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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.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.
And as you know, we have a little slogan here, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.
My real goal is to just get you to think biblically.
What does the Bible say about this issue or that issue?
In the old days, I had the name No Compromise Radio because I was all about, �I don�t want to compromise.
� But we�ve kind of morphed that.
It�s grown.
It�s evolved.
So, this is why we have the mnemonic or No Compromise Radio.
Can you imagine someone who�s lived on this earth who never compromised, tempted but did not
succumb to the temptation?
Jesus said in John, �I always do what�s pleasing to the Father.
� That�s amazing if you just stop and let that sink in.
So, that�s the first reason it�s No Compromise Radio.
We want to talk about Jesus, the one who never compromised.
Secondly, at the cross, you know, God exercising all of His attributes simultaneously from justice,
holiness, compassion, and love and grace at the cross, none of God�s attributes were compromised.
And in light of that, I don�t want to compromise.
So, how do you like that, Dan, for a rescue?
Sounds great.
Dan Borman, welcome to No Compromise Radio.
Thank you.
Great recovery.
We�ve gone from this discernment ministry.
How do they say it in England?
Discernment?
Discernment.
Yes.
Dan Borman, if you have not listened to the audience, if you haven�t listened to yesterday�s show, please do that first.
And so now we�re just jumping right back into this part two.
How did you get to England?
I never intended to compromise my American allegiance
by returning to the mother country.
But after seminary at Westminster Seminary in California, I was encouraged by some faculty
there to continue my studies and was looking at programs
specializing in the Protestant Reformation.
So that�s what I work on, 16th and 17th centuries.
And a professor there at Oxford, Dermot McCulloch,
one of the leading Reformation theologians today, so I contacted him
and it came about very organically, you know, personally, really through him.
I never had any dream to study in England or go to Oxford or anything like
that.
It just kind of fell into place and loved it, lived there for five years.
My wife and I still very much miss English life.
I think London�s the greatest city in the world.
So as Dr. Johnson said, if you�re bored with London, you�re bored with life.
I think that�s absolutely true.
Now, before you go any farther, you know, you could walk down the street in London to a pound land and get a huge
PG tips for just one single pound.
Do you miss those days?
I don�t miss much of the food in England, in fact, none of it.
The best food that you could get in England is from somewhere else, Indian food, French food, German food,
although they�re good with cheese and sausage, and that�s about it.
Okay.
All right.
I�m sorry to interrupt you.
So for the listeners, if you�re on holiday, as they say, anywhere in England, and you see,
you pass a restaurant or a pub that says, �Traditional British Fair.
Keep walking.
� You�re better off at McDonald�s.
Did you ever go to the Jerusalem Tavern?
I have been there, yeah.
12th century, I think it is.
Yeah.
Nottingham.
Yeah, fascinating.
I think that church, Grace Life, is close by.
Nice.
So you were studying what?
What�s your doctorate, what�s your dissertation on in French?
I work on the French Reformed Church of the 17th century, specifically a pastor and
theologian named Pierre Dumoulin, M -O -U -L -I -N, like Moulin Rouge, the movie,
it just means �mill so Peter Mill in English.
Why did you pick him?
He was the most influential theologian and pastor
in the French Reformed churches in the first half of the 17th century, and not much has
been done on him.
He wrote a tremendous amount of theology, polemics.
Some have estimated that in the Reformation era only Calvin and Beza wrote more than Dumoulin, so
he was a prolific writer.
Not all of it is great.
I mean, it's not heretical or anything, but he's not of Calvin, he's not John Owen, he's not Francis
Turretin as far as the theological acumen, but very much his
specialty, at least early in his life, was polemics.
So anytime they had a dispute, whether it was Roman Catholic, Arminian, later in his life
with the Amaraldians, he was the guy that they asked, all right, pick up the pen
and write a retort to these erroneous teachings.
Did he write in French or Latin when he did his theology?
He wrote in both, and because of his notoriety,
his works were disseminated even his own lifetime across much of Europe, even
into the British Isles.
He actually studied at Cambridge early in his life.
He never wrote in English, but because he had an international reputation, many of
his works were translated into English even in his own lifetime.
So if you want to go online, Google Books has many of his works in English, readily
accessible, and his influence really
was broad despite the difficult nature of ministry
in Roman Catholic France.
