Apologetics, Justice, and Race

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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, the radio ministry of Bethlehem Bible Church and Pastor Mike Abendroth.

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Ridiculous voice. Other than to say this, I am Steve Cooley, I am Mike Abendroth's sidekick, the

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Tuesday guy. And today, being a Tuesday, I'm on the air and Pastor Mike is still on vacation.

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And it may seem to you like he's been gone for a while, but it's really not as long as it seems. At least, that's what he tells me.

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So, welcome to No Compromise Radio. Well, I want to talk today about apologetics, a few things that have come up, reading, just going through the archive of Christianity Today magazines that have been decorating my desk for a while.

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A few things have just popped up that I wanted to address today. One is,

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Andy Stanley recently said this, he said that basically, pastors should stop saying the

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Bible says. And you know, it's interesting to me because it's been acceptable, fashionable in Christian circles.

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I mean, this is what Billy Graham would always, you know, would say a lot in his crusades. I mean, he might go to a specific passage, but he would say many times, the

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Bible says or God says or, you know, Jesus says or something of that nature.

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But Andy Stanley says we should not do that. He says that that's not a good thing to do, says the goal is to lead people to a place where they acknowledge

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Jesus to be who he claimed to be. They don't have to believe Noah built an ark and put animals on it to get a person to the point where they believe the

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Bible is authoritative. They first have to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. The reason

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Christians take the Old Testament seriously is because he did. And so, what he's trying to say here is we have to establish that the

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Bible is true by getting people to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. You know what I love, the last part, we want people to believe that Jesus is the

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Son of God. But the question is, do we have to establish the fact that the Bible is credible? Do we have to establish that the

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Bible is true? And the answer is no, a thousand times no, we don't have to do that.

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The Bible is true, it declares itself to be true. It is 100 % true.

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There is no error in it, there is no asterisk in it where we have to go, gee,

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I'm not really certain if that's correct or not. No, the Bible is true.

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Can we quote it or can we say the Bible says, yes, we can? You know, there are a variety of opinions here.

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Let me just read what one says, he's a professor of preaching at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Herschel Yorick, he says,

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Jesus often attributed passages to individual authors like Moses and Isaiah, but he also introduced passages with phrases like, it is written, which means it's in the

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Bible, you know, it's in the Old Testament, or have you never read in scriptures? Okay, both formulas are legitimate, but Stanley's reasoning is unsettling.

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It suggests unbelievers can't relate to the Bible because that phrase, the

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Bible says, or can't relate to the Bible says because that phrase grants equal authority to all parts of the

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Bible. This thinking inevitably leads to a canon within the canon. We should counter the suggestion that Genesis is less reliable than Matthew.

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Is any one part of God's word less reliable than another? And the answer is no.

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Why? Because the Bible has one author throughout. All scripture is inspired by God, that means that it is breathed out by God.

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We don't have to defend the Bible. We don't have to say, you know what, that's Genesis, maybe, you know, some people who copied after Moses wrote down, you know, made mistakes, or maybe it isn't quite as accurate as the gospels, or that's just all wrong.

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I mean, I have an unbelieving friend who thinks that he can kind of pick and choose the teachings of Jesus he wants, or, you know, select the teachings of Jesus out of the gospels, and that's what he'll believe.

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He says he's a follower of Yeshua, or, you know, of Jesus, and he's not a

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Christian. So, you know, what about all that? Is it, you know, is the

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Bible less inspired when Paul says something, or Peter writes something, or, you know,

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Luke the physician writes it, than when Jesus says it, or when someone else says it?

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The answer is no. Jesus said what? It is the scriptures, and he was talking about the

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Old Testament, that speak of him. All the Old Testament, ultimately, if it isn't specifically about Christ, the overall message is about him, and it's building the case for him.

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And it explains over and over again, our sinfulness, that is mankind's sinfulness, I mean, we can't watch how

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Israel behaves and think, you know, we're better than they are, because we're not.

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So, this whole idea of not being able to say what the Bible says, listen, it's perfectly acceptable.

