God Is Sovereign So Walk By Faith

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

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 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.

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

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. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Ebendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, my name is Mike Ebendroth, Pastor Esteban Cule. Yeah, you couldn't say my middle name in Spanish, could you?

I know, how do we do that? Ermano. Ermano. That's right.

Ermano. Yeah, I took about,

I don't know, six years of Spanish, Steve, and I did a trip once to Mexico as a missionary.

I was on regenerative, but that's just a minor detail. Yeah, you know. It's converted by my own message.

I heard myself saying the words and I thought, that's right, I need to repent and believe.

I'm sure that's happened in life, don't you think? I don't know, but that would be a great testimony, wouldn't it?

For a baptism night, and I was up there preaching, and then it was like I had an out -of -body experience and I was listening to myself and thought,

I was convicted of my sinfulness and I realized I needed a Savior. There is an old story,

I think it's true, about the lady who started saying out loud while the pastor was preaching, the parson just got converted, the parson just got converted, he was converted through his own preaching.

I don't have the details, I think it was in England. The parson just got converted, why don't you Google that while we're talking?

Well, I think when we're looking up Oakland Raiders, football numbers and all that stuff.

So, in real time, it happens to be a rainy Tuesday afternoon, but in no -code time, it's always bright and sunny and chipper and Tuesday.

It's always Tuesday in no -code time. It's kind of like some sort of time warp where real time doesn't exist, you know?

Petey - Yeah. Wormholes and such. Petey - Uh -huh. Yes, I'm listening to,

I know you're not maybe so happy about Bill O 'Reilly these days, Bill O 'Reilly. I'm listening to like killing

Hitler or something, narrated just a book on him.

Petey - Hitler's Last Days. Petey - Yeah, that's it. Petey - Uh -huh. I did not know Hitler's dog was named Blondie.

Petey - Well, that's where the group name came from. Petey - Well, see, I didn't know that either.

I just had some songs go through my mind, but I wanted to make sure they weren't, you know, bad. Petey - Yeah. Yeah, that's wise.

Petey - I have regularly said about total depravity, the T in tulip, that it is whole depravity,

WH. That is your whole person, mind, soul, body, will, conscience. It's all depraved, affected by the fall.

It does not mean utter depravity. You're as bad as you could be. It doesn't mean that at all.

And then I would always say, Hitler even loved his dog. Oh, until he killed him. Petey -

Did he kill his dog? Petey - Wow, because he didn't want him to fall into allied hands. Petey -

I know. Blondie. Petey - Oh, boy. Petey - Yeah, that's pretty sad when you kill your dog so that the enemy won't get your dog.

Petey - So bad. Steve, last time we talked about election, predestination. We talked a little bit about depravity.

When you think about some of these big doctrines, Young, Restless, and Reformed, Doctrines of Grace, Five Points of Calvinism, what's your assessment these days about this younger generation seeming to embrace these more readily than our generation did?

Steve - Oh, these young whippersnappers, these kids. Petey - You're 56 now, aren't you? Steve -

Shh. Petey - Man, why don't you put my social security number out on the air, too?

Here, let me just write that down. My birth date. Steve - The number to call is

BR549. Petey - Yeah, it's not 56. Steve - 857 -6309.

Is that what it was? No, wait. Petey - I don't even want to go there. What are you doing,

Tommy Two -Tone now, or what? Okay, so, I just, yeah, I wanted to know as a maturing saint, as you look at the climate of evangelicalism, in our day,

Five Points of Calvinism, not very popular. These days, it seems like the trendy thing, so please analyze the trend and where do you think the trajectory is going to take us?

Steve - I don't really know because it, you know, in our circles it seems like maybe it's a little more popular, but when

I look at evangelicalism, you know, writ large, somebody needs to put the evangelical back in evangelicalism because they've forgotten the good news.

You know, and so, I don't know, I think there's, I think there are some good things happening in the church, but I think there are more bad things in the church, and I put the church in quotation marks, you know, the universal church.