Dan, I'd like to know more about this question and the answer to the question, because I don't know anything about it.
You've got Calvin in Geneva, and he's got the School of Death there, and the men would come over from France and be trained
and go back into France, and many of them perish because they were preaching the gospel.
What happened between that time period with the School of Death and Calvin training pastors
to the 17th century?
What was the history that was going back on there?
Because obviously now we have the French pastors, so what happened?
Right.
The School of Death, that was the case because they were basically involved in a civil
war in France between the Catholics and Protestants, typically known as the French Wars of
Religion, we historians call them today.
But it was a series of brief civil wars,
not over, you know, 40 years in one time, but skirmishes here and there over the course of decades
between Catholics and Protestants.
There's always an uneasiness.
And at that time, it was very much geographical.
You were in—if you were Protestant, Reformed, you were in a Protestant
town.
And just thinking of the map of France, the Huguenot towns, the Protestant towns,
basically form the letter C around the border of France.
So in the north, all the way along the channel there, and coming back around to the south,
down to the Alps, the Huguenot towns were kind of on the peripheries of French society.
So if you weren't living in one of those towns, you probably wouldn't become Protestant.
But if you did, you had to be very careful about it.
And it was a very bloody time, St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572,
where we don't even know how many Protestants were killed—3 ,000, 5 ,000.
They say the streets of Paris ran red with blood of the Protestants.
So the school of death is not just an interesting moniker.
It was true.
Pierre Dumoulin was four years old at the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.
His father was a Reformed pastor, and he was a target.
And his father and his mother went one way.
They sent the children another direction to save their lives.
And he was nearly killed—Pierre, the younger—by Roman Catholic soldiers who
stormed into this farmhouse where they were hiding.
By God's providence, they didn't find him underneath a bed.
But this was not uncommon, sadly, for the French Reformed.
Then in 1598, after Henry IV, who's
one of the most revered kings in French history, not just for religious reasons, but overall—his statue
actually is outside of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on a horse, very regal
depiction there—began his life, or lived his life as a Protestant until
he took the throne.
He famously said, or maybe apocryphally said, Paris is worth a mass.
So he knew if he was going to take the throne in France and keep the nation united,
he had to convert to Roman Catholicism.
Even still, even though he was an apostate, and sadly, he was
very favorable to Protestants, much more favorable than previous kings had been.
So in 1598, he issues the Edict of Nantes, which basically gives the Protestants
relative religious freedom.
They certainly weren't—not like religious freedom that we have today, they were still kind of second -class citizens—but this allowed
them to worship without fear of soldiers bursting into their
congregations every Lord's Day.
So in the 17th century, the French Reformed Church really flourishes.
And they become one of the most Presbyterian in government churches of all the
Reformed churches in Europe.
And sadly, in 1685, the king repealed the Edict of
Nantes, then making Protestantism illegal in France, and the Church
basically dissipates.
Many come to North America, many come to the British Isles, the Protestants, and the French Reformed Church was basically just
decimated at that time.
Some remained underground, but the Golden Age was over.
Dan Borvin, this is a switch -up here, but how can people follow you on Twitter?
Because you have some pretty—I don't know, just interesting, you know, you
just throw out a grenade here or there, a theological grenade or a cultural grenade, how do they follow you?
I am at Dan Borvin.
That's pretty simple.
Easy to remember.
So let's think about what's happened.
You first go to Master's Seminary.
How long did you attend Master's Seminary?
I was there for a year and a half.
And then you leave to go to Westminster Escondido, is that right?
That's correct.
So your MDiv is from Westminster Escondido.
Correct.
And then what URC church were you at?
Oceanside United Reformed Church, Pastor Danny Hyde, still the pastor there.
And then you're influenced to go to Oxford.
How easy is it to get into Oxford?
Because I'm going to live vicariously through you because they'll never accept me.
Well, people have this impression of, you know, these quote -unquote elite universities.
I certainly am not of the elite intellectual status.
I always said I would put our best students at Westminster, California up against Oxford students
and any day they could hang with them.
The difference with Oxford is that every student is of that quality.
So the top students at most seminaries, evangelical seminaries in the
United States, I think would be perfectly fine at a place like Oxford.
But it's funny, you know, I come from a very working -class, blue -collar background.
