Bavinck And Systematic Theologies

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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 apostle

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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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My name is Mike Abendroth, and the old days I had everything all scripted out, and it probably showed, and now it's just,

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Lord, help. Why is this Bible here? There's so many Bibles here. I would go to the

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Peabody Mass Christian Book Discount Sale four times a year, and you could get really nice study

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Bibles there, or other Bibles, leather Bibles. They had somebody else's name on them. So you could order your name, you know, embossed on the front or whatever it is.

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And this one had Steve Anselm on it. And I thought, well, I can respect

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Anselm. So I'm maybe now known as Steve Anselm.

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Speaking of Bibles, my all -time favorite Bible I got in the mail the other day, paid a premium price, but you get what you pay for, evangelicalbible .com,

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fine -crafted Bibles. My Bible weighs about five pounds. I got it at NES and Quintel series.

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It is rockin'. It is rockin'. It costs you a couple hundred dollars, but it's like the

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Bible that I'll read, live with, and die with. So that is the Bible.

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I guess if I had something in my house, if my house was on fire, what would

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I do? Of course, I'd make sure to get the kids. Of course, with my wife.

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Wife and kids, dog, Bible. I think that's probably what

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I'd do. And the new sexual fidelity book. Just kidding.

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I've been pretty happy with sales. I printed about 2000 of them, and we got about 1980 left.

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It's not true. That is so funny.

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One of my favorite writers is Herman Bavink, B -A -V -I -N -C -K, and probably 10 years ago,

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Reform Dogmatics came out for volume. Might even be, well, no, the newer version,

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I think, is PNR. That was just a few years ago. I read volume two. I think

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I'm working on volume three now. Just read a little bit here and there. It's great stuff. I mean, just really wonderful.

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I tried to read some systematic theologies over the years. I loved Robert Dabney's systematic theology.

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I loved Calvin's institute, two volume. Make sure you get the McNeil battles.

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No, really, there's not a good other one besides that. Well, I guess the new Banner of Truth, like from the original

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French, isn't bad. I've read the Foundations of the Christian Faith by James Montgomery Boyce.

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That is excellent. I'm currently reading the Turretin. There's a three volume Turretin, so I kind of read that and a little

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Bavink at the same time. Oh, I'm just looking across my room now. I did read a lot of, well,

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I had to read the whole thing, Millard Erickson. That one really wasn't the best, but I had to use that for seminary. I loved

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Robert Raymond's systematic theology. I can't remember what it's called, the new something or other systematic theology of the

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Christian faith or life or something like that. I really enjoyed it though. I read

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Basic Theology by Ryrie years ago. That's not too bad, but not high on my recommendations.

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I am trying to read Culver, but I haven't read it yet. I mean, I need to read

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Culver. I've dabbled with A .H. Strong. I want to read

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Charles Hodge, the three volume set, but still haven't gotten around to it. So Culver, I need to read.

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I need to finish Bavink and Turretin, and by then I'll be infant Baptist. By then.

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Boyce, B -O -I -C -E, I've read that. I haven't read the abstract of systematic theology in its entirety by B -O -Y -C -E, but probably the granddaddy of them all is sitting,

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I heard, on S. Lewis Johnson's old computer, and I'm trying to get there in June to maybe access that and see if we could put that out,

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S. Lewis Johnson. What would we call it? Systematic theology, No Compromise.

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I'm also trying to get his Colossians commentary out, but I don't think it's really working. You know,

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I got too many things to do, too many TV shows to watch. You can always write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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I would have to say, I think some of the snarky ones, the mean ones, they don't make it to my desk.

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Spencer gets rid of those, but you can disagree with me, that's fine. If we're adults about it, it's okay.

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One thing I don't do, though, and I would just challenge all the listeners, getting into social media debates,

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I mean, points of clarification, fine, but the debates, I don't think it's very fruitful. I think it is fruitless.

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I just make my comments and move on. I don't, the

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YouTube channel, the No Compromise Radio YouTube channel, we've got about 150 videos there. You know, sometimes people say things that are awful,

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I delete those, otherwise I just kind of let them ride, but I don't really say much, just once in a while.