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Another question would be this, you know, is it okay to say the Bible says, or do I have to give an address that is to say, do

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I have to say 2 Corinthians 5 21, or can I say, you know, the Bible says that God made

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Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

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Do I have to give 2 Corinthians 5 21, or can

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I just simply say, the Bible says. And I think you can say the Bible says,

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I just did it a few weeks ago at a funeral. Why would I do that? Because you know what, when people are sitting there and they've never heard gospel preaching before, they couldn't find these verses, you know, if I sat down and kind of coached them through it, then that specific information maybe doesn't really help them.

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If I say the Bible says, it has just as much input or impact on them. Here's the point though.

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The reason we don't have to defend the Bible, the reason we don't have to explain that it's trustworthy, the reason we don't have to make sure that they're

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Christians, that they're believers in the Lord Jesus Christ before we start talking about using the

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Bible is because the Bible is what God uses to draw people to themselves.

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Listen, no compromise radio audience, if you want to see somebody come to Christ, what do you do?

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You preach the Bible to them. Why? Because the Spirit uses the word, if we understand

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Hebrews 4 12 correctly, right? The Holy Spirit uses the word to kind of reveal the sin in our lives, to reveal the weaknesses in our lives.

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And it says it's sharper than any two -edged sword. It's able to divide between the bone and the marrow.

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What's the point of that? The point is, it's like a surgeon's scalpel that just kind of gets in there and makes us feel uncomfortable because it reveals our sinfulness.

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It reveals our unrighteousness. It reveals to us our need of a

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Savior. That's why we use the Bible and that's why we don't have to be ashamed to say the

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Bible says. So, that's just a completely erroneous idea.

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I just reject that completely out of hand. I mean, you know, Andy Stanley would say, who are you,

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Steve Cooley? Well, I'm nobody. I'm just the guy on no -compromise radio on Tuesdays while Mike's on vacation and leaving me gross coffee cups.

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That's all I am. I'm just that guy. Now talking about apologetics, I came across this article too and I thought it was interesting.

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I'm always interested in apologetics and I'm interested in the way people think about it and the way they approach it.

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Apologetics meaning it's the way we apply the Word of God to ministry.

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I mean, it's our whole approach, our kind of worldview on how we approach the gospel, how we present it, how we give a reason for the hope that is within us.

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And I found this one interesting, this is a man in Detroit, a black man, his name's

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Christopher Brooks, and he says, apologetics in urban settings, that means his approach to the gospel must be both intellectual and soul -ish, not soul -less, but soul -ish.

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And what he wants to do, what he really, what he winds up saying, talking about quite a bit is the idea of social justice.

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And I want to give us just a little bit of a taste of this. And I think it is interesting because, you know, especially if you read in the

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Old Testament, it does talk about justice quite a bit. Not really as much in the

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New Testament, and I think there's a good reason for that. And let me just break it down this way.

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In the Old Testament, written to Jews, right, and for a lot of that time under a theocracy, that is, with God as their king, as their ruler.

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And even when he was no longer the king, when they had human kings, they would have prophets and again, he spoke to them directly and there was a unique relationship that God had with Israel that he didn't have with the other nations.

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And so, when he called Israel to justice, when he called for the rich to treat the poor rightly and all these other things, he was really talking to a nation and saying, you,

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Israel, need to be just, you need to treat the poor rightly. Now here's my question.

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My question is, do those passages in the Old Testament apply equally to the

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United States or the United Kingdom or Australia or China or wherever it is that you happen to live?

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And I think the answer is no. Does that mean that we want injustice?

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No. It just means that justice is not the focus of the gospel.

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It was the focus of or a focus of Israel and getting to really getting the

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Israelites, the Jews, to love one another as they love themselves, right?

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That's always the issue. We need to love other people like we love ourselves. So, should we want justice?

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I certainly want justice. The question is, is it an appropriate focus for a ministry, for a church?

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Should we be concerning ourselves with issues of social justice? And here's what I say, my opinion based on what

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I know and what I read in the New Testament is no. We see over and over again

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Peter writing that we need to submit to authorities, the governmental authorities.

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Paul writing that, well, again, we need to keep in mind that for at least part of that time, Nero was the ruler.

