Legalism in the church (Part 2)

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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. We're here to take your calls as well. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

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My name is Mike Abendroth and today is Tuesday and Tuesdays we have Pastor Steve Cooley in the studio as well.

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Pastor Steve, welcome. Thank you very much, Pastor Mike. Well, it's good to see you today. It's good to be seen.

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What other kind of trite sayings could we have on this No Compromise Tuesday? I don't know, but why waste time with them?

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All right, let's get back to where we were last week. Steve, what'd you have for us? Well, we began talking about running down our list of a baker's dozen legalisms.

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You think there's legalism still in the church today? Absolutely. I would say that most people when they first get saved happen to be legalist and I think they actually like it.

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Well, it's comforting to see our lives change and the easiest way to do that, to accomplish it, is to make some mechanical changes in our lives.

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That's right, and so what we want to do with legalism, of course, we're not saying legalism is obedience to the word of God.

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That never is. We hear that lots of times, though. Oh, you're a legalist when really what they're trying to say is you want to actually preach the

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Bible and have people obey it. Yeah, shame on you for obeying what God says. We're not saying you shouldn't have standards and convictions.

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Those are good, don't you think? Absolutely. Are preferences fine and okay? Yes, they are. Forcing preferences down the throat of others?

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That is legalism. Okay, we are not saying that if you obey God -ordained leadership at home or at work as the governor of the church, that's not legalism.

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No, it's not. But these dos and don'ts that are somehow above Scripture, extra -biblical rule -keeping instead of obeying the

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Scriptures, we don't like that. No, and I think the real key is it's kind of an external show.

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You know, it's kind of to show people or maybe even just demonstrate to yourself that you are holy, that you're exceeding all expectations.

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Yes, that's right, and I think all of us as sinners, as people who have not arrived, we're not glorified yet, we tend towards either going away from rules, of God's rules, or we like to add extra ones.

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That's just what we do. We don't want wild Christians running around with no boundaries, so sadly, sometimes,

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Christian leaders make extra rules. That's right, and you said it well.

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I mean, our tendency is to either go toward legalism or the other extreme, where we just think we can do whatever we want, which is called antinomianism.

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That's right, no laws. Show me, specifically, institutions that like legalism and don't preach free grace, do not preach substitutionary atonement, do not preach sovereign grace.

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They keep adding throughout the years, law after law after law after law.

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I think of Roman Catholicism in particular. That's just one long list of legalistic extras, and if you can't restrain sin by grace and by the

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Bible, you've got to add rules. Today, we want to talk about, on NoCompromiseRadio .com,

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if you want to pull up a podcast, what about legalism? We had one last week. We'll quickly review it, and then we'll get to the rest.

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What do we have, Steve? Number one, it is a sin to drink alcohol.

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You'll like this as an ex -cop, Steve. I read the other day that there was the H1N1 virus in a jail, and that some of the people there in the jail, the inmates, were taking the hand gel, the sanitizer alcohol gel, and distilling it to drink it, and they had to take all the

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Purell hand sanitizer out of the jail. That would be the first time

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I've heard that, but I have seen them make some noxious brews in my day. What do they make them out of, by the way?

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Bread, sugar, fruit. They call it Pruno, but it always had apples and oranges and stuff like that, and it's horrific.

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Well, we here at the No Compromise Radio Ministry believe that it is a sin to get drunk.

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Ephesians 5 .18, do not get drunk with wine, for that is a waste, our dissipation.

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We believe that sinful drinking, that is, drinking to get drunk, is always wrong.

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And so that's not legalism, but the Bible doesn't say thou shall not drink. We looked at last week,

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Psalm 104 and many other passages, that it's fine for Christians to drink. What about making your brother stumble?

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What about that? Well, the question is, can you cause someone else to sin by participating, by drinking at all yourself?

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And I think it really comes down to, is it wrong for me to exercise my liberty in Christ to drink alcohol?

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And I think the answer is no. Well, we have that liberty in Christ, and what we're not to do, and I agree with you,

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Steve, quoting Paul in Romans 14 .21, it is good not to eat meat or to drink wine or to do anything by which your brother stumbles.