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Depends, we need somebody maybe to just take over that job and they could be uber nice as they would correct people.

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But if you spend a lot of time, even on email, back and forth and debating, I don't know,

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I just don't think you could do it. I think it's a culture that we have via email, via Twitter, Facebook and other social media.

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You can read a newspaper article now online and at the bottom, you can make your comments. You can watch a football game online and interact with the live tweets and live broadcast updates and all this stuff.

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And I don't know, so far, no one that I know, I'm sure it's out there and this is only anecdotal evidence.

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No one that I know has changed positions based on email tweets back and forth, emails and tweets back and forth rather.

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In front of me, I have the message Bible. So I probably should pull out the message

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Bible and see what is said here early on. What could we find here?

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Oh, I know. This would be good if I went to Acts chapter two. Let's see, all

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Israel then know this, there's no longer room for doubt. God made him master and Messiah, this

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Jesus whom you killed on a cross. Is that what

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I'm looking for? Doesn't seem to have any kind of sovereignty of God stuff there.

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Oh, there, here it is. Fellow Israelites, listen carefully to these words. Jesus, the Nazarene, a man thoroughly accredited by God to you, the miracles and wonders and signs that God did through him are common knowledge.

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This Jesus following the deliberate and well thought out plan of God. You know, I have read worse.

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I have read worse. Now, Bovink, back to Bovink.

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As I contemplate the cross, and I would encourage you to do that because it speaks to the love of God.

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When you think about God's love, if you think about how great the lover is and how unworthy the loved is, it makes you appreciate how great that love is.

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What love is this? And when I contemplate the cross, and I was reading

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Bovink, he helped me when it comes to Jesus. And when he said, my

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God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now remember, Jesus was quoting Psalm 22, verse one there, calling

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God for the first and I think only time that I can recall, not father, because that relationship is like the father turns his back to the son.

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And instead of being a father, now the son is forsaken by the judge. And if you were a

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Jew, to be forsaken would just be awful. I mean, it's awful for us, but now think about things from a

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Jewish perspective. And Bovink helped me when he said this,

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Reform Dogmatics, page 389. In the cry of Jesus, we are dealing not with a subjective, but with an objective

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God, forsakenness. Let me repeat that, because it was a dash and I thought it was two separate words.

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In the cry of Jesus, we are dealing not with a subjective, but with an objective God forsakenness.

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He did not feel alone, but had in fact been forsaken by God. That's important.

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We might think subjectively and left to ourselves these days in our culture, that's exactly what we do.

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Everything's subjective and through our own lens. And isn't that sad that the father turned his back to the son and now the son probably feels really lonely.

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Bovink says, he did not feel alone, but in fact had been forsaken by God. And now the gravity of the atonement and the cost increases in my mind.

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Bovink, his feeling was not an illusion, not based on a false view of his situation, but corresponded with reality.

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On the other hand, this must not be understood in the sense that the father was personally angry with Christ. All right, so was

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Jesus at this time? Remember the sun is up and it's now darkened because of judgment.

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When you read many times in the Old Testament, the motif of darkness was judgment and God is judging the son for the sins of the bride, for the elect, for all those who would ever believe.

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If you don't wanna say elect, you say for all those who would ever believe because it's the same thing. It just seems like a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

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It's not personal anger. Why would the father be angry with the son when the son is doing exactly what the father sent him to do?

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When you read second chapter of Philippians, this is obedience at the highest level.

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So the son is not going to receive the anger from God, personal anger, but there's going to be judgment because we have substitution happening here.

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Calvin puts it this way. This is still quoted by Bobbink. Yet we do not suggest that God was ever eminent or angry toward him.

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How could he be angry toward his beloved son in whom his heart reposed?

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Matthew 3, 7. Calvin goes on. How could Christ by his intercession appease the father toward others if he were himself hateful to God?