I think there are just, there's still more troubling signs than there are positive signs. Pete -

Steve, if I were to ask myself the question, Mike, what do you think about that? I would probably say

I especially am glad for the embracing of the sovereignty of God.

They get that at least at the big level. If it doesn't wash out with their cessationism, i .e.

their continuationism that they would be, or they're not limited atonement people or whatever, I'm just glad for a larger grasp of the sovereignty of God.

That seems to be one really good benefit to this, that at least by word, by tongue, they would say

God's absolutely sovereign. Pete - But like, if it doesn't tie in with inerrancy, you know, and all these kind of things, then it's really sort of, it's not as valuable.

I mean, it's not valuable at all. You know, you've got to, you have to embrace the whole, all the truth, not just part of it.

In the book, Systematic Theology, the New Systematic Theology of the

Christian Faith by Robert Raymond, last time we looked at a John Calvin quote, and then we went to Scripture because that's how we preach.

We find a quote, and we find Scripture to back it up, and then we wax. Pete - I thought you were going to say, we find

Scripture after we go to Calvin. You know, what did Calvin say? And then - Mike - Yeah, no, that's what we're, yeah.

You find a quote, then find some verses to maybe back it up. Pete - Isn't he kind of like the Protestant Pope? Mike -

You know, I think, I think he's known down in San Diego as Papa.

Pete - Okay, there you go. Mike - Here is a B .B. Warfield quote, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield.

Pete - Archbishop. Mike - Do you ever have a B .B. gun? Pete -

My brother did. Mike - Did you ever get in trouble? Pete - I had a pellet gun. Mike - Did you ever get in trouble for shooting it the wrong direction or at a person?

Pete - No, because we were pretty well - Mike - Trained. Pete - Yeah, pretty well trained. Yeah. Mike - Yeah, okay.

B .B. Warfield quote, a God who would make a creature whom he would not control would cease to be a moral being.

It is an immoral act to make a thing that we will not control. The only justification for making anything is that we will control it.

If a man should manufacture a quantity of unstable high explosive in the corridors of an orphan asylum, and when the stuff went off, should seek to excuse himself by saying that he had determined that he would not control it, no one would count his excuse valid.

Pete - Well, you know what immediately comes to mind when you read that? Of course, Frankenstein. Mike - Victor Frankenstein.

Pete - Yeah. I mean, think about that. He created this monster. He had absolutely no ability to control it whatsoever, and it apparently never occurred to him.

And the idea of God making something, well, does he control everything?

Well, yes, he does. You know, as R .C. has said, if there's a rebel molecule in the universe, then he's not

God. Everything is doing exactly what God wants all the time. You know, dogs are dogging and cats are catting and fish are fishing and -

Rats are ratting. Pete - Yeah, and ratting. That's what they do. And what is mankind doing? Well, mostly sinning.

That reminds me of John Gershner when he would say, and you're worse than rats.

God made rats to be radish and they do it with radish perfection. God made you to worship and honor him as an image bearer and you sin, you know, and off he went.

Pete - You've pretty much got 56 years worth of smoking rasp right there. I don't know what it is today. I don't really feel under the weather, but I've got the,

I got the smoker's cough. So, I went on a long bike ride yesterday and that gives you the cough, actually.

R .C. Does it? Pete - It does. R .C. Okay. Pete - Now, I listened to hardcore history,

Dan, whatever his name was, Dan Wallace, no, Dan somebody, forgot his name. And I listened to the four and a half hours on Luther, the printing press,

Gutenberg, Radical Reformation, Munster Rebellion, Anabaptists, Catholic suppression, and prophets that somehow spoke from God.

And that's a four -hour show, hardcore history, and you ought to listen to it. R .C.

Well, I have the link now. Pete - Okay. And so, then I quick ordered a couple of Munster Rebellion books he gives you at the bottom of his website, the history books that he studied to come up with his program.