Before I went to college, I drove a dump truck, worked in a carpet warehouse, you know, and here I am with all these
Sons of Noblemen and stuff in England with these—if
you want an impression of what life is like in Oxford, watch Harry Potter.
It's not that far off.
With the Grand Hall and all of that, much of it was based on Oxford and Cambridge.
So here I am at these fancy dinners with the president of the college, and we're all in
formal attire.
And, you know, I'm a blue -collar kid from the suburbs of Chicago.
I have no business being there.
So God's providence brought me to that place.
Some theologians will go overseas to Europe, and let's say it was Machen, and Machen goes
over to study underneath the Germans, and he says to himself, you know what, they were so kind to me, I
almost bought into their liberalism.
Or you'll have other folks that go to St. Andrews or Basel, and they're influenced by some liberalism that's
found in other countries.
Were you tempted to believe something at Oxford that you hadn't believed before that would be of a liberal
stripe?
Not at all.
My study of church history—you know, some people who end up studying church history become
disillusioned with the Church because they see a bunch of sinners throughout church history.
To me, it was the exact opposite.
I became more confirmed in my convictions, particularly of the Church,
because there is no human explanation for it to continue for 2 ,000 years.
Not only from the assaults from without, as I've mentioned, from Roman Catholics and
others, but also internal divisions, strife—again, we're
sinners, so of course it's not going to be a perfect institution.
Even with our best efforts, you think of, you know, Abraham trying to help God out.
The same is true with all of us, really, trying to help God out, doing our own thing in a sinful way.
But yet God preserves His Church, the gospel still goes forth throughout every generation.
So my convictions have been confirmed more and more in that semi -hostile
environment.
Interestingly, though, in Oxford, and England in general, I found more intellectual
religious freedom than I did in many parts of the United States.
I think Americans are a little too close to Christianity.
You know, our culture has been a little more Christian recently than European countries.
So Americans see it still as a hot -button issue, whereas in England,
people were very relaxed about it.
You could talk openly about religion, no fear of anyone getting angry.
They could have a Christmas break, not a holiday break.
You could say Merry Christmas, things like that.
They have Easter, you know, with the bank holidays and so forth.
So there's less hostility, I found, to biblical Christianity
in much of Europe than there is in the United States.
As you were talking about the Church, I was reminded of Matthew 16.
Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar -Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but
my Father who is in heaven.
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell, here
the ESV says, I don't think it's the best translation, shall not prevail against it, the gates of death.
If it wasn't for the Lord building the Church, I mean, it would be obviously utter chaos
and utter demise of the Church, but the Lord is still saving people and regenerating, justifying.
Dan, I want to know a little bit about the English view of American evangelicalism, not necessarily the
Reformed movement here in America, because that could be a good follow -up question.
What do the English, kind of the, in my mind, kind of the snobby English, you know, folks think
of American, I guess, carnal evangelicalism?
Many, sadly, have bought in to some of the
excesses of American evangelicalism, the megachurch culture, the personality cult
aspects of American evangelicalism.
So you have many evangelicals in the UK trying to be Rick
Warren in their little community or trying to be Tim Keller or something.
Even whether or not those philosophies are biblical and useful,
the idea that you could just replicate it somewhere else in a completely different context is
rather foolish, in my opinion.
So some people have bought in to many of the excesses of American evangelicalism, but one thing I
have appreciated is, although some have fallen into the
personality cult trap, most British people are not
enamored with celebrity as Americans are.
You know, the dandelion that pops up is the one that gets chopped down.
The English pessimistic point of view always, if someone's getting a little too big
for his britches, you know, they'll come along and say, all right, remember who you are.
You're not a celebrity.
Sit down now.
So I've appreciated that fact.
We don't worship the spiritual leaders in the UK the same way,
sadly, many Americans do.
What if the Gospel Coalition started to say that to some of their folks?
It's the dandelion theory.
I think they would be a much better organization.
How about the influence of N .T. Wright over in England?
That's an interesting difference, because the theological
milieu is so liberal and gone
from biblical Christianity.
He has a very different reputation, and he's perceived very differently
around the rest of the world than in North America.
North America, of course, we see him as abandoning many aspects of biblical Christianity,
compromising on justification and so forth.
We focus on those things, whereas in the UK and around the world, they love him because he
actually believes in the Resurrection and writes pretty well on the Resurrection.
So he, in the UK, is like an ultra -conservative.
