Don Green September Interview

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 Abendroth.

Introducing Don Green and His Background

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I, in my pride, want to be known as ML Abendroth. Well, why is that, you say? Because the good theologians, great theologians, B .B. Warfield.

Right? Right. A .A. Hodge. D .M. Lloyd-Jones. And the list goes on. And so, if I can�t be called ML Abendroth, at least I can have guests on No Compromise Radio. And so, we welcome to the radio show today, D .E. Green.

Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, ML. It�s good to be with you again. I hope you had a good summer. Don Green, pastor of Truth Community Church outside of Cincinnati, we�re glad you�re back on the show. We always get a bump in complaints every time you�re on.

Well, I try to do whatever I can to maintain the good name of No Compromise Radio.

Well, Don, as you know, and I think it was Mick Jagger who originally said, �Even bad press is still press.

That�s right. There�s no such thing as bad publicity. I know.

Don is pastor at Truth Community Church, and I think that�s been going on since the early 2012-ish or something like that. And maybe our listeners don�t know that Erin from Equipping Eve from Do Not Be Surprised is one of your congregants.

Tell us a little bit about Erin. Well, Erin and her mom are just incredibly faithful to our church. She is a gifted writer. She�s very biblical in her thinking, and I�m very grateful for her ministry to women and also just for her faithfulness to the local church.

She�s really a model of what you would want a young woman to be in your church, and I�m very grateful to God that he brought her to Truth Community.

Amen. And Don is a regular guest of No Compromise Radio, and he does such a great job, and we have such a kindred spirit that the Lord has worked in our lives that, Don, I think instead of quarterly, now we need to bump you up to our once-a-month guest.

Would you be willing to do that?

As long as you triple my salary, I�ll be good with that. Okay.

Law Practice, Pastoral Concerns, and Persecution

Well, before we talk about what�s in your craw and other assorted sundry matters, your background is law, University Law School, Indiana, that is, and you are a litigation attorney in Chicago. What was the wildest case?

Give our listeners something like crazy in the law world that you had to deal with.

Well, you�re taking me back 20 or 30 years, so I�m going to have to stall to think about it. But, you know, we did a lot of medical malpractice and construction litigation and product liability, and sometimes you just saw some of the worst things that could take place, and we had one fatal case that we were dealing with where a guy�s tire blew up in his face, and that�s not exactly the most edifying thing that I suppose you could think of, but that�s what popped into my mind, you know, 30 years after I was practicing law.

Don, when I fill up tires to this day, I think,. �Well, I don�t know how to protect myself. I guess I put my reading glasses on. At least that�ll maybe help for a second.

I had taken the boat from the lake without the nut on the bottom of the ball for the trailer hitch. That could have been not necessarily an �I love Lucy� show, but it could have been. That could have been a complete disaster and another lawsuit for lawyers.

Yeah, another one coming after you. That's pretty scary.

Don has a little segment on No Compromise Radio because pastors, while they deal with wonderful things and they see the Lord convert people, they rejoice with congregants as they are overcoming besetting sins, new births in the church physically and spiritually, lots of wonderful things that a pastor gets to enjoy and we as pastors get the inside look at those things and we're thankful for that.

But there are other things too that we get the inside look on and pastors are at the hub, at the center of a lot of controversy and issues and things that go on, so we have a little segment called What's in Pastor Don's Craw?

And I don't know if you have craws in Cincinnati, but what's in your craw these days?

Well, you know, Mike, I've just been, as I've been teaching through the Psalms, just thinking a lot about the way that American Christians think about persecution and their First Amendment rights, freedom of religion.

And I wouldn't say this is so much something that's in my craw in a way that upsets me, but it is a matter of ministry that I'm concerned that Christians would think biblically about. You know, as much as we love our Bill of Rights, freedoms in America, I just think that Christians have lost perspective on the fact that Christ told us that to follow Him would bring persecution to us, and the First Amendment does not exempt us from the biblical warnings and promises of persecution to those who would be faithful followers of Christ.

And I know you've thought about that also, and we just need to be braced for persecution, to accept it without complaint when it comes, and not try to use political means to exempt ourselves from that which our Lord said would be part of our lot of being faithful disciples.

Don, it's certainly fair for a Christian, if he or she, as a citizen, wants to get involved in whatever they'd like to get involved in, you know, as long as it's a righteous involvement. But explain to our listeners the difference between a person who wants to get involved in politics or maybe a demonstration or something like that, and having a church coordinate it and lead it and push it.

