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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. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to our eighth year,

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Tuesdays. Bienvenidos. Esto. Cool. Buenos dias. Buenas tardes, mis amigos.

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Más o menos. Más o menos. Now, did you have to take Spanish when you were in the

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City of Angels? Sí. Yes. How many years? Cuatro años.

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As I look at etymology of languages, the English language question,

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I say to myself, Oh, I'm in a quest for something. What am I in a quest for? The answer to my question.

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Spanish, pregunta. This is pregnant. There needs to be a birth and the birth is the answer.

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Frog, right? It's a question in German. It's a fragment. And to fill out the rest of the fragment,

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I need the answer. I just thought of that. Wow. There's a whole sermon. I think I'm going to take over Noam Chomsky's linguist stuff.

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You know, Ted down in Atlanta, we don't need Ted anymore. He never emails anyone. Noam Chomsky.

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I saw Noam Chomsky in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1980 when

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I was – I think that year I voted for Carter. Sadly. Well, I didn't vote for Carter.

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I think I saw Chomsky and then later that night we saw Joan Jett in the Black Arts at the same –

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Which was more impressive? Crimson and Clover. Over and over.

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If you would like to go to Israel with us, great. I guess us is not the royals.

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Is Joan Jett going on this? What if she did? Maybe we could have some special music on the bus. Oh, it would be special.

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All right. Well, Nina Hagen made a profession of faith. I don't know if she's still professing faith in Christ.

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But if Nina Hagen could get saved, Paul the Apostle could get saved. I guess

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Nina Hagen could too. I wasn't a major Nina Hagen fan. So didn't she do the 99 –

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No. No, that's another German. Yeah. That was not Nina Hagen. It was –

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Nuna Hagen. There's an S -Bahn stop in Germany and I mean there are all these

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German words of course. I never knew which one to stop at and it was like Neun Hagen.

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It was New Hagen. So I always said to the kids we get off at Nina Hagen. Let's see.

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What else do we want to talk about here as intro fodder? Steve, anything going on with your grandkids and such?

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Well, I mean nothing to really talk about. I mean they're the regular issues of life but nothing all that amazing.

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So it was fun to drop by the church last night and see them all in their Moana classes.

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Oh. Because that's what Karis – her mom told her when the year was starting that they were going to be going to Awana.

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So Karis changed it for whatever reason to Moana and now it's just become Moana. Well, when

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Haley was little, she was in the – I think the little kindergarten Awana class and it was called the

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Cubbies. We are Awana Cubbies. We're happy all the time. Love us. Anyway, she didn't – she couldn't say

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Cubbies at the time. Maybe she was just four. They were the Awana Cubbies. See?

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That's cute. It's fun stuff. We are Awana Cubbies and I've had my recent health issues,

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MRI coming up in December. How are you? Are you healthy? As far as I know. Now see, I would have predicted – maybe

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I wish I would have wanted you would have had more health issues than I do and you've had the external ones but not like cancer stuff.

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As far as we know. I know. So yeah, I'm pretty happy about that. Yeah. I mean plenty of –

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I mean I think I'm getting to the point where maybe I'm thinking about doing some surgery on my carpal tunnel now that you're back and everything.

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So maybe pursuing that and seeing if I can get it eliminated. Well, with all your injuries back from the

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L .A. Sheriff days, I was encouraged when you told me you were in England and one day you walked like 10 miles or something.

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Yeah, we walked – well, it was seven plus miles but, yeah, and I've been walking a lot. So I have enjoyed that quite a bit.

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OK. It was a 10K then. Yeah. Well, I mean and we've just in the neighborhood and been walking around.

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I did get some like some knee – I don't want to call them braces or whatever but some like bands that are supposed to support the knee because I noticed when

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I started going up hills a lot, my knees started hurting. So as soon as I started wearing these, that went away.

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Steve, I can walk pretty far and when – I think our European maximum for walking in a big city one day was 11 miles in Paris.