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If there's ever been a more unjust ruler in all of history, especially with regard to Christians, it was

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Nero. I mean, he lit, he used them as human torches. He would light them on fire and just use them to light up, you know, the area around where he lived.

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This was a cruel, inhuman, unjust person. And there were no calls for social justice from the apostles during that time.

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So, I find it somehow misplaced. But anyway, he says, many people in our community, meaning the black

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African American community, are simply asking, how do we make it in this country now?

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And the article goes on to say, unfortunately, traditional Protestant apologetics has rarely addressed issues or questions of justice.

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I don't know, man. I'm, man, am I calling you guys, man? I look at our church and I see how the

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Lord is building it, how we're consistently, we're bringing in people, we're not, we're not as white as we sound on the radio.

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And this is fine. This is fine. I mean, God does not, and this is going to be a message

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I'm going to preach here, I think in a few weeks, Lord willing, God does not value, quote unquote, diversity the way the world does.

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He's going to do it, he's going to bring people from all nations, all tribes, all kindreds, all tongues into the kingdom of God, right?

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But it's not the emphasis of the church. He does that. We don't determine who comes into the church, he determines that.

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We don't determine who gets saved, he does that. If we have an outreach where we're just, you know, trying to save, pick a color, white, black, brown, green, whatever color, you know, the focus is on, that'd be wrong.

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It's also wrong to get hung up so much on social justice issues. Why? Because historically, well, biblically,

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I think it's a wrong emphasis, but historically, if you look at churches that get super involved in social justice, what happens?

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Social justice displaces the gospel, so the focus is no longer on Christ, it's no longer on sin and salvation, but it's about fairness and equal treatment under the law.

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And when that's your focus, you may gain a platform. You may have people listening to you and following you and oohing and aahing you and cheering you on and all that, but at the end of the day, here's your problem.

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Your problem is that you've maybe achieved some level of social justice, but the people for whom you've achieved social justice are still hell bound.

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That's not a victory. That's not victory in Jesus. We're not all gonna lock arms and march about how wonderful it's been that we've achieved social justice, and then some of us go to heaven and some of us go to hell.

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What kind of mindset would that be? I mentioned it in the last show, but again, the

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Great Commission is not to go and spread social justice throughout the land, right? The Great Commission is what?

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To make disciples, teaching them all I have commanded you. This is what the church is about.

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It's about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, it's about the good news that God saves sinners. And that's the good news for which

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I'm grateful for. And if we take the time, and I'm not saying we should be not concerned or disconcerned or unconcerned about social justice,

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I want justice. It just can't be the focus. It just can't be the way that we view the world and the way that we try to reach people, which is what we're gonna see here that this man wants.

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He says, white evangelicals typically are drawn to the righteousness of God, the importance of right doctrine and right practices, whereas African Americans and minorities are drawn more to the justice of God.

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I don't believe that. I think that Christians, period, are drawn to the righteousness of God.

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And when we talk about the justice of God, well, what does that mean? The justice of God is not about this world.

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If the justice of God were focused on this world right now, we would never see people like Adolf Hitler in power.

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We would never see people like Joseph Stalin in power, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong. We would never see those people in power because God would take them down immediately.

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Justice is not, when it talks about the justice of God, it talks about, it's in a more cosmic, in a judgment day sense, that each one will get exactly what they deserve in this sense, that if we believe in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, we will be saved, and if we don't, we won't. That's justice. That's right.

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That's what God calls us to, and this idea that we should somehow be focused on fairness in this lifetime, well, let me tell you something.

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This life isn't fair, and there's a reason why it's not fair, and that reason is super easy to understand.

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It's called sin. When you understand the concept of sin, the ubiquity of sin, when you understand that every single person is infected with sin, and if they're not redeemed, in other words, if they're not saved, it permeates every bit of their thinking, of their living, every part of them now are they as bad as they could be?

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No, but their motives are bad, because without faith, it's impossible to believe or impossible to please

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God. Their motives are bad, and their actions are displeasing the sight of God.

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So justice or injustice is in this world, why? Because people are selfish, because people are greedy, because people are sinful.