So, I just clicked on a couple and then asked the library if they would order them. So, I didn't want to spend, you know, some of these history books, 80 bucks, 100 bucks.

Anyway, I was thinking about Munster and I wanted to make sure I was spelling it right. And so, I typed it in and then somebody on the website, the

Twitter site, said something about Herman Munster. And you just mentioned Frankenstein. R .C. Of course. Pete -

So, I wanted to give a Herman Munster quip back to the person on Twitter because Twitter is quippish.

R .C. It's very quippish. Pete - Right? R .C. You could probably eat Quisp cereal as you would quip on Twitter.

Remember Quist? Pete - Quisp. R .C. Quisp, yeah. Pete - Yeah. R .C. Uh -huh. Wasn't that good? Pete - Hard to say, though. R .C. It is super hard to say.

And anyway, in Omaha, they have something called the Quest Center. So, you have to be careful with quest and quip and quist.

So, I found a little dialogue from a real Munster show.

What was it called? The Munsters? Pete - Yeah. I think it was just called The Munsters. R .C. Okay. All right. And he got a phone call,

Herman did, and it was from Dr. Frankenstein IV. Victor Frankenstein IV.

And they went back and forth. So, it's ADHD pastor today.

Pete - Okay. R .C. Yeah. Pete - ADHD. R .C. So, we're thinking about the sovereignty of God. God is in control of everything.

Isn't Psalm 103 fabulous when it says, and his sovereignty rules over all.

I think that's NAS. I think maybe ESV says something about kingdom. Pete - Well, somebody asked me this earlier today, actually.

So, now, and it seems appropriate to ask you, what would you say to someone who's just been the victim of a crime?

Maybe it's a, you know, some horrible circumstance or whatever, and they say, how could God let this happen?

You know, if he's in control of everything, how could he let such a thing happen? If someone is angry and they say that, or they're trying to defame or slander

God, I don't usually answer it in a kind way, a pastoral way, a patient way.

I usually say, you know, you have a lot of questions to ask. God's got a few to ask you.

And let's just go with Job 38 and 39. And if you can ask and answer questions, or if you can answer questions like, where were you when the world began?

I think maybe you have a leg to stand on. Are you a sinless being? Then maybe you have a leg to stand on.

But if they're really hurting, you know, they've lost a loved one, and we've had somebody in the church here recently lose a loved one, how could

God let this happen? See, both of us have been trained, because it's our only answer, really.

I mean, we could throw ourselves on the character and attributes of God. God cares. God loves. God does not forget

His people. But we have to go back to the cross, because there all these attributes meet as well.

And how could God punish His Son on our behalf? How could He love us so much that He would punish

His Son instead? And we don't really have an answer. We just know it's true.

Justice and love and mercy kiss or meet at the cross. And so I usually will take people back to the cross eventually and say,

God has a plan, and we don't really know the end from the beginning. And so God will get more glory out of this tragedy or accident than He would have another way.

And it also begs the question, you have to be very, very tender and pastoral as you say this.

But sinners don't deserve anything. And whatever they get has been gravy. I've had 56 years of just gravy and ice topping for everything.

And if something happened to me tragically, I wouldn't want my family to say, why did God let this happen? They should be saying, do you know what,

God, thank you for those 56 years. Daddy didn't deserve any of those. And you gave us Daddy, and you gave him 56 years of living common grace, special grace.

We're just going to bite our tongues and submit and say, God, whatever you do is right. We take you at your word for that.

And that's enough. Yeah. I sometimes, you know, people will essentially ask why evil exists, why, you know,

God permits such things to happen. And yeah, I think that's great. Just to point them to the cross.

I think it's also just important to remember that we live in a fallen world. Bad things happen all the time.

Why is that? Can't God stop them? Yes, He could. And He's going to.

