Calvinism (Part 3)

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What Jesus said before He was born (Part 4)

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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 king.
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Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio. Mike Abendroth, your host here.
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I am about running out of gas. I am pretty much on overdrive right now.
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Taught the IBS class last night, at the New England Institute for Biblical Studies on the history and theology of Calvinism.
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This is the third show I've taped today. I think this week, this is show seven that I've taped for No Compromise Radio, and just finished my sermon for Sunday morning, and I am pretty much spent.
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So I'm gonna try to have to turn this up a little bit. I guess what I need is coffee. That's probably what
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I need. Starbucks. On No Compromise Radio, we always tell you, we don't want your money.
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You don't have to send any money. We're not gonna beg for any money. I think there is a link. If people ever wanna give, they can.
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I've always found it interesting that if you really wanted to give money to a ministry, you could figure out a way, right?
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You could figure out a way to say, you know, I'd like to give them some money. Just really can't do it. It just seems too hard.
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But so I don't wanna ask for money. Times are tough. It's towards the end of the year. If you'd like this ministry to be on your station, you give money.
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You're not gonna hear that, but what you're going to hear is, if you'd like to continue this ministry here on WVNE 760, and on podcasting and iTunes, we would like coffee.
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We need coffee scent. Starbucks isn't bad, as long as it's dark roast, but Pete's is what we prefer,
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P -E -E -T -S. And so please send Pete's coffee, or we're not gonna be able to continue to be on this radio ministry, and souls might be lost because of the lack of teaching on Calvinism on the radio station.
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So yeah, I know that sounds stupid. All right, here we are again. Part three on the quiz regarding Calvinism.
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Remember, we've been going through this quiz to just get your taste buds wet on what does the Bible teach?
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What does church history teach us about this doctrine, this hated doctrine called
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Calvinism? And so this is a good introductory quiz that I gave, actually, the class at New England Institute for Biblical Studies, north of Worcester, Bethlehem Bible Church, bbchurch .org.
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All those classes are online. You can get the syllabus, you can get the handouts, you can take the quizzes.
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I think we're actually starting to tape some of the classes, much to my chagrin. I should probably watch the tapes before I allow them to post it.
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But anyway, that's just life. And so let me give you the quiz to catch up so once we get here to question 18.
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Today we only have four questions, 18, 19, 20, and 21. For those of you that didn't listen to last week and last week before that, the week before that, shame on you.
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I don't know what you're doing, but we expect you to be tuned in. You have to drop everything so you can go out to your car and listen.
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Take your breaks there. Take your cigarette breaks during No Compromise Radio so you can be out there and listen to people.
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Let me give you the Calvinism quiz, the first set of questions. And I'm not even gonna give you the answers, but just for those of you who wonder what the other questions were, this is for you.
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Number one, list the five points of Calvinism. Two, what is a hyper -Calvinist?
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Three, was Jesus a Calvinist? Four, Calvin was a Calvinist, question mark.
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Was Calvin a Calvinist? Five, why is Calvinism so hated today? Six, can
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Christians who are not Calvinists go to heaven? Seven, describe Calvinism with one verse.
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Eight, list as many five -point Calvinists, famous five -point Calvinist missionaries as you can.
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Nine, list as many famous zero -point Calvinist missionaries as you can. Feel free to use all the space you need.
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That was kind of a trick, there was no space needed. 10, is Calvinism the gospel? Why or why not?
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You know what, I think we missed that one. Ooh, I think we missed that one earlier. 11, are you a
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Calvinist? Why or why not? 12, do you pray for the salvation of your loved ones?
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By the way, if you do, you pray like a Calvinist, don't you? 13, what are the practical implications of Calvinism?
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14, true or false, all Christians believe in predestination. 15, true or false, all
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Christians believe in election. 16, all Christians limit the atonement, true or false.
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And 17, finally, true or false, Calvinism quiz here on No Compromise Radio, God's sovereignty and man's free will are both true but hard to reconcile.
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And the hint there was man's free will, which doesn't exist anymore because men are in bondage to sin, that would be false.
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It would be true to say God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are both true but hard to reconcile. So we are up to date now on the
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No Compromise Radio quiz. If you'd like to email me, I'll send you a hard copy of the quiz, info at nocompromiseradio .com.
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I usually get an email a week usually regarding the show. I either hate it or love it or have a question.
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I haven't gotten any for the last couple of weeks and so you better email me and you better email me that gift certificate for Pete's coffee.
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Actually, you think I'm joking and having, I'm saying this in a joking way but I really want the stuff sent.
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Nobody ever sends it so I don't have to worry about it. Now, I skipped number 10 and there's a reason why
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I skipped it but I won't get into that but I mistakenly made a mistake.