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This is why we are saying he bore the weight of divine severity since he was stricken and afflicted by God's hand,

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Isaiah 53, 5, and experienced all the signs of a wrathful and avenging

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God. Calvin, end quote, still found in Bobbink.

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When you think about the cross, make sure you think rightly. Here, Jesus is bearing sins.

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And if you use the language of God treated him as if, God judged him as if, then you're going to guard yourself from falling into a probably pretty easy error.

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Jesus never sinned, but God treated him as if he did sin. But this whole time, remember,

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Jesus was sent by the father to do this very thing. God isn't personally angry or inimical.

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Inimical? Yeah, inimical. To quote Calvin. How could he be? How could he be angry with the son?

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This is the zenith of obedience. And I think it'd probably just be helpful if I did read

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Philippians chapter two, Kenosis passage, because it sets my mind rightly to consider this.

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Who, this is about Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not account equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even on a cross.

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Therefore, now this is going to help us. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.

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So that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord to the glory of God, the father. That hinge there in verse nine, therefore

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God has highly exalted him. He did because Jesus was obedient to the father, even to the point of death on a cross, the creator of the universe, the son has to die on a cross, fit for the riffraff of the world, it's unspeakable.

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Bavinck goes on to say, also on the cross, Jesus remained the beloved son, the son of his father's good pleasure,

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Matthew 3 and 17. Precisely in his suffering in death, Christ offered his greatest, most complete obedience to the will of the father.

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That's what we just got done talking about. And Jesus himself tells us what the hour would come, tells us that the hour would come when all his disciples would abandon him, but that he would himself not be alone for the father was with him,

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John 16, 32. When you think of the cross and you think about the love of God, make sure you think of the love of God toward sinners, that's wonderful,

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I know. But also think about the love that the son had for the father to go do that and the love that the father had for the son, because he had that love and that love was then, of course, confirmed by the death of Jesus, his obedience.

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Hebrews 5, 8, although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.

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Hebrews 10 additionally tells us some insightful things as we understand the atonement, chapter 10, verse five and following.

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Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me.

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In burnt offerings and sin offerings, you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, behold, I've come to do your will, oh

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God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. When he said above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings, these are offered according to the law.

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Then he added, behold, I have come to do your will. He does away with the first in order to establish the second and by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

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And then we have the son, I've come to do your will. And how could the father be personally angry with the son when this is the pinnacle, this is the apex, apogee,

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I think that might be a good word too. When you consider the atonement and you consider the love of the father, the lovelessness of the bride, the love of the son, it helps.

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Now, just probably you should give me a commission because now you wanna go read Bovink.

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That'd be good, that'd be good. Just don't write, read the baptism part. I have to say, and this is true,

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I have a lot of respect for my Presbyterian friends. I know that's true. But when I was reading Calvin's Institutes, so wonderful is section on prayer is very devotional and of course, predestination stuff.

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And just in general, it's excellent. There's all these characters of Calvin and if you've not read him, you might buy into those.

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But then I got to the baptism section, infant baptism section, and I just thought, there's a different guy writing this or something.

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Probably the best defense for infant baptism that I've ever heard was Ligon Duncan. He did an iTunes series on iTunes, covenant theology.

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I was probably as close as I got to go, you know what, there's an argument to be had there. But we like our

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OPC friends, our PCA friends. You know what, if you're

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Christian Reformed, you should tell me because I don't think we have any Christian Reformed friends. I don't think they listen to No Compromise Radio.

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Once I was in a concert, a conference in Nebraska, and I'm speaking at an,

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I think it was an OPC church. They said, you'd make it a good OPC person. You need to tell Carl Truman that.

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Carl needs to know that. I think most people are afraid of Carl Truman.

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I think Carl Truman's afraid of me. Bovink, Reformed theologians, however, could not speak along those lines since Christ as a true human being was certainly obligated to keep the law, to love

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God above all and to love his neighbor as himself. Yet they rightly rejected the sentiments of Piscator.

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It is one single work that the Father assigned to him and that he finished in his death. His ministry was completed in the giving of his life as a ransom for many.