When you have some of the people in the Church of England who probably don't even believe in God,
for someone in his position, he's on the far right wing of Anglican theology.
Fascinating.
What's the British view of Tim Keller?
Again, many love him.
Many are trying to be Tim Keller in London, in Edinburgh,
in Manchester.
He actually came to speak at Oxford when I was, I think, my first year there.
He came speaking to the Christian Student Union there.
But in Presbyterian circles, many of the
English and Scottish Presbyterians are a little skeptical, particularly of his ecclesiology.
Dan, as I just pick your brain a little bit, it's fascinating, I'm trying to think about what I would like to learn, but then I'm also thinking about their
listeners, what they would like to learn.
Tim Keller here is the kind of the PCA front guy, in a
sense.
I know Ligon Duncan is PCA too.
You're not PCA.
What do you think is going to happen to the PCA?
Do you think it's going to split?
Do you think the General Assembly is going to keep allowing more women to do this, that, or
the other?
What's your prediction, if you were predicting?
Yeah, well, I don't gamble.
So I probably shouldn't make prognostications, not so
much for conviction, not gambling, but I'm just bad at it.
Oh, good.
Well, nobody listens to the old reruns anyway, so maybe PresbyCast will listen or something.
But with PCA, yeah, I have many friends in the PCA, many good pastor friends.
I preached in a PCA just last month.
There are still many tremendous congregations throughout the PCA, but
as many have mentioned, there are alarming things
happening, alarming movements and ideologies that
are sweeping through the PCA.
So I don't know.
I hope they can stay together and not divide.
I hope, sadly, while they have remained together, some churches have split off.
Some very high -profile churches have split off to join more liberal Presbyterian
denominations.
ECHO, being one of the denominations, a large PCA in Houston just left
the PCA for ECHO a few months back.
So mainly it's over women's ordination.
I hope more churches don't go that way.
I hope the denomination doesn't go that way.
And I would like to see those who don't go that way, if the PCA does end up dividing in some way,
I would love to see the solid confessional congregations come into the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
Are you writing anything these days?
I'm working on my thesis, so I'm writing a lot of that.
So you don't even have your doctorate yet.
I do not.
Oh, I was going to say, wow.
Still working on it.
Work in progress.
Who's your advisor?
Dermot McCulloch.
I'm actually working on a paper, though, just the other day was assigned for the
Evangelical Theological Society conference in November.
The Reformation study group there will be celebrating the anniversary of the Synod of
Dort, so I'm going to contribute one of the papers on the Synod of Dort.
Excellent.
And tell me, on a regular basis at the church you're at here in Massachusetts, what do you do?
Do you teach?
Do you have a Bible study?
What's your ministry there?
I regularly teach Sunday school, adult Sunday school is kind of my slot regularly.
And then from time to time, I fill the pulpit.
In recent months, I've taken time to focus on finishing my doctoral thesis, so that's prevented
me from preaching very often.
But last year at this time, I was preaching at least once a month, sometimes two, three times a month, and then participating in various
Bible studies and other ministries of the church.
Dan, before the show, we talked a little bit about backgrounds and how they influence us theologically,
Calvary Chapel or, you know, institutions like that.
When you're preaching, do you—I mean, you're an amalgamation of your past as God has providentially
put you together.
Tell me what about Master's Seminary and Westminster, Escondido, and
then Oxford.
All three of them must have influenced the way you prepare a sermon and then preach a sermon.
What would be some of the good points of each?
Yeah, Master's really taught me to do the work of exegesis, to dive
deeply into the text, and also the
cultural background of the text, understanding, you know, whether it's Greco -Roman
culture or Jewish culture and how that informs the text, how we interpret the text based on its
cultural background, those things.
And in preaching, there I've taken away the emphasis on
very simply proclaiming the text and that text.
You're not preaching every passage of Scripture in one sermon, you're preaching a particular passage of Scripture, so focus
on this text and preach all that God has in that passage.
And so I took that, those aspects, from TMS and then to
Westminster, Escondido—not that they didn't teach me exegesis and any of
those things, but the idea that I received there was
preaching Christ from all of Scripture.
We preach the gospel every Lord's Day, every sermon.
The gospel is preached.
The law is preached in every sermon.
In my opinion, it's not a sermon if you don't have a law and gospel.