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And, you know, I was tired but it wasn't that big of a deal. When I was in California in Mount Hermon, they have a day where you can take the train down to the beach and back or just back or just down.

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And it's this old -fashioned train through the redwoods. It's really a neat trip. And then there's a boardwalk down by the beach.

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And every year we ride bicycles down to the beach, throw them in the back of the train and take the train back.

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Oh, no. This year I couldn't ride a bicycle for several months. Right. So we did the walk down.

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And so we walked eight and a half miles to the beach along the train track. And it was –

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I was walking downhill but it was just a slight decline. And we're going from the mountains to the ocean, so sea level obviously.

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I was dying the next day because I was walking downhill for eight miles.

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It was awful. Your knees? It wasn't my knees. It was my back. Oh, really? And just my quads felt weird because I wasn't used to that, you know, the lower quad probably by the knee.

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Right. Yeah. Yeah, it puts a lot of pressure. I should go and get some of that Synvisque put in, the chicken coop, the chicken – that red stuff that's on a chicken.

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They grind that up and put it in your knees. Oh, do they? Yeah, I've had that done. Hmm. Sounds great.

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Extra lube. Will it help me play basketball? Because if it will, I might – It actually will. Really? It's like extra meniscus just put in, extra fluid.

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I have like zero meniscus, so that would be good. Put the fluid in. Okay. Synvisque, S -Y -N, that kind of Syn.

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Can you get it done at like Jiffy Lube or what? I actually got it done over at Fallon. Really?

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Yeah. But it's about $5 ,000 a shot, so you have to make sure you have good insurance. I didn't pay cash.

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The insurance paid. Okay. One more reason to have good insurance. It's like, wow, let me check your wallet out, you know.

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It's another letter from the IRS. I'd like some Synvisque. Steve, we've been talking about justification by faith, and the

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Reformers would rightly recognize that this is a major issue. If you get justification wrong, guess what could happen?

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You get everything wrong? You could be New Perspectives. You could be Federal Vision, Roman Catholic. I mean, it's pretty hard to have a good grasp on the gospel if you get justification wrong, right?

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I mean, can you think of anybody who really has the gospel right and has justification wrong? Can you think of anybody that you'd like to sit under who's got justification wrong?

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No, because it would make me mean. But plenty of us have Richard Baxter books, and we sit with him as we read them.

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Oh. I think Richard Baxter just unfollowed me on Twitter.

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Once he wrote the book on justification early in his career, it always dogged him. That controversy never left him, and the big guns came out when the justification by faith alone book was written against him, and the man that wrote it was

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John Owen. Well, I have to tip my cap to him, though, that he's with it enough to follow you on Twitter, though.

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That's pretty good. I know. After all these years. Yeah. It's amazing. It's amazing. That's right. He's still at it.

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Justified by faith and evangelical obedience alone. So Kistler had this little quiz, and I think we did the quiz earlier, but hey, we've been known to do reruns once in a while.

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Really? Yeah, although in real time, it is September 28, 2017.

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Más o menos. And by the way, this equipment we've had is eight -year -old equipment, and for the longest time, we had these headphones.

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I think they're actually nice headphones. Yeah, they're not bad. And Phil Johnson said when he saw the microphones, oh, those are good. Yeah. I guess he would know a thing about broadcasting.

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Sure. Yeah, he wondered why they weren't gold. Well, mine is. What's yours? It's chrome.

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Platinum. Koda chrome. And our ear headphone pieces, I don't know what they're called.

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They're the cushy part. They started making black flecks appear on our scalps and ears.

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Yeah, we call those cushions, and they were actually disintegrating. Yeah, it was awful. Yeah. Make you want to eat a cricket protein bar.

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Nothing is going to make you want to eat one of those foul things. Number three, Don Kistler, justification by faith alone.