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I mistakenly skipped it. Number 10, is Calvinism the gospel? Why or why not? Some people do want to preach just the five points of Calvinism and they think that is preaching the gospel.
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Now, certainly there are components of the doctrines of grace and the five points of Calvinism that will be discussed when people are preaching the gospel.
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The state of man, the need of man, man, the law breaker, et cetera, regarding total depravity.
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There also could be a discussion spill over when it comes to the atonement. Jesus, the substitutionary atonement in the place of sinners, on behalf of sinners, in their place, in their stead.
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Jesus dying as a substitute and so they could probably get into the atonement a little bit but limiting the atonement and talking about the intention of the atonement doesn't need to be talked about.
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It could be talked about but it's not mandatory for evangelism. And so if you're a Calvinist, Calvinism is not the gospel.
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Now, I believe that Spurgeon did a tract, Calvinism is the gospel.
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It was something close to that but when you read that, you'll see what Spurgeon meant. And here's what I'm after. I'm after those rabid
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Calvinists, those flame -throwing Calvinists. I'm a five -point Calvinist and hopefully
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I've been maturing over the years but they tend to be a little overaggressive early on. They latch onto this truth.
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It's eye -opening, it's amazing, it's wonderful, it's intellectually stimulating, it's praise -making and then they just go too far.
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And then if you don't preach unconditional election when you're evangelizing, somehow it's not the gospel. Back, as I said last week, 1
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Corinthians 15 or maybe two weeks ago, chapter 15, verse three and four, Paul said all scripture's important but there's some things of first importance like Christ died for sinners.
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He was buried, he was raised from the dead, he appeared to people. And so when you evangelize, I think you need to talk about man and his condition and how he breaks
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God's law. I think you need to talk about God, the Holy One, God, the one who is faithful,
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God, the one who has his law and then you need to talk about who
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Jesus is and how he is redeemed and been resurrected and you need to tell people to repent and believe and to trust.
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And so is Calvinism the gospel? No, but I think you can preach the gospel in such a way that exalts the sovereignty of God and exalts his supremacy versus preaching some small little
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God that has to do whatever a man says he has to do. Like taking Revelation three out of context and the kids song, behold, behold,
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I stand at the door, knock, knock, knock. If anyone hears my voice, I will open. That he's got to have permission somehow before he'll come in.
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Taking that verse out of context, that says nothing to do with God and salvation. So when you evangelize,
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I want you to talk about God and man and Jesus and man's responsibility in light of what
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God, the Son, God, the Father and God, the Spirit has done. Now jumping ahead to verse number 18.
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Question number 18. See, in my life, everything's, if I see a number, it's a verse, right? It's either a chapter or verse. That's what my life is all about and so when
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I see things here, insert yawn. I need something. I bought a two liter
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Diet Mountain Dew today and I think I might just go guzzle the whole thing. You don't have good coffee in the afternoon? How about a two liter
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Diet Mountain Dew? Although I don't really like the aspartame, so I'm wishing they would put in some Splenda. Or Stevia is even better.
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I don't know if you know Stevia. All Calvinists eat Stevia. True or false? True. No, just kidding.
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All right, list as many verses as you can that have the word free will in them. So take your
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Bibles and go through. I said hint, offering verses don't apply. Free will offering verses don't apply.
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You're gonna be hard pressed to find the word free will. Now immediately you say to me, yes, but Trinity is not in the
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Bible. The word, I agree. The word rapture is not in the
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Bible, but the concept is, okay. How about this?
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The word Bible's not in the Bible and I still believe in the Bible. That's true. I'd go so far to say is there's not one
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English word in the Bible. The word does not in the Bible because that's an
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English word and the Bible was written in Hebrew and Aramaic in the Old Testament and then Greek in the
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New. And so people say, they talk about free will all the time, but they have a hard time finding verses and they usually use the verses that they do find to teach free will out of context.
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And they like to think that if the Bible teaches that you're responsible to believe, and you are, repent, believe, trust, follow, that if you're responsible to do something, therefore you must be able.
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And that is something that Pelagian would believe and that is something that Finney would believe and that is something that most man -centered theologians believe that if God gives the unbeliever a command, then that believer, unbeliever must be able to do it.
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The old Kantian thing that if you are responsible, then you are able. Responsibility implies ability.
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Well, that sounds all fine and dandy, but it's only for getting one major thing, very major thing, the fall of man in Genesis 3,
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Romans 5. Man, Adam, was the federal representative for humanity and all those in Adam, all of us, are sinners.
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And God has imputed that sin to our account and we have contributed by being sinners ourself by nature.
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And so you can't say, well, I'm responsible, therefore I must be able to do it or not to be able to do it.
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Well, think about this. Before the fall, Adam was responsible to tend the garden.
