Hipster Seminaries and Such

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Why chose a seminary? Glasses, beards, scarves, tight jeans and…?

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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 No Compromise Radio, a ministry.
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My name is Mike Abendroth. Real time, April 9th, I think, yes,
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April 9th, 8th, something like that, and it was sunny this morning, then it was rainy, then it snowed, then it hailed.
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Now it's sunny and it's going to be partly cloudy. Now how do you ride a bicycle in such weather?
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I'm not exactly sure. You can write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com. I don't know how many emails we get a week.
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My guess is about six make it through to me. We have a certain person that keeps changing his email, trying to get by the screeners as he is a little, how do we say it, office rocker.
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No, I'm not talking about Fred. Fred has my cell phone number and he texts me sometimes.
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I think on my iPad, though, I haven't entered in his name, so it just pops up. I think an 805 area code number.
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The number to call is BR549. If you would like the book,
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Sexual Fidelity, you can get that on Amazon. If you want to have a Kindle version, it's $4 .99.
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If you want to get the regular book, the hard copy, not hard cover, but hard copy, actual book, book made out of paper, you can go to the website with the promo code
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Heno, H -E -N -N -O, small H, and you can save yourself $5. If you want to buy five, 10, 20, 30 copies for a
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Bible study for men, or for ladies for that matter, then just email me, mikeatnocompromiseradio .com.
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I'm trying to finish the other book for the fall release, but I can tell
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I'm tired. I can tell I can't do what I used to do. I was born in 1960 and it's starting to catch up with me.
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Recovery time isn't quite as fast as it used to be. I have other responsibilities like Sunday preaching here at the church and other things, men's discipleship.
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I think writing is about the lowest on the list. Plus every time
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I go to the book, I think, I need to just change it now. Sounded good five years ago. I think this one was written three or four years ago, just trying to put some finishing touches on it.
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Okay. I have a few things. This is a desk cleanup day. I like desk cleanup day because I like clean desks and then it's kind of potpourri for 50.
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If you don't like the first subject, then you like the second or a third and you can just hang in there. It's almost like a Q and A on Sunday night at Grace Community Church, 1990.
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John Calvin has written a set of commentaries on the New Testament and old, not every book, but I think even if you're an
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Arminian, you would find them helpful. And here is his comment on Romans 1 .32.
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Now I think it would probably be best if I read Romans 1 .32 first.
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What Bible do I have here in front of me? The other day I had a New King James. Wasn't too happy with that. This is the
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ESV and I think this is the NoCo Bible right here.
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All you trendy neo -Calvinists, young, restless and reformed have to have the
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ESV. Okay, let's just flash into the future for a second. What is going to happen when we have the
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ESV onlys? What will they be like? Beards, hipster beards, skinny jeans.
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They'll be old by then and I don't know what they'll have. They'll have, I don't know, guava juice instead of coffee.
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Romans 1 .32, last verse in the chapter. Though they know
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God's decree, these are the pagan Gentiles, though they know
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God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval or hearty approval, another translation says, to those who practice them.
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They know it's wrong and instead of warning people, they give approval, probably making themselves feel much better.
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Calvin, excuse me, in Romans 1 .32, the following appears to me the correctest interpretation.
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Did John