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There's a time where we have Christian freedom that we don't exercise it because we love other people.

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As Jesus laid down his life for others, we want to say no to ourself as well. Some people think, well, you know,

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I'm not gonna drink around others because they'll get mad at me if I drink. That would make them stumble, they'd get mad.

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That's not making someone stumble. Here's what's making someone stumble is that they almost stumble in my words there.

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Stumble, bumble, mumble, it's kind of Keith Jackson. He's gone. Fumble, rumble, stumble. It's really Fumble Ruski.

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Here's what stumbling is. Some new Christian who had a problem with alcohol has said no to alcohol, is around a more mature

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Christian. Maybe he's around you, maybe around an elder. And then they see that elder who drinks a little alcohol.

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They're not to sit next to wine for a long time, First Timothy three, but they're just having a small glass of wine at a restaurant.

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That immature believer sees the mature believer drink. And then they say, well,

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I guess I can too. They drink, but their conscience kills them, convicts them. We'd be causing them to sin in that way.

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And so that's what that means. And it's just kind of, you don't want to be the source of causing someone else to fall to pieces, to essentially trip into sin.

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Good. Let's get to the baker's dozen of legalisms. I think that's number one, and we're going to go fast through these.

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At least I think we are, but you know, it's no compromise. Lightning speed. Okay. Number two, it is a sin to use any tobacco product.

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Sin to use any tobacco product. I'm trying to think of some kind of camel illustration or something like that.

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Some kind of cool. It is easier for a pack of camels to go through. You know?

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Well, tobacco, of course, is a hotly debated topic in local churches.

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I'd go so far to say this, probably Steve won't let me, but I think every church should probably have an ashtray outside their local, outside their front door.

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So people who do smoke have their last puff, walk into the local church.

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What do you think of that? No comment. Ashtray ministry.

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By the way, there's nothing in the Bible that says, thou shall not take some dried leaves, roll them up in some kind of paper, light them on fire, inhale, and then cough and get cancer.

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Now there's nothing in the Bible that says that you can't smoke cigarettes, right? That is true.

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And so what do we do about legalism? There's some people that basically say you're learning and growing in your

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Christian faith when you stop doing certain things. And we here at No Compromise Radio Ministry want to say, of course, there will be things that you stop, but godliness is not based on what you don't do anymore.

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I think it's all about the heart issue and motivation. What's my motivation to smoke cigarettes?

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I don't want people to drive down the street today, see someone smoking, and then tell the kids in the backseat, look at their pagans, we ought to pray for their salvation.

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Christians struggle. Brand new people that get saved, who used to be smokers, still will struggle with smoking.

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Do you think it's good to spend $5 a pack and to do that to your lungs, Steve? I saw him for eight bucks a pack the other day.

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And you know, the other issue is if we make that some kind of standard for holiness, well, there are a lot of unbelievers who don't smoke.

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Does that make them holy? Perfect thinking. Tobacco smoking might not be the best.

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If you want to smoke a cigar sometime, Spurgeon used to smoke cigars until he realized he went to a store one day and they were promoting the cigars, the cigar that Spurgeon smokes.

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And he thought, I better stop that. You want to smoke a pipe? Do you want to smoke, you know, cherry tobacco?

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Do you want to put some tobacco between your cheek and gum? You know, it's not good for you. It's going to cost a lot of money, but it's not necessarily a sin issue, is it?

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No, but how you dispense with your chewing tobacco. That would be sinful.

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That might be a sin, yeah. You know, the guys have the Diet Coke cups or something or plastic

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PVC and they're spitting into it. It is very disgusting. So what we want to make sure we do is this.

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We want to treat other Christians kindly and compassionately. And if Jesus died for them,

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Romans 14 would talk about, we want to make sure we are generous and gracious. And I do, with all seriousness, if someone smokes a cigarette and takes the last puff in their car, puts it out and comes into the church service,

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I want that. I want them to come to church. And I think as time goes on, they'll say, this isn't good for my body.

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I could spend my money on other things. This is addictive. I don't want to be under the influence of some kind of addictive thing.