So preaching Christ from Leviticus, whereas in many contexts we
look to the Old Testament only for moral examples, from a Reformed
perspective, Christ is on every page of Scripture.
One of the first sermons that I heard after coming to Escondido was at
the OPC there in Escondido.
Zach Keel preached on Leviticus, I think it's 14, the
bodily fluid transmissions, that passage.
He's preaching through Leviticus.
I thought, how in the world is he going to preach this passage?
It's uncomfortable to read, let alone to preach.
And he went into the depth of the Mosaic law, explained
the law very clearly, very simply, explained what it meant in that context, and then
he showed us Christ in that passage, how Christ fulfills that law,
how He died in our place as we did not fulfill that
law, and how He has abrogated that law, and now we are free from that in Christ.
So finding Christ through all of Scripture, that thread, the red thread of redemption, as they say, that
runs all the way through Scripture, that really impacted me from Westminster.
And then coming to Oxford, obviously the theological aspects of
the university life, most of that I didn't imbibe because it wasn't biblical, but
thinking about how to communicate to people.
You have some of the, literally the brightest minds in the world are in,
some of them are in that city.
But then also, so if you're a pastor there, you're preaching to brilliant university people, but then also you're
preaching to the janitor, you're preaching to the truck driver.
How can you communicate to both of these people and feed them with the truths of God's Word
in a way that they can both understand and also be satisfied with?
So you don't bring the cookies to the bottom shelf, but you also don't shoot above the heads of your congregation.
So as I prepare sermons now, I think of all those types of people that might be in the congregation, and how can I
be clear to them no matter where they are on the spectrum?
Dan, that's so important as I work through the same issue here at the church, right?
You have people who have doctorates and you have people who are brand new Christians, you have some people who are unbelievers, etc., blue -collar, white
-collar.
I think to myself, I don't want to exegete the people.
That's not my first step.
But after I've done exegesis of the passage and put the sermon together, then I often think, all right,
I have a message from the Word and from the Lord that I need to give to the
people.
Now, who are the people?
How shall I explain this doctrine to them so that people who are learning and growing can catch on quickly, and then
the newbies, they can figure out as well?
In other words, are this means such and such, or do you remember that?
And so I don't exegete people.
I think it's wrong to say, all right, let's think about grandma and grandpa and dumpster drivers first, and what would they need?
No, well, it's just for us, it's the next section in Hebrews.
We're just teaching sequentially through a text.
But I will say, all right, I mean, this is an easy way, Dan, don't you think?
If I'm going to teach junior high kids, I still study the text, and then I deliver it in a way
that's apropos to where they are in life.
And then I go to the rest home, and I teach the same text, for God so loved the world still means God loves the world in this
particular way, and then when it's for Sunday morning, it's something different.
And so that's excellent insight.
Exactly.
You have to know your hearers, and you're preaching to a specific people.
This is one reason why I'm not a huge fan of multi -campus churches, because who are those people?
I don't know them.
If they're in another state, getting the video feed.
No, I preach to a specific people in the congregation.
And yes, you have to communicate in a way that those people can understand.
And it's not just changing some of the approach, it's even
changing the language.
When I have a pastor friend in Milan, Italy, and when I preach there, of course, in English and he
translates, I simplify my sentence structure so it's easy for him
to translate, so the people won't be confused.
Some of them know enough English.
But I try to simplify the content so that even through
translation, it's easily digested by the people there.
All right, two more comments or questions, Dan, before we go have a break and take some time for lunch and
fellowship.
Are you determined to stay where you are now, or would you like to be a preaching pastor someplace, a
teaching elder, or how does that work?
Our tentative plan, of course, we make our plans and God laughs at them, but our tentative
plan in our church is that I will finish my doctoral
studies, then be called and ordained as an associate pastor at our
congregation in Merrimack Valley with the idea of planting a church
in Boston.
Our congregation is the closest OPC to Boston, about 30 miles away,
so we need an old -school Presbyterian congregation in
the city of Boston.
As we mentioned, I think, on the last program, Boston's one of the most post -Christian cities in America.
Some recent surveys, I found Boston, I think, was number two of the most unchurched cities in
America, and interestingly, it's also, I think, in the top three
of the number of people who used to attend church and now no longer.
And I think much of that, of course, is due to the Roman Catholic priest scandals.