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Yes? Yes, of course he was. And he was also able. God said, tend the garden, name the animals, be fruitful, multiply, whatever
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God said to Adam, he was responsible to do, obviously, and he was able to do and he could do it and he could name things and he could obey
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God and be fruitful and multiply. Whatever God told him to do, he could do. Well, then after the fall,
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God did not change his program in terms of, here's how I want you to obey me. Now you don't have to obey me.
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You're a slave to sin, you don't have to obey me anymore. You're just good to go. You know, you've put this upon yourself and now my holy will, my holy law, my holy counsel, you don't have to do any of that.
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You know, you can't do it anyway, so you don't have to. You're not responsible to do it. That's not true and you know that.
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What happened? After the fall, man was still responsible. We are still responsible, but we are not able,
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Adam was not able to do things by himself. He needed the grace of God.
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He needed the last Adam. He needed somebody who could obey the law perfectly.
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That's why Jesus came. He came not just to die on the cross for our sins, that would only bring us back to neutral, but he came also to live a perfect life.
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That's why he was born from his mother and lived a life of total obedience.
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He just didn't come on Friday afternoon, beam down, die, be raised from the dead the third day and go back up.
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He lived a full life, 33 years of perfect obedience so that his righteousness can be credited to, applied to, forensically, judicially given to the believer.
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And so we say to ourself, just because you're able, just because you're responsible doesn't mean you're able.
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That's why we need someone who was able to do for us what we couldn't do, die for our own sins and be raised from the dead, living a perfect life.
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So the question is, list as many verses as you can that have the word free will in them.
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I will grant that the word free will might not be in the Bible, yet still could be true based on what the
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Bible would teach, but what I will say is you can't even get it from verses that don't technically say free will.
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Number 19, people are saved because of faith.
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People are saved because of faith. Acts 13, 48, as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.
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You are not saved because of your faith. You aren't going to be able to get to heaven and say, God, I'm here because I believed.
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You're going to say, I'm here because you saved me by your grace, motivated by your love, motivated by the
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Trinitarian council that said we're going to redeem a people, redeem a select group of people and make them the bride of Christ.
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That's what you're going to say. You're not saved because of faith. You're saved because of grace, and you're saved by grace through faith, aren't you?
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Not because of faith. That would be a different religion. It would be a different religion if you're saved because of your faith, and then you have to just come up with your faith.
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No, you're saved because of grace, because of Christ's work, because of God's great accomplished redemption, and you're saved through faith.
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As I said last time with the Passover, faith put the blood upon the door posts, but it was the blood that saved.
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The faith didn't save, the blood saved, and they were saved by the blood, substitutionary death in the place of the people.
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The death angels went over those houses in Passover time, and then they were saved because of the blood through faith.
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The faith didn't save them. It was the blood that saved them, and they put their confidence, not in themselves, but they took
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God at his word and believed what he said to do, and so people are not saved because of faith.
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Faith is not meritorious. Faith does not oblige God to do something. Actually, the
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Bible says in Philippians chapter one, verse 29, that faith is a what? Gift.
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Faith is a gift. It's not meritorious, it is a gift. Same thing in Ephesians chapter two.
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Saved by grace through faith and that and of yourself, it is a what? Gift of God. Well, you can see that's the neuter, and it doesn't apply to this, that, or the other.
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The whole saving process isn't of yourself. Faith is a gift, and so faith is not meritorious if it's a gift.
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God says you must believe, and you're responsible to believe, but you're not able to believe, so Jesus lives a perfect life in your place, and then he says, here's the gift of faith to those that my father have given me.
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So people are saved not because of faith, but through faith. The only way you can get around this is if you do what
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Dave Hunt does, and say the Hebrew version of Acts 13, 48 says something to the effect that as many those who believe were appointed to eternal life.
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Well, that's the New World Translation, a rough equivalent, the exact meaning of it, except maybe
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I'm not quoting the exact verse, although I've got that book around here someplace. I talk about book burning, but that probably is not the best thing to do in the news today, is it?
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So you're not saved. By the way, there's no such thing as the Hebrew Old, the Hebrew New Testament 13, 48 that's got some kind of weird translation.
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I don't know where Dave got that. As many as were appointed to eternal life believed. Acts says people are believed through grace.
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Isn't that amazing? How about saying this? Lord, thank you that you saved me, and you even gave me the gift of faith to believe in you.
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I wouldn't even do it on my own. You told me I must believe, and I couldn't even come up with my own faith. You gave me the gift of faith.
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That's why if God gave you the real gift of faith, you're never going to lose that, because God's going to give good gifts, and he's going to make sure you have that as securely fastened as it were.
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Number 20. We've got two left. Are we gonna be able to make this? Am I gonna just have to make up some of my own? I guess
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I just say who we are. Mike Abendroth, NoCompromiseRadio .com. You can listen to our shows in a variety of different ways.