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And I think I'd like to stop. That's what I want. That's exactly right. And I, you know, as we're thinking about this,

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I'm even principalizing it, you know, figuring out how to apply it and, you know, basic rules.

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Rules. If it's not in the Bible, if God does not forbid something, then why would we consider it a sin, firstly?

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And secondly, it is always a matter of the heart, not of external actions.

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You know, our motivations in doing things. But, you know, when it comes to cigarettes, just one more note.

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I mean, if we think five, six, seven, $8 a pack, and it seems like the taxes are going up all the time, multiply that times, let's say you only smoke one pack a day times 30 days.

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That's a lot of money. Then you could do a lot with that kind of money. That's true. And just think about that $4 quad latte we buy at Starbucks for five bucks.

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Yeah, about once every two weeks. So we would say that it's legalistic to look at another

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Christian and judge them because they are smoking a cigarette. Romans chapter 14, verse 10.

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But you, why do you judge your brother? Are you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt?

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For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. We want to make sure that we realize each one of us,

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Romans 14, 12, will give an account of himself to God. So if someone that you know smoke cigarettes, it's not a good habit.

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It could give you cancer. There's all kinds of other things that'll happen, but let's not judge somebody's Christianity based on that.

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And if you smell someone has tobacco smoke on them on a Sunday, you love them anyway. That's exactly right.

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Let's go to the next one. Okay, next one. Number three. It is a sin to get a tattoo.

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A sin to get tattoo. What if it's like when I saw in Southern Seminary, it's a Hebrew tattoo of Genesis chapter one, verse one.

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Well, then it's very sanctified. And then I saw on his other massive bicep, it was in Greek and it was of John one, one.

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I'm impressed. Well, my wife likes to say this. How would you like to wear bell -bottom jeans the rest of your life?

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And what she's trying to say is once you get this done, you've got big trouble. Here's what mostly happens with Christians.

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Christians go to Leviticus chapter 19. And Leviticus 19 says, you shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead, nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves.

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I am Yahweh. And then they say to their children, look, you can't get tattoos because the Bible says you ought not to.

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Friends, that would be taking the Bible out of context to suit your own purposes. The issue there is cultic information for the dead, what they would do in pagan celebrations.

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It has nothing to do with tattooing yourself today. I've got a bigger question for people who want to get a tattoo now and who are already

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Christians. What is your motivation? Well, and as we've been saying over and over again, with each one of these issues, that is the question.

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What is your motivation? What is it that moves you to do that? You know, if you say I want to get a tattoo for the glory of God, maybe, you know, but where are you going to put it?

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And how does that, you know, here's my issue with tattoos, if we can just be candid for a moment. This is no compromise radio.

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We want more than being candid. We want controversial. I'm not going to pay anybody to inflict pain on me.

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And I'm just not interested in that. So that's never been an issue for me. Well, the people that are Christians now and they have tattoos,

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I don't care. I mean, I know people that have got all kinds of tattoos for the wrong reasons. And I think you as a

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Christian listening today better be quite ready to embrace people who walk into the church, have tattoos, have transdermal piercings, have all kinds of other issues.

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I think you better be ready to love those kind of people because we will be having a tattooed society soon.

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The people that say, you know, I never want to get a tattoo because I don't want to be flamboyant and I don't want to do

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X, Y, and Z. I have a question for you. Does your wife wear earrings? There are all kinds of issues with our body that we want to be careful about before we point to the tattooed people and somehow ostracize them.

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If you want to get a tattoo of your wife's name in cursive in a spot on your body that no one else will see, well, that's between you and God and your wife.

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I'm not going to say it's a sin because frankly, it isn't a sin. And don't hold Leviticus 19 against that because then you don't know your

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Bible. You don't know hermeneutics. You don't know that it was for Israel. You might take a principle out of there, but it has nothing to do with cutting and the dead and cultic practices.

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Tattoos, here's what you do if you're a parent. If you're a parent, Steve, and you have a child that wants to have a tattoo, don't go to Leviticus 19.

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What do you do instead? He's getting a knife out now.