So there's a tremendous need in one of the great cities of America for
a faithful congregation, faithful to the Word of God, where the Word is preached, the
Law and Gospel are preached every Lord's Day, and Christ is lifted high.
Dan, I almost weekly, through the radio show and through other means, receive an email or phone call,
where's a good church in Boston, because my son's moving there for school or my daughter, or we're moving there for work, and
it's hard to find a Bible -teaching church that is, you know, Law, Gospel, a church
that I could recommend, right?
And I can recommend OPC churches, I can recommend some PCA probably as well, too.
But it's difficult, so I'm glad you would have that plan, at least.
Last question.
I did not know until an hour ago that we have met before.
I thought this was the first thing, I thought you were a stalker, I pulled up to the church building here, there's a guy in the back and he's
got the glasses on, I didn't know if he was a CHIP officer, California Highway Police, or what you were, and
then I thought maybe you might have been a movie star.
But we've met before.
Tell the story.
Apparently I'm not that memorable.
Yeah, that's right.
So, while I'm looking at you, you look like a masculine man, but that's easy to forget.
A face that you never recognize.
So we met, I think it was 2007, on foreign soil
in Switzerland.
You were at the, what is it called, the Bible Training Center there in Zurich?
Yeah, European Bible Training Center, maybe at Mission Call, some kind of
call, Mission Call, Evangelistic Mission, Midnight Mission, Midnight Call.
Midnight Call, exactly.
You were there teaching on your book, Preaching Like Jesus, and I was there
looking into, dipping my toe into European ministry,
our mutual friend Martin Manton, I went along with him, who's from Zurich, and
we hung out there.
We had Thanksgiving dinner together, you and I, and you still just blocked it out of your mind.
Can you imagine?
No, it's called, you know, memory loss, because I'm 20 years older than you are.
Where did we have Thanksgiving dinner?
At Christian Andresen's house.
Oh, so we went back up to Berlin?
I think so, yeah.
And I wonder if I had the rest of my family with me.
No, you were solo.
Because one time I was in Greece with Christian, and it was Thanksgiving, and so I sent a picture
of Christian and I having a double espresso with some gelato, and that was our Thanksgiving.
And I sent that back to my wife, and I thought, oh, this is, no stuffing today, no.
But my biggest memory of you was that you were funny.
Sadly, many Christians aren't funny.
You know, come on, you have the light of Christ living within you.
Why are you so morose all the time?
So especially in some of those circles, you know, to find a guy who'll crack jokes, I always gravitate toward those types
of people.
And we sit in the back and crack jokes while everyone else is being too pious for their own good.
Now, in all candor, I try, and I know I certainly fail in many areas, including this
one.
But I would like to be someone that others would say, and we're
talking about within the Christian realm, they look at me and say, do you know what?
He's a fun Calvinist.
He's a kind Calvinist.
He's a funny Calvinist.
He's someone who's nice, right?
I don't want to be, and some days I am, sadly, but my goal is not to be the stereotypical
snobby faux Presbyterian, you know, Calvinist Baptist.
I think, you know what?
We should be able to enjoy life, and when I think of that word shalom, that Hebrew word, all of life and just whole
living, W -H -O -L -E, I mean, we can enjoy everything from the hand of God, and I don't have
to do anything else to keep my justification.
There is no final justification that somehow I have to earn or keep.
Yeah, Robert Godfrey, former president of Westminster, California, famous for saying, we take our
theology seriously, but not ourselves.
I live by that motto.
So true.
When you think about those multi -campus churches, one of the reasons why it's so important to have a
local team of elders and a pastor who teaches that you get to see every week, not just
on some video, is I want them to notice the difference.
I even, I don't want this, but I'm glad after it happens for a practical reason.
If I'm short with my wife, or I say something to my kids, or maybe I don't respond to someone with enough
patience or humility, when people see that in me, of course, I don't want that.
I'm ashamed if I do something untoward.
But I want them to look at me and say, he's not Jesus.
He better be talking about Jesus every week because he falls short.
He's tempted and he fails.
But there is a high priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses, and he's tempted in every area, but he's without sin.
And I like that.
And if you only see positive things up on the screen all the time, then how do I know that the
person is A, real, and B, who could enjoy life and have fun and talk
about this, that, or the other, and just do the Ecclesiastes 9?