In other words, I think it's fine if I wanted to go march against abortion, but I wouldn't have the churchwide promo to do that very thing. Is that how you consider.

These issues, or what's your take on that? Yeah, it absolutely is the way that I think about it. You know, the Church's job is to equip the people of God with God's Word to provide a place for fellowship, for prayer, and, you know, we need to be after the same things that the early disciples were in Acts chapter 2 verse 42.

And you look through the New Testament and you don't see Paul, you don't see Peter, you don't see John organizing against the political wills of their day, and there were plenty there with Caesar and with slavery and things like that.

They were focused on communicating the gospel and building up the people of Christ so that they would be faithful disciples of Christ. And nothing about that mandate has changed in the political changes.

Over the ensuing 2 ,000 years. Don, in the Romans commentary, S. Lewis Johnson's Roman commentary that I got to work with, Lewis basically asked the question, what did Paul not say in Romans chapter 1 with all the ills going on in Rome?

And you can just imagine that cesspool of iniquity going on there from homosexuality to self-righteousness and everything in between. And he didn't address that. I mean, he was about the gospel, the way to transform a city is through the gospel.

And I don't mean in a post-millennial way, but the church's mandate is the gospel. And once it's put to the side and we engage in social things, I can tell you what's going to happen. Even if it's not theologically what's going to happen, the resources that go.

Into the social side will consume all the other resources. Yeah, that's right. And Paul, you know, Paul just made it so clear at the beginning of Romans. When he wanted to get to Rome, he made it plain what he wanted to do.

I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome. And for pastors, for elders, for church leaders, that needs to be our same focus. We cannot get distracted away from that for the sake of social things.

All of these social things are going to die away, and eventually people are going to stand before God, either justified in Christ or in their iniquity. And we need to keep that eternal perspective in everything that we would lead the church to do, to say, and to think.

Hebrews, Apostasy, and the Warning Passages

Don, I ask you a couple questions, and since.

You're now a monthly guest, now it's your turn to ask me a question. We did this before where you interviewed me, but I think now I ask you a couple, you ask me a couple, and then we go back.

And forth. Well, that's great, Mike, and I'm glad for the opportunity to do it. Why don't you just start with telling your audience maybe that isn't able to follow your Paul, but what are you preaching on these days?

Are you still in Hebrews, and what are you gleaning from that, and what's.

That doing in your congregation? Don, it will lead me into my next question to you, but I'm in Hebrews chapter 2, and I'm in the first of the warning passages. There are these five warning passages that just come across the bow, as it were, of the ship of the listeners of Hebrews, and they're so stern.

I found it fascinating to see what commentators try to do with a stern warning. We would teach that you can't lose your salvation because you didn't earn it. It's Christ to keep. So then what do you do?

Is this a hypothetical warning? Is this a warning that has temporal judgment, or what is it? So I've been fascinated to see what people do, and I've come down on the particular side where we would say, of course, Christians can't lose their salvation, but this writer, really it was a sermon, a letter of exhortation, Hebrews 13 .22, and he knew, just like you know, Don, and like I know, when I get up to preach, there are believers and unbelievers, and I don't really know who they are necessarily, but God does, and this warning of apostasy where you will not escape if you neglect such a great salvation.

There's no escape. I mean, the way he terms it could be translated, there is no way in eternity you're going to escape this, and I think when the unbeliever hears that, of course, it's a call to respond to the gospel and faith, but when a believing person hears that, I think what we do, Don, is we say, I don't want to get anywhere close to that precipice.

I don't see how close I can paddle to the brink of Niagara Falls without going over. I just need to avoid it, and anything that's of an unbelieving nature that's creeping into my mind, I don't need to go down that way because I know where that ends.

I'm not going to lose my salvation, but that warning is going to keep me far from going down the path of unbelief, and I hope it's been encouraging the congregation and driving people who aren't saved but who are close to Christ, that is, a member of a church or an adherent or an attender.

I hope they're driven to the cross by faith, and that's what I'm hoping is happening here at the church.

Yeah, and you know, it does two things. First of all, it instills a fear of God when you see these things. When we deal with these eternal matters, we're dealing with weighty matters that are supposed to be taken with sobriety, and it also does drive them closer to Christ, and you say, you know what, I do fall short and I need to lean fresh on Christ again and renew that comfort and that rest of my soul in Christ alone and in his righteousness.