But it's not yet. He's coming back to set everything right, right? Yeah. So, Steve, as pre -millennialists, if we were to say to people, okay,

Jesus reigns for a thousand years, Satan's bound, and then God lets him back out again. Why? I mean, if we had an accusatory type of attitude toward God for anything, that might be a good one right there.

Why in the world? Why in the HE double toothpicks would you let Satan back out again?

I mean, you can just hear people's anger as they would say something like that. And yet God has his reasons.

God does what he wants. And he's going to overthrow sin eventually, but he's just going to let it go for 6 ,000, 10 ,000 years, whatever the number is, and then he's going to stamp it out.

Sin, left to its full reign, cannot destroy God. The answer to almost any questioning of God.

I mean, you can go back to Job, you can, or you can look at Romans nine, you know, where Paul just says, who are you?

Oh man, who answers back to God? You know, you're the, you're the clay pal. He's the potter. You know, you need to, and all love and affection put a sock in it.

And that's why if we're talking to a loved one who has lost a child or a grandpa or something, there's a certain way to go about these truths.

And if we're talking academically, there's another way to go about it. And if we're talking to someone who's got a big mouth and they think they're know -it -alls, then it's the sock in the mouth approach.

And I, Steve, I just think to myself, okay, I'm sinful. So that means my mind is affected by the fall and I can't think perfectly.

But more than that, I'm, I'm finite. I can only, my IQ isn't very high.

So, so how do I work through all these things and figure out the end from the beginning when I've only existed for 56 years?

Sometimes we, we forget our place. And so back, back to the cross from the human perspective.

All right, let's just imagine we were standing there. He saved others, but he can't save himself.

No wonder they thought it was foolish. I mean, if he died as a martyr, we might give him props and a few claps and applause, but dying on a cross, probably naked and just,

I mean, you don't even talk about crucifixion back in those days and he can't even save himself.

Where's the saving power of the cross? Yet from God's perspective, that's exactly what was happening.

When Jesus said it was finished, he had to accomplish exactly what the father had sent him to do. And then crazy things happen when

Jesus dies. And the veil is rent from the top to the bottom and the tombs are opened up and people get up and start walking around.

I mean, it is instead of all he double toothpicks breaking loose. It's exact opposite. Now the resurrection power of Jesus is soon to be had that coming

Sunday. Why, why is it that God himself would go to the cross and die voluntarily when he could have removed himself from the cross?

He could have stopped the whole thing. He could have stopped the trial. He could have at any step along the way, he could have stopped the whole thing, but he didn't do that.

Why? Because he was the son, God, the son, and it was the father's will. And he came to do the father's will.

And, you know, when you talk about unfairness and why do bad things happen to good people?

You know, the answer is it only happened once and he volunteered, right? Jesus volunteered to, for the bad thing to come to him.

And so I, I think we, like you were saying, we just get to me focused to focus on the things right around us.

And we, in our own little finite minds, we just think this isn't fair. This shouldn't be happening. You know, how could

God permit this? How could God allow that? How could he cause this? You know, doesn't he know that I deserve better?

Wasn't Jesus on the cross having his best life now? I mean, it is just so stupid.

When you've talked about Job earlier, I thought to myself, as I listened to Abner Chow, remind his listeners, okay, in the middle of suffering, do we know

God, the sovereign God cares? That was Job's real question.

I know you're sovereign. I'm suffering. Do you care? It would be enough to know that you cared.

Even if you don't do anything about it, just that you would care, right? Like when Don Green was preaching in Psalm 6, praying, and it's just enough to know that God hears our prayer.

Then that just changes everything, even though our circumstances don't change. And Job realized, yes,

God does care because there is a mediator who forgives sin, who

God is going to raise from the dead through the resurrection. So God does care. And now we either walk by faith or we walk by sight.

And many of these people, Steve, I think you agree with me. They're trying to walk by sight and figure it all out and they don't want to walk by faith.

And I want to push them back to you can trust God. What do we think about, you know, people in history that have been martyred and everything else.