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That's why we have injustice, and you can't legislate those things out of the world.

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You can try, and you will fail. You will fail over and over again. There's no such thing as justice.

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There's no such thing as fairness apart from, you know, the millennial kingdom, apart from Christ ruling and reigning on this earth.

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So all those kind of things, I mean, we certainly want justice, but that can't be the focus of what we do.

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And I think this is interesting, this CT article, they go in and they ask him this, this pastor, they say, how have you included both righteousness and justice in your setting?

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He says, by allowing the biblical text to speak for itself. We have to come to the text, not through the eyes first of class or race or social position, but as the self -revelation of God.

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Well, I believe that, because if you come to scripture with the idea of class or race or social position, you're going to fail.

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Taking an exegetical approach to both preaching and apologetics means we ask, what does the text say? Amen. And what does it reveal in its totality?

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Amen. Says that approach brings to our attention things that we would not have stumbled on if we had just let our own presuppositions be our guide.

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And again, I agree, I give a hearty amen to that. Says I hope that there are Christians who can speak the language of righteousness to minorities.

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I think that is part of my call. On the other hand, I'm speaking the language of justice to those who haven't had to deal with justice issues.

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We need more bilingual Christians who can speak the languages of both justice and righteousness.

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While I speak English and have a minor bit of facility in Spanish, I don't get this idea of speaking to people and this being an apologetic methodology of speaking to them in terms of justice.

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In other words, if I come to people and I say, look, what we, an unbeliever, and I say, let me speak to you about justice.

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Well, if I'm thinking about establishing justice in this world, I'm thinking about it wrongly. Here's what I would say.

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Let me talk to you about justice. Justice means that you get what you deserve, right? And they'd say, yes.

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And then I'd say, well, you know what you deserve? You actually deserve hell. That might be the end of our conversation.

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But that's what each of us deserves apart from Christ. We somehow think that, many people do,

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I know I did for a number of years, that when we stand before God, that we're going to be able to say, you know what,

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God, I know I haven't always been perfect, but I know that I'm better than a lot of people in your letting into heaven.

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Maybe you are. Maybe you did more good things. But the truth is, justice would say this, one sin, one violation of God's law, one, is enough to offend a holy

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God. And for you to merit eternity, we don't like to think about justice that way.

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I don't think most of us like justice when we think about it that way. We prefer something nicer. But here's the good news.

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The good news is the grace of God, the grace of God, that is not just unmerited favor, but unmerited favor to enemies of God, His demerited favor.

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We need His grace. We need His mercy that He sees our need and responds to that.

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So instead of justice, we should want God to treat us with grace and mercy. Why? Because grace and mercy meet at the foot of the cross so that all of our sin is placed on Christ and all of His righteousness is placed on us.

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So now when I stand before God, by the grace of God, not through anything that I've done, but by Him granting me faith in His Son, His perfect life,

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His death on my behalf, His resurrection from the dead, now when I stand before God and He says, why should

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I let you into heaven? He won't say that. But if He did, He said, why should

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I let you into heaven? I just say, Father, I have no claim on heaven except this.

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I believe in the perfect life of the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe that He lived that life in my place.

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I believe that He died the death that I deserve to die. And I believe that you raised

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Him on the third day to show that you accepted His sacrifice. And Father, if that's not enough, then

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I can't get into heaven because that's all I have. And that's all

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God. Now, this man, going back to this for just a moment here, and I do want to say on WV &E,

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No Compromise Radio, that it's not wrong to be concerned about justice.

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It's not wrong to want to see people around us,

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I mean, certainly we have a number of minorities here in Worcester, in our area around that.

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We love to see people from all backgrounds, all walks of life, come to Christ, but we don't change our message.

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We try to explain it in a way that makes sense to them, but we cannot change our message.

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We can't change our methodology even. We want to meet them at their weakest point.

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We want to help them, but it always has to be the Bible says. It always has to be that you're a sinner in need of salvation.

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Why? Because that's how the gospel is presented in the Bible. I mean, if you go to Acts 17,

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Paul on Mars Hill, he does the same thing. You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the soon coming judge, the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you and 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 10 .15 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.