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No, he's not. Here's what you do. I'm your dad. You may not get a tattoo as long as you live in this house.

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And now that's God's rule. You must submit to me. And so I don't need to take the Bible out of context to get what

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I want because you're teaching your kids something worse than getting a tattoo. And that is blaspheming

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God's word taken out of context to suit you. So you just say, you may not get a tattoo.

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That's right. What a mistake to use Leviticus 19. The next thing you know, you're not going to allow your child to wear clothing with blended garments.

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And I mean, do you really want to go through all that? I guess if you want to follow the Old Testament, you'll live in a tent. I mean, it just goes on and on and on.

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It just misses the entire context. And that's the point. You always want to know what the Bible says in context.

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If I would have gotten a tattoo when I wanted to get one years ago, it would have been a Rolling Stones trademark tongue on my shoulder.

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I remember my father, he had a big tattoo in, he got it in Korea during the Korean War of some kind of lion and all these things.

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Some tattoos look good. Some tattoos don't look good. Here's what we're after. We want to make sure what the

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Bible calls a sin, we call a sin. And if somebody has a tattoo and you see someone with a tattoo, you welcome them.

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Maybe they got it when they were an unbeliever. Maybe they got it when they wanted to show off, but they've repented of that, but now it's stuck on them.

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And we want to make sure that we don't say, you've got a tattoo, you're ungodly. Well, and to just kind of emphasize that a little bit more, think about this, every single person that comes into church, whether they have a piercing, or you meet them on the street, whether they're a piercing or a tattoo, whatever the case may be, that person is a soul who will one day stand before God.

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And do you want to say, well, I'm not going to preach the gospel to them. I'm not going to love them. I'm not going to do this because they've got, that's just wrong.

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True, and I hope our church, by the way, if you smoke cigarettes and you'd like to go to a church, you'd like to smoke right out in the foyer before you walk in the church, you come to Bethlehem Bible Church.

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We will love you and extend, and I'm serious when I say this. It's half in jest, but with all serious now, seriousness now, serious now, serious now, serious radio, you come to our church.

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We will love you. And if you have tattoos all over your face, your back, I don't care if they're gang tattoos, what you have on your body, your body's going to be glorified one day.

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And when Jesus dies for sins, he dies for all kinds of sins. Maybe the sin is, I want to look cool,

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I got a tattoo, and now you're ashamed of it. But the people that have tattoos at this church, I think if you ask them, you'll find that they are welcomed into this fellowship of sick sinners.

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Well, I mean, if we could all somehow never have done anything that we regretted, well, then none of us would be here.

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I mean, we wouldn't need to be here. We'd be like Elijah, we'd just be gone. Absolutely, I mean, I lose my wedding ring all the time.

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What if I just get a little wedding ring tattoo across my finger? Is that going to somehow unjustify me, unregenerate me, unsanctify me?

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Well, some maybe would say that, but why is the Bible so quiet about tattoos?

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People say, well, you weren't born with any tattoos. Well, your wife wasn't born with holes in her ears either.

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I hope at least to be consistent, she wears clip -ons, but those things hurt after a while, I know by experience.

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Let's move on, next. Okay, next. It is a sin to have, or I'm sorry, it's a sin to go to the movies.

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It's not a sin to go to the movies, but it's sin to have a DVD about the movie. Isn't it interesting, we do the exact opposite.

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We say, I can't go see that movie on the big screen, but I sure can buy it on DVD and watch it at home.

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I can fast forward the bad parts. What about going to the passion pit?

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That is the movies. We don't wanna play with the devil's deck cards. We don't want to go to the passion pit.

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Some people call the movie theater the passion pit. Wait, is that a phrase from the 50s? I think it's some kind of Edgar Allen Poe, the passion pit.

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It's not a sin to go to the movies. It's not a, I mean, I guess it could be a sin if you do things the wrong way.

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There's a time for leisure, there's a time for rest, there's a time for distraction. If you go to the movies because you can't stand life and you want to just run away and you want to kind of get caught up in something, maybe that's not the best.