Scripture, Authority, and the Offense of the Cross

Well, it's not helping these days when we have the Andy Stanleys of the world and then the Bart Ehrmans, of course, who are more extreme. But Andy's new tact is, believe Jesus, don't quote the Bible. And I guess, and maybe it's just my opinion, that he's doing it because if you say the Bible says, then they might say, well, you can't wear polyester now, can you?

And what about Noah's Ark, and was it a worldwide flood, and what about evolution? So let's just say, believe in Jesus, and I think that's a wrong.

Approach, don't you? Oh yeah, absolutely, because there is no Jesus except what the Bible reveals, and we have to have a biblical Jesus if we're going to have Jesus at all. And if you cut out the Bible, if you cut out the written Word of God, you lose the incarnate Son of God,.

No question about it. How often did even Jesus say, it is written? And you're the Greek scholar, but I think it could be translated, it stands written. It is written, and it stands written. Of course, my unbelieving friends are going to think I'm crazy for quoting the Bible and believing in Jonah, and Lot, and Sodom, and Gomorrah, and one Adam, and Eve, of course, but what am I going to do?

A little duck and jive, and then say, well, let's believe in Jesus, and then when they finally do open the Bible, they're going to go, what about all this other crazy stuff? It's eventually going to come out, and by the way, and I'm not informing you, Don, but by the way, listener, the cross is offensive to those who don't believe, and they want a sign,.

Or they want wisdom, but we give them Christ crucified. That's exactly right, and the Bible is our authority. It's our only authority. We have no other weapon in our arsenal, and the Bible is true. It is cutting as far as bone to marrow and soul to spirit.

It divides, and that is where the power of God is revealed. And I have no use, I have no time for these guys who close the Bible and just talk out of their own mind when they're in a pulpit. That is treason against God, the opportunity He's given them, when they stand behind a pulpit in front of an audience.

And I fear for them, because as teachers, they will face a stricter judgment, and to set aside the Word of God when you're speaking to people, both saved and unsaved, is an incomprehensible.

Betrayal of duty. Well, maybe they hide behind authentic, maybe they hide behind, well, there's lots of people coming that wouldn't normally come, but that's not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to tell the truth.

We want to speak the truth in love, but we tell people the truth, and then we just let it go. Don't we believe that God is sovereign in salvation, and we're not responsible to save people? We just need to give them the good news.

Yeah, that's right. And the Spirit of God is going to use the Word of God to do the work of God. And I just want to lay God's Word out there and trust Him to use that as He sees fit.

Sovereignty, Evangelism, and the Weight of Ministry

Don, I was going through some old files, because I can purge a lot of these paper files now because of computer systems and all that, and I found an old seminary paper, May 2nd, 1991. Now, were you in seminary in 1991?

No, I was still practicing law, chasing down tyrants.

Well, this particular paper was pre-computer for me. I think my first computer was an IBM 386SX, I believe, and it was pre-that. So this was typed, and you could see how I had typed it, or maybe my wife typed it, and a couple places there's whiteout because I made a mistake in typing, and how do you go back and untype it?

Anyway, it's the evangelism class, and here was the paper's title, 1991, How Can God Be Sovereign and Man Be Responsible for Evangelizing? I don't think I put it that well, but anyway, I was so happy because I said, here's the first sentence, the short answer is to say, because Jesus told us to.

Yeah, there you go. We just rely on the Word of God, and we fulfill our responsibility, we call men to their responsibility, and through the means of evangelism, God accomplishes the appointment of election that He established before the foundation of the world.

I mean, even from a practical standpoint and how to sleep at night, what would we do if we were the ones responsible for the salvation of people? And when we realize how eternal God's wrath is, and how holy He is, and how awful hell is, that would drive people to drink, it'd drive people to Ativan.

We have a neighbor, we first moved out here 20 years ago, and for 10 years we lived right by a deer couple, and they were very moral when it comes to society and helping people and assisting them, environmental issues, health issues, they were very, very kind.

And we went to the man's house yesterday, it was his 100th birthday, and he's waiting to die, and we preached the gospel to him many times, and he still isn't believing. And as far as I know, by the time we recorded the show today, he could be dead.

And what if his eternal soul was on my conscience because we never implored him to believe the gospel? Who wants to live like that?