And you just think not only not your best life now, but a miserable life now.

And that's not the issue. The issue is eternity. You know, and we get so focused on our immediate circumstances and forget that our immediate circumstances are insignificant.

You know, 100 ,000 years from now in heaven, nobody's going to be thinking, you know, about the death that they suffered, you know, as horrible as it might've been at the time.

You know, like my, I don't know, my girls, I'll just call my girls, my daughter and my wife, they have almost this morbid curiosity or not curiosity, but fascination with, they follow these kids that they know are going to die.

And they just kind of keep up on it. And they pray for the kids and everything. I'm not going to say there's anything wrong with it from that perspective, but they know these kids are going to die.

And then they still, you know, of course, cry when they, when they do. you mean like sick kids and they'll be on cancer wards on Facebook or something.

And all that kind of stuff and different diseases. But I mean, they're usually related to people that they know or whatever.

And I'm just going, I go, man, I would just be crying all the time. If I, if I, because, you know, of empathy and other things, but it's never

God's fault, you know? And, and again, as much as the family suffer, I'm just so thankful listening to Janet talk about one of these families the other day, because they do know

Christ and their perspective is right. It's right on the money. Every step along the way, they did everything they could, could for their child.

But knowing that she was going to die, they just said, well, we've done all that we can and we trust the

Lord. You know, we're not going to blaspheme him or anything else. He, he was good. He gave us this child.

We loved her. She loved us. And, you know, we'll see her in heaven. And that's, that's it.

When I read history and church history, I think to myself, oh, that person was killed.

That person lived a short life. That person caught a disease and died young. And then

I say to myself, yeah, but everybody else died too. Every person is dead. If you were born in 1890 or earlier, you're dead.

Whether you're assassinated, you got cholera, you, you know, got the chicken pox, you're dead.

And he died. And he died. That's right. Genesis five and he died. That's exactly right. Well, this is

Mike Abendroth with Steve Cooley. We're talking about the sovereignty of God today and how it's good to just submit to God and to think, you know, father, the

God, the father knows best. He knows what our minds can handle and what they can't.

and that's why it's good to just rest in him and trust in him. Steve, why do we have to go back over and over and over to the scriptures where we see the words trust and faith and by faith because the object of that faith is the

Lord. It's not the person's faith. It's the object of their faith. Well, why, why do we have to go back to it over and over again?

Because, you know, we're prone to wander. We, we need to be reminded of these things and we need to be, frankly, comforted by them because, you know, this is a, it's a disturbing world.

It's a disturbed world. It's a fallen world. We have troubles. We have difficulties.

We have trials all the time. And if we're not focused on the things above, we're not focused on the Lord Jesus Christ.

We're not focused on the life to come and we just dwell on these things. We're going to, we're going to be depressed and we're going to be asking a lot of questions that we ought not ask.

and wouldn't you add to that? One day Christian, you probably will know the answer.

Maybe on earth, you'll get the answer to many of your questions and you'll see how God orchestrated things in such a way where you'll say,

I see now what was happening, right? We don't read the future in a charismatic type of way, tea leaf way, but we can read the providence of God in our past.

And so we can look in our past and say, look at what happened. And this bad sin and this divorce and this death and my dad died.

God, what's happening? Well, through that, God saved me, God saved my brother and now we're both in ministry.

And I look back and go, you know what? That's part of the answer. Why did my dad die at 55? Because God was going to use that death to call me into the ministry, call me to himself.

And then eventually when you get to heaven, maybe you won't care, but if you did care and God cared to tell you, you would recognize how everything on earth happened perfectly according to God's will.

There are so many amazing providences that if you string together all of them, if you could possibly understand them all, you would be amazed at the sovereign way that God brings you to himself.

Steve, great show today. Not because we're great, but a great subject, the sovereignty of God and walking by faith.

Preach it. I mean, that's what it's all about. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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

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