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God accepts the believer because of the moral excellence found in Jesus Christ. B, God makes the believer acceptable by infusing

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Christ's moral excellence into his life. I mean, it's like I know the answer is going to be

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A anyway, but as soon as I see infusing, it's like… Yeah, we have, you know, little hints for you.

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If you're ever taking a quiz, it's true and false, and anything in that particular section is false.

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That means the entire section is false. The other little hint is if you ever take a theology test and you see the word infused, you just say that.

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I mean, there should be fire alarms going off in your theological, you know, head there. I just need some more medicine to get me through the week, the medicine of grace.

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How do you get grace? Well, it's essentially poured onto you, into you via water baptism.

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The Ramones should have done a song, said, you know, I want to be infused instead of I want to be sedated. 24, 24 hours to go.

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I want to be sedated. Steve just did that with his mouth kind of open just on the side.

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I want to be infused. Well, because you got to be, you know, New York. Yeah, well, how can you do the whole infused deal?

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I want to be infused. I don't know. It would take some work.

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Did you know I met each of the Ramones? Did you? Not the original drummer, but I met the,

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I didn't, I think that was Tommy. I met Marky instead, but I met Joey, Johnny.

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The funny thing about Johnny Ramone, he's as Republican as you can get. The other guys are liberals.

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But I think Johnny is dead. Joey, the singer's dead. Didi is dead.

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The bassist and the only guy left is Marky. Sad, sad times.

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I don't know if I can do the rest of the show. Number four, if the sinner accepts, by the way, number three,

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God accepts us because he accepts his son. And so Jesus is the mediator and we're placed in Christ.

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You read Ephesians, in Christ, in him, in Christ Jesus, in Jesus Christ, union with Christ.

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And we have Christ's righteousness and God sees us through the mediatorial role of and lens of Christ Jesus.

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Four, if the sinner accepts right standing with God by faith, he then will experience transformation in character.

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I might even want to rephrase that. But if a sinner becomes born again, regenerate, transformed in character, he has a right standing.

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And let me see. Well, for a change, I'm going to go with B.

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Listen, you know, if God causes you to be born again, I mean, the whole idea of if he accepts right standing.

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I mean, yes, we have a will. It's just not free. So, OK, here's what he's after, though.

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Yeah, I think it's A is what Kistler wants. Because if the sinner accepts right standing with God by faith,

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I just don't like the way that's put. I don't like it either because I like B. What's wrong with B?

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OK, hold on, hold on, because both of them can't be correct. But what's wrong with B? Hold on.

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If a sinner now has right standing. Let's just change it a little bit for me.

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If the sinner has right standing with God by faith, he will experience transformation in character then.

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So the point is you're justified first and sanctified later. So it's justification before sanctification.

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But the way he phrases it isn't good. Well, what's wrong with B? OK, I'm getting there. Tell me what's wrong with B. If a sinner becomes born again, that is regenerate, transformed in character, the nature's changed, he has right standing with God.

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So go ahead and tell me what's wrong with that. Go ahead. Tell me, tell me, tell me the answer.

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You may be a lover, but you ain't no dancer. To talk about the Protestant view, Kistler should have said if a sinner has right standing with God by faith, he will then experience transformation in character.

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Sanctification certainly follows justification, but you're not accepted by God based on sanctification.

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Then he should have said the opposite of that. The foil to that is a sinner must become transformed in character to have a right standing with God.

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That would have been his foil. You have to have a right. Something has to happen to your character, to your morals, to your nature in order to have right standing with God.

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So that's what he said. I know. I know. But what we're going to do is we're going to say

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Kistler should have rephrased these. Because you got it wrong.

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No, no. No, I didn't get it wrong. He's still after. He wants you to pick A. Well, you know.

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Justification, then sanctification. That's what he wants you to pick. Three out of four isn't bad. Well, if we had to get to heaven based on this quiz.