You know, Mike, I've often thought about that, and if I did not believe in the full sovereignty of God and His absolute providence over everything seen and unseen, I would leave the ministry for exactly the reasons that you're talking about.

No one can bear that weight, no one is adequate for those things, and to try to carry that weight saying it depends on what I do rather than on the sovereignty of God is a weight that no man could rightly bear when he understands the consequences of the issues that we deal with as ministers of Christ.

Pastors, Sobriety, and Weakness in Ministry

We're talking to Don Green today, Truth Community Church and monthly guest here on No Compromise Radio. Don, I appreciate you for lots of reasons, and one is when it comes to these matters, you're very sober, and I think that's actually an elder qualification to be sober-minded, because when these sober issues, eternity come up, we need to be sober-minded and not flippant.

And of course, when you're not dealing with those things, you laugh and we joke and have fun, but when we're dealing with these issues, I just see the stark contrast of the sober ministry that John the Baptist, Peter, Jesus had that we now have, and the flippancy of some of these congregational, worship, authentic, seeker-sensitive, I don't even know really what to call it, but I'm almost wanting, Don, the churches like back in New England where they had the cemetery right next to the churches before the zoning rules came up where you'd have to walk through the cemetery before you go to the worship service because, of course, there's time for joy and uplifting singing, but we've lost the sobriety and the eternal weightiness of what's going to happen, and I appreciate you because when it's time to laugh, you will, and when it's time to say, I have to have you consider your soul, how can individual congregants recapture some of this sobriety that I think we need to have?

Don D 'Amico. Well, that's an awesome question, Mike, and I appreciate the same thing about you, you know, and we've talked about this, to be sober in the pulpit and yet not to take ourselves too seriously outside of the pulpit, and I love that balance that you have in your own life.

When it comes to our people, you know, one of the things that I would—the thing that comes immediately to mind is that I'm grateful to God for those people in our church that are faithful to be present whenever we're gathering together, and, you know, that consistency of being under God's Word, being in fellowship with the people of God, being in prayer with the people of God is the most powerful, sanctifying influence.

As somebody who's walking with Christ and daily reading their scriptures, you know, God, we need each other to help us along that way and to give us that balance. You know, there's times when we go through valleys and we're discouraged and other people strengthen us, and then the situation is reversed, and we just need the people of God and the fellowship and the Word of God to help us keep that kind of balance, and, you know, we're not really able to maintain that on our own.

We'll fall off the balance beam on.

Pastors as Weak Vessels and Closing Remarks

One side or the other. Don, from one pastor to another, can you tell our listeners a little bit about how we as pastors are just regular saints as well? Of course, when we get up to preach and thus saith the Lord in the office of an elder, I understand that, but I almost think that church members, I mean, there is a higher standard, the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, but pastors, we struggle with sin and we need the gospel and we need to walk by faith again in the Son of Man who died for us.

Tell our listeners a little bit about what you wish they would know about their pastor in terms of their own life as a feeble sinner saved by grace.

Yeah, there's just so many different places that I would go to start to answer that, Mike. I had this conversation with a close friend who's a pastor west of here, and we go through gloomy times, and we need the encouragement of Christ, we need the encouragement of other believers, just in the same way that we want to be an encouragement to those who look to us for spiritual leadership.

Our love runs hot and cold, our motivations run hot and cold, and so we're not exempt from the same kinds of spiritual trials and the same kinds of spiritual weaknesses that every other Christian is there, and it's there by the grace of God that we're able to do it.

And one of the verses that I've just really been relying on in the past several weeks is ministry has been so difficult with so many sorrows in our congregation that are just beyond my strength to deal with.

Just going back to what Paul said, the Lord said to him, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. And then Paul describes what he feels. He says, therefore I'm well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, but when I am weak, then I am strong.

And Paul lays out there that, you know, he felt those things as well, and all of us who are lesser men by comparison to the Apostle Paul feel those things as well. We need the prayers of our people, and we need the gospel, we need the Spirit of God to encourage and help us.

We're not supermen, we're weak vessels, clay-feated vessels of a glorious gospel and a perfect Christ.

Thank you, Don. Pastor Don Green, minister at Truth Community Church. You can go to truthcommunitychurch .org to hear some of the sermons, and you'll especially want to zoom in on a great idea that Don had, one psalm in one sermon, even if it's probably Psalm 119.

We'll have Don on again next month. Don Green, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio. Thank you, Mike. Good to talk to you. 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 bbchurch .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.