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I think you should go to the movie when things are going well. It's like Augustine used to say, I think it was Augustine, if you'd like to drink alcohol, drink a glass of wine when you're happy.

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Don't drink it when you're miserable. Although that's the opposite of what the Bible says because sometimes those in misery should drink.

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Here's what we're saying about movies. You wanna go to a movie, go to the movie. Research it. Are there different ways to research movies so we know what's going on now?

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Yeah, I mean, certain websites that help you discern exactly what's gonna be in the movie. I mean, there have been several movies where I've just looked,

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I really wanted to see it and I looked online and I just said, I can't go see that movie. And then there was a time,

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I think we went with another family. It wasn't me. They had suggested the movie. You know, this is years and years ago and they had suggested the movie and like within the first few minutes,

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I wanted to leave the theater. I think we did. So you just really have to be cautious and certainly your motivation, as we've talked about over and over again with each one of these things.

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If you're going, if you're a guy and you're going because of certain females in the movie and you find yourself attracted to her, that's probably not a good reason to go.

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You know, same for the ladies and with men in the movies. And I think it's just, you know, somebody mentioned to me lately that they like to go see horror movies.

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Well, horror movies now are not really horror movies. They're movies about dissection of people and all those kinds of things.

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And you just, I wonder about the motivation of that. Great point. In the old days when

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Shakespeare was around and they would have things on stage, Shakespeare so arranged the murders that they were always done off stage and the person would run onto the stage, so -and -so has been brutally murdered.

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And to do a murder on stage, it was improper. And so the word on stage means, is we get the word obscene from that.

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It would be obscene to have a murder on stage. I appreciate watching an old Columbo movie where there's a person murdered.

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You see his feet kind of halfway sticking into the picture of the movie and he has to figure out who has done it.

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There's all kinds of intrigue there. I don't need to see the horror movie where the jugular and the carotid have been split open and then the blood goes flying in all different directions and it's all the gore and blood.

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I don't mind if there's a murder, but I do mind if it's gratuitous. I think Christians today, we all have our own little ways to work it.

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We might not like nudity. MacArthur used to say, if you see a 50 -foot part of a woman's body up on screen naked, that just doesn't get out of your mind very fast.

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So we say, we don't like nudity. We don't like some swear words, although the D word's okay, the S word's not.

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The name of the Lord in vain isn't. But somehow we don't mind violence. And for me, I know.

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I think, oh, war violence is okay. Why do I think that way? Well, it's because it's probably because it's real.

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It's genuine. It actually happened. So did they, like a movie like Saving Private Ryan, do we actually see what happened?

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Well, no, because they can't go back in time, but it's certainly a pretty authentic recreation of what it would have been like.

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Good. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. We are a ministry from Bethlehem Bible Church, just north of Worcester.

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We'd love to have you come anytime you'd like. You can get online. We're going to soon to start through First Corinthians, verse by verse.

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We've received several emails already about people listening through WVNE and Excellence Station, 760

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AM. If you'd like to email us with a comment or question, we'd love to have you do that.

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Soon enough, we'll have live call -in. This Thursday in the studio, we'll have Dr. Mohler via phone.

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He'll be in Louisville or wherever he is. And we'll talk to Al Mohler about his new book about Southern Seminary.

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You won't want to miss that. We're looking at a baker's dozen of legalisms. Steve, how many have we gotten through so far?

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Four. Four. So that's a small little box. That's just a small little carton. But there's so many other things to talk about besides movies.

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I really want to look at birth control next time and children in public schools, homeschools.

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You know, there's the sixth soul of the Reformation and that is sola homeschula. And we want to talk about that and what we do about our own schooling with our own children.

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Is it a sin to vote for a Democrat? All kinds of issues like that. Maybe it is.

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Who knows? We'll have to talk to Pastor Steve next time. We've got about 20 seconds, Steve. Any last comments? No, again,

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I would just stress the issue is ultimately one of the heart. What motivates you to do what you're doing?

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And it also can be an issue of stewardship in terms of finances. You know, is it the best thing to do?

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Good. NoCompromiseRadioMinistry .com. We will see you tomorrow, Wednesday, same time.

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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.