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Even Paul, who powerfully emphasizes the cross of Christ, regards his death not as the whole, but as the consummation of his obedience.

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He was born under the law, Galatians 4 .4, in the likeness of sinful flesh, Romans 8 .3,

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did not live to please himself, Romans 15 .3. At his incarnation, he already emptied himself and assumed the form of a servant.

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He continually humbled himself and became obedient even to death, Philippians 2, 2 Corinthians 8.

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So it is one single ministry and one obedience which gives life -giving justification to many.

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He's explaining Romans 5 .18 -19. The case is rather that Christ's entire life and work from his conception to his death was substitutionary in nature.

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And I really appreciate Bovink there because there are some who they would affirm that Jesus never sinned, that he perfectly upheld the law, but that obedience, that act of obedience is never credited to the believer.

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And they'll try to use things like Romans 5. And so Bovink is trying to help us think clearly.

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Therefore, Romans 5 .18 -19, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness.

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See, some thinking it's just the cross leads to justification and life for all men. For as by one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

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Bovink, it is the case, to repeat rather, is the case that Christ's entire life and work from his conception to his death was substitutionary in nature.

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It's this single ministry, one obedience culminated, highlighted, capstoned at the cross.

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What else do I have here? Well, we've only got a couple minutes left as I'm talking about Herman Bovink and helpful things that he writes now that it's translated into English.

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Second, while it is certainly true that as a human and with reference to himself,

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Christ was subject to the law, it must be emphasized that his incarnation and being human occurred not for himself, but for us.

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Christ never was and may never be regarded as a private person, an individual alongside and on the same level as other individuals.

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He was from the very beginning a public person, the second Adam. This is language that's used by the way of his

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Bovink's Puritan forebears and John Owen and Thomas Goodwin and many others, public person.

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Bovink says P -U -B -L -I -C, some say P -U -B -L -I -K in the old fashioned way to spell it, but this is a modern translation.

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He was from the very beginning a public person, the second Adam, the guarantor and head of the elect.

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As Adam sinned for himself and by this act imposed guilt and death on all those he represented, so Christ by his righteousness and obedience acquired forgiveness and life for all his own.

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Even more, as a human being, Christ was subject, certainly subject to the law of God and as the rule of life, as the rule of life.

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Even believers are never exempted from the law in that sense, but Christ related himself to the law in still a very different way, namely as the law of the covenant of works.

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Adam was not only obligated to keep the law, but was confronted in the covenant of works with that law as the way to eternal life, a life he did not yet possess.

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But Christ in virtue of, sorry, I'm trying to speed up. But Christ in virtue of his union with the divine nature already had this eternal and blessed life.

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This life he voluntarily relinquished. He submitted himself to the law of the covenant of works as the way to eternal life for himself and his own.

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The obedience that Christ accorded to the law therefore was totally voluntary. Not his death alone as Amsal said, but his life, entire life was an act of self -denial, a self -offering presented by him as head in the place of his own,

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Herman Bavink. All of a sudden this is the third show I recorded in the last couple hours and I can't talk.

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Four volume set, Reformed Dogmatics, Herman Bavink.

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If you can't afford systematic theologies, because they're pretty pricey, there's a bunch of them online.

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And I would just encourage you to listen to some teaching on systematic theologies like there's an

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S. Lewis Johnson series. If you go to the Believer's Bible Chapel in Texas, you can listen to a couple hundred of his messages on systematic theology.

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It helps you put things in the right categories. I also like biblical theology, but the subject today right now is the systematic theologies that I think you should regularly read.

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I'm reading now Turretin, like I said, and it's just fascinating as I'm studying even

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Adam in the garden and what God required and what the reward would have been if Adam would have succeeded.

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And we are done, done for today. That's three shows. And I am zonked, wiped, kaput, finished, alfine.

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El Nino. Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. Don't forget you can write us if you've got questions. Info at nocompromiseradio .com

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or Tuesday guy at No Compromise Radio. 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 in staff or management.