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N plus one. Well, I think Kistler is the one who's in trouble, basically. I know. What are we doing with this?

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An errant quiz. Maybe he was looking at his Justification by Faith Alone book that he edited.

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And he was looking at the John Armstrong chapter. Sad times. That is a sad man.

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Reformation and revival. That was like one of my favorite magazines, journals.

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Years and years. S. Lewis Johnson was in there. Those were the days. Those were the days, my friends.

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And now, you know, John Armstrong standing in the fire. What's that all about? So, okay. Sorry. Where is he?

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Is he at a Greek Orthodox church? Maybe he and Hank Hanegraaff are going to write a book together. About infused something.

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Uh -huh. Okay. Well, Steve wants us to keep going. Yeah, I do. Because otherwise we're going to run out of time.

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We have all the time in the world. Number five. So, basically, we've understood one, two, and three as A.

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Number four, actually, it's a minus. Kistler gets a minus. We're adjusting it for Pastor Mike.

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I told you my favorite all -time Kistler story. He's at the bookstore, at the book shack, during a

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Shepherds Conference several years ago. And we get the little coupons that give you $40 worth of books or $50 or something like that.

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Yeah, and now they've marked it down to like $20. Yeah. And you have to pay UPS shipping overnight $27 for –

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I know how much books cost to get shipped. It's not $27. They're making a pretty penny out of that. The Vig. I mean just to spite them,

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I almost said, I'll just ship my own. But that means I have to run down to the store to some post office and I don't really want to do that.

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It becomes the schlepping conference instead of the Shepherds Conference. That's right. I thought, you know, if I'm going to have to do 18 pull -ups, it better be good.

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Yeah. Anyway, he – I'm standing there right by him at the book shack.

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Not the tent or anything, but the book shack. And they said, well, sir, you have $9 left on your gift certificate.

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Do you want to buy something else? We don't give you like – it's not a debit card. You got to spend it now or – and he goes, well, no, that's okay.

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And so I saw Kistler and I said, well, I think this is $9. You could add it.

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And I picked up one of my books that I authored. In great humility. And gave it to Kistler and said,

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I've heard this is pretty good. Now it gets better. He goes, okay. And so he gave it to the teller and then she said, well, that puts you a little over.

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You owe me $2 .50. And he should have looked at you and said, hey, Bob, give me the $2 .50. I actually said

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I'd pay for it. And he said, no, that's quite fine. He was earning his way out of purgatory.

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All right. Number five, we receive right standing with God by faith alone. We receive

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B, right standing with God by faith which has become active by love. See, I don't even – it doesn't – it wouldn't even matter what

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I thought the right answer was. B just makes me so nauseous. I would vote against B. So I'm going with A.

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Well, what's happened when you look at Rome and Baxter and others, they say, all right, you're justified by faith alone.

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And then they say faith is knowledge, assent. And instead of saying trust like the reformers would, they say knowledge, trust, and obedience.

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It's evangelical obedience. It's something that God does first. It's almost like a pervenient grace type of thing.

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They would never say, oh, we do all of salvation on our own. But they just switch it up just here and, of course, people are going to go live little moral – laxative lives, moral laxatives.

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You hear what I just said? Yeah, instead of moral imperatives or whatever. Laxity. So it's kind of like God puts you on the bike and he's holding on to make sure that you're steady and then he goes – then he lets go to see if you can keep the bike up by yourself.

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How much evangelical obedience do you need to keep up to stay justified in order to be justified?

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Well, probably not all that much because once you ride a bike, you never forget.

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Obviously, in sanctification, you are going to grow and learn and there's going to be moral transformation.

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And you read the Belgic Confession and it's chapter 24 follows 23. Sanctification follows justification. There are works.

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I'm sounding like a Presbyterian. 24 follows 23? Wow. Okay. I'm going to write that down.

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N plus one. Once you start talking about justification by faith alone, guess what,

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Steve? That sola means faith alone. So nothing with it? So that doesn't mean faith plus love, faith plus works, faith plus, you know, dine merit.

