him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. OK. Now, what
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Steve didn't know, because he probably didn't listen to the show when I did the show on dancing. And basically my context was these praise team dancerettes who are 15 years old, tight dresses with streamers running down the aisles, getting ready for the pastor's sermonette for Christianettes, that kind of thing.
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And so the question is, if the Bible talks about praise dancing, why don't we do praise dancing in a
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New Testament church? Answer is, I go about this a different way.
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I'll ask you the question, then we'll answer your question, Sarah. David is the one that wrote this psalm.
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David could not be a New Testament elder or a pastor. Why is that, Pastor Steve? Because he committed adultery and murder.
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That's right. He was no longer a one woman man. Now, certainly he was a man after God's own heart. He was forgiven. He knew the joy of forgiveness,
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Psalm 32 and Psalm 51. But what David was doing in the Old Testament, we just can't say what
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David did in the Old Testament and what was prescribed worship in the Old Testament is what we should do in the New Testament.
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You just can't make that jump. And so what we do as New Testament believers, and I know Steve is on board with this, because like I said last week, he's a pragmatist and Steve dancing.
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Can you imagine Mike and Steve dancing to the church? Oh, no, I can't. Tiptoe through the tulips. I think we'd have to call that dances with wolves.
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Tanaka. What was he? Tanaka. Whatever he had for the wolf. Tanaka. Banaka. I don't know.
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The Hebrew version of the Old Testament, the Tanaka. What happens is when it comes to dancing, just because something is in the
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Old Testament doesn't mean, and described in the Old Testament, doesn't mean it's prescribed or given to the
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New Testament to put into their worship service. And so we believe like the Presbyterians in something that they would call the regulative principle.
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The New Testament regulates what we do in a worship service. And Steve, I think just recently you preached on that, didn't you?
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Yes, we did. And does the New Testament say that you should dance? No, it says we should publicly read scripture.
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It says we should preach the gospel. It says that we should preach from the Bible. It says we should sing, but it doesn't say anything about dancing.
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Yes, giving. We would give. We would do baptism. We would Lord's Supper.
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Yeah, yeah. So there's lots of things. And so we just want to focus on those things. And once we get those right, then perfect, we might move on to something else.
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But until then... Isn't it interesting that many churches today do not want to focus on the things that they're supposed to do and want to focus on the things that are never mentioned or are mentioned in the
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Old Testament, like dancing. Well, how would you regulate dancing? You'd say, well, do you have to be a member to dance?
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Do you have to have a fine figure to dance? Do you have to be a good dancer to dance? Here would be my principle. You can dance if you want to.
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You can dance if you want to. What's that? That's a safety dance. Yeah, it is. Who sang that?
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It's Men With Hats or Men Without Hats. Men Without Hats, yes. That would be a good New Testament principle, too.
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First Corinthians 11, you can't have your head covered if you're a man in the New Testament church. Men Without Hats.
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A theologically correct band title. Who knew? That's for Pete and Maynard. Hermeneutical principle is this.
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You have Old Testament descriptions of dancing and praising God with your dance, but you'll have no
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New Testament prescription for that. So description, prescription only on No Compromise Radio. Steve, do you know how to do the two -step?
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No, I do not. Because we've got 15 seconds to two -step out of this place. By the way, yeah, go ahead.
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Well, I was just going to say we'd invite you again to our concert on Friday night, seven o 'clock here.
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Be here early, 307 West Lancaster Street in West Wilson or Lancaster Street in West Wilson.
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God bless. 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 six. 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.