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One, live at 3 .30 here in Central Massachusetts, Worcester, Massachusetts.
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WVNE 760. 760 AM. On your
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AM dial. Second way you can listen is NoCompromiseRadio .com,
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and you can go to podcasts and pull up the old shows. Should be about 270 or 80 shows. Pull them up, listen.
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Most are marked, few aren't. So those are just kind of surprise mystery shows.
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And then the third way is if you go to iTunes, and you open up your iTunes account, and you go to iTunes
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Store, and you just type in NoCompromiseRadio, pull it up, and then you say subscribe, and you're good to go, and you can hear my voice five days a week.
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That is scary. That is absolutely scary. You know, good side to that though,
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I don't know how long I'll live, and I hope to live longer. I mean, I hope to live as long as God wants me to live.
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I don't want to pull some kind of Hezekiah deal. But if I could just listen to my father talk,
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I'd like that. I kind of have forgotten his voice, and the cadence, and how he would explain things.
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It'd make me cry if I think about it long enough. I just miss my father, 21 years ago, dying. But if I do die anytime soon, the sermons that I preached over the last 13 years, 15 years, all on tape, 270, 80
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Roman Catholic shows. Yeah, it seems like it, doesn't it? The Catholic Bachelor, Avondale. 280 no -compromise radio shows.
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I'm so tired, here comes a coffee, Diet Mountain Dew, that the kids could listen and get to know their dad, and they could hear their dad's voice.
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And so, what I'm trying to do is be faithful here locally in West Boylston, and then say, Lord, bless the ministry.
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Increase the breadth. Put it around the world, kind of thing, as far as you want it to go, whether that's
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Auburn, Boston, or maybe nowhere. Maybe it just needs to be shut off here.
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Springfield, has any good thing come out of Springfield? I think the answer is yes. We've got a great signal there. Welcome people in Springfield.
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Can't believe you're not driving to Bethlehem Bible Church. Come on, it's only an hour, hour and 15 minutes. You can be back home for the big
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E, no problem. Calvinism quiz number 20. Repentance is a gift and a command.
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Repentance is a gift and a command. True, repent, you can hear Jesus repent, John the
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Baptist repent, Peter repent, Paul repent. That's how they preach, change your mind. That's what repentance means.
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And I guarantee you, if you change your mind, your life will change. I can guarantee you, if your life hasn't changed, you haven't changed your mind.
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And so we tell people, repent, metanoia, change your mind. That's exactly what it means. But how can people change their mind?
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If they're fallen, if they're corrupt, if they're enslaved, if their will is in bondage to sin, they can't do it, yet God tells them, this is what's required.
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So then we realize that in 2 Timothy 2, repentance is a gift.
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If perhaps God may grant them repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth, they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.
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They can't come up with it on their own. Satan's not gonna help do that either. Repentance is both a command and a gift.
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So when I preach evangelistically, I tell unbelievers, you must believe. And then the whole time you're just praying,
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God grant them faith, because they'll never believe without it. God grant them repentance, they'll never change their mind without it.
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So it is both a command and a gift. Number 21, once you freely choose to be saved, you can never lose your salvation.
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Once you freely choose to be saved, you can never lose your salvation. Now that's kind of tricky, isn't it? Let's just break it down.
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Second half of the sentence, you can never lose your salvation. That part's true, because it wasn't yours.
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God doesn't lose what he has done. And if Jesus saved you, then
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Jesus isn't going to lose you. Now, if you're a man -centered, Arminian, semi -Pelagian, Phineasian person, you think you came up with your own salvation, then it only makes sense logically and theologically to you that you could lose what you gained.
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Well, that would be true if that was biblical. But since you didn't earn your salvation, you couldn't earn your salvation, you were a slave to sin, and Calvinism teaches that it was gift to you by God, initiated by God alone,
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God alone working monergistically, then what God does, you can't undo. So that part's true, but what about the freely choose to be saved?
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If you mean by yourself with no external help, you can't do that because you're in bondage to sin.
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But if you mean God regenerates you, gives you a new nature, and in that nature that used to hate
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God now loves God and just says, yes, I do believe, I do choose you, I embrace you,
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I wanna follow you. What my point here is, if you are regenerated by God, you now love what you used to hate and hate what you used to love, and God doesn't believe for you,
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God doesn't repent for you, you repent, you believe, but God initiated the process and he regenerated you, and regeneration comes at least temporally, rent regeneration comes before faith.
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So how'd you do on the quiz? Well, write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. Maybe you can give me some other questions.
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Just an introduction to Calvinism, that God is sovereign over the salvation of everyone who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.
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God is sovereign. He initiates salvation, we couldn't. That should give you praise, glory, and honor motivated by love.
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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.