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Faith plus obedience. Faith plus – Nine, nine, nine. Nine, nine, nine.

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False, false, false. Number nine. Number nine. All right. We move to number six here on No Compromise Radio.

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Don Kistler, a little quiz. If you like this quiz, we will send it to you. Free of charge.

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Okay. I was going to say free. We achieve right standing with God. We achieve by accepting the fact that he has obeyed the law perfectly for us.

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We achieve by belief. Oh. Oh. Achieve or believe or achieve by belief.

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Uh -huh. We achieve right standing with God. I see. I don't even like that. By accepting the fact that he has obeyed the law perfectly for us.

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Okay. We achieve right standing with God. Be with God by Christ living out his life of obedience in us.

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Survey says – so, I mean, I'm not really crazy about achieve, you know, right standing because it makes it sound like we did something, right?

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So the way it should be stated I think to be more accurate, but I understand where Don is going with this.

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We have right standing with God based on the fact that he has obeyed perfectly for us or something like that.

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We have right standing with God by Christ living out his obedience of life in us. So which one do you have it by?

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The fact that Jesus obeyed for you or you obeyed? That's the question. Well, but it's, you know, we obey through Christ living in us.

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Yeah, I just don't like the achieve part. But yeah, we have right standing, right? It's by being in Christ because of his perfection, not because –

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Maybe the work that you should do is to believe in Jesus. Yeah.

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Legit. Okay. Number seven are we up to? Yes, we are. We follow

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Christ's example because he has life – his life has given us right standing with God. We achieve right standing with God by following Christ's example by the help of his –

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Oh, see, number B is so bad that I would pick A anyway. I mean, this is really, really bad.

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We achieve right standing with God, which again, I don't – I object to that, by following Christ's example.

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So he's a moral example. But he helps us along. He's going to keep us upright.

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Who's to blame then if I don't do a good thing? Yeah, I think we're just wandering into problematic areas.

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But yeah, that's just a bad answer. So it's got to be A. God, number eight, first pronounces that we are good in his sight and gives us his spirit to make us good.

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Yeah, okay. God sends his spirit, B, to make us good. Obviously, he's got

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A's along here. And the issue is always justification, then sanctification, justification, then moral transformation.

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Okay, well, based on that, then I'd still go with A. But I'm not really wild about the wording.

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Yeah. The goodness in terms of the making versus the pronouncing, the infusing versus the imputation,

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I think that's what he's trying to do. He's trying to make sure we're not going to go Romish. Yeah, I just – and maybe it would be too easy if he stuck with more biblical language, right?

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Does God pronounce us? He declares us righteous. I think that is true.

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Well, you know what? I'd like to amend that. He doesn't pronounce us good. God first enunciates that we are good in his sight.

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Doesn't that sound much better? Okay. Okay. Number nine.

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I don't think we have time for number nine, but we could try. Number nine, number nine. Christ's intercession at God's right hand gives us favor in the sight of God.

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B, it is the indwelling Christ that gives us favor. So I guess

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A is always the right answer. Christ's intercession gives us favor.

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It's basically – I don't know if I'd phrase things like that, but it's Christ who gives us favor in God's eyes. He's the only mediator, prophet, priest, and king.

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I think that's where they're going. Do you know when they had the large radio station in Saigon I believe and the

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Viet Cong came in and they got inside of it and they were going to play a bunch of propaganda? Then others quickly disarmed them and they just played

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Beatles music. So the propaganda wouldn't go out. Who knew?

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See, I would have thought they would have just played tapes from Rome or something. If you have benefited by the show, we'd love an email of encouragement.

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If you've got questions about this side or the other, and if you have somebody in your family diagnosed with prostate cancer, as I said a few times ago,

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I would love to be able to help you in any possible way.

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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 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbcchurch .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.