This is one of my great grievances with much of Church history
that is produced, particularly by those who actually believe it.
You know, in evangelical Reform circles, when they write about some of the heroes of the faith, John Calvin or John Owen or
somebody like that, they present these men as if they never had a bad day, as if they just
kind of floated across the floor in this holy, pious cloud and never kicked their dog,
never got mad when they hit their finger with a hammer.
That's not inspiring to me.
Number one, it's not true.
Obviously, these men all had feet of clay.
But how can I be inspired by that?
I know I'm not that way.
So if all these heroes of the faith are these supermen, I can't
live up to that.
And so when I write Church history, I try to present these guys as human.
They're human.
They have feet of clay, but they have a perfect God that they serve, and that's what's inspiring.
Here, these sinful men, just like me, can be used by God to proclaim the gospel.
Dan, maybe that's why I've enjoyed the last two years reading some original sources, reading
Luther himself.
You know, how many people read about Luther?
Well, I'll just use me as a classic example.
I've been a pastor for over two decades, and you know, I've read Roland Bainton and other things, and I've read
the 95 Theses.
But have I really read, I guess I read Bondage of the Will, but I hadn't read much, and now I'm reading a lot of his works.
And one thing that Luther does, to his own, you know, maybe shame,
but he writes about himself in such a way where you never think the opposite of what you just described.
Absolutely.
Luther would be the most upset at, you know, the personality cult that developed around him.
He knew he wasn't that guy.
Yeah, I would encourage the listeners, Luther's Table Talk, which I published multiple
volumes in the great translation series that continues to be
put out by Concordia Press.
They reveal all the struggles of a real Christian who's
struggling with sin, trying to be faithful, trying to trust Christ while constantly being tempted by sin.
It's the real Christian life.
I wrote an article for The Ordained Servant, which is the OPC's publication
for officers about Luther's doctrine of assurance.
And I took much of it from his Table Talk, because even at the end of
his life, he still wrestled with assurance because he had that Roman Catholic
grace and cooperation with grace impulse in his bones.
He never could extricate himself from that drawback to working
my way into God's favor.
And so he, even at the end of his life, he had to fight to trust in Christ alone and not to
rely on his own strength.
That's inspiring because that's me.
I fight that as well.
And that's why he can be...I feel as if we're appropriating as Calvinists, you know, that I
don't really have a right to Luther because I'm not Lutheran.
And I feel like I'm stealing, you know, it's like somebody else's dad, you know, as if it's not legitimate that I love Luther.
But I love Luther.
And I love that Karl Truman loves Luther.
And as a Presbyterian who talks more about Luther than he does Calvin, I think that's great.
And I can hear my children say, after the last few months in Germany, Dad, do we have to go to
another Luther site?
And yeah, just talking about fun, being fun.
I wouldn't want to hang out with John Calvin.
He probably wouldn't be a good time.
But Luther, you could have a great time drinking beer in a German beer hall, talking theology.
I'm reading through his letters to certain people that are undergoing bereavement or
trouble or my husband's suicidal.
What should I do?
Very, very good.
I mean, so wonderfully written, pastorally written, that I think, you know what?
Sometimes I think I'm going to have to write that.
I'm going to take that about who Jesus is and how He understands and make your focus be on such and
such.
That's the Luther that people don't read.
They just want to say, oh yeah, He hated Jews.
And I think, you know what?
You don't have any idea what you're talking about.
In his table talks, I think it's from the early 1530s, he writes about the death of
one of his daughters.
I think she was eight years old, 10 years old or something.
And he writes about how that destroyed him emotionally, obviously,
that would, but then how he speaks to his daughter and gives her confidence in Christ
that they knew she was dying, she knew she was dying, but he gives her the gospel, he gives
her hope in Christ, even while he is destroyed internally, he's showing her
she can have peace as she goes into eternity because Christ will preserve her.
It's just, I was actually moved to tears reading that.
And I'm not a guy who weeps at romantic comedies, you know, but it was so
impactful on how he ministered to his own daughter while she was dying and
gave her confidence in the gospel.
Amen.
Dan, we'll have to have you on.
We could talk for a long time.
Let's go have lunch.
If people want to listen to your Sunday School series, is it online?
Most of them are online at mvpc -church .org.
All right, Dan, thanks for being here in the studio.
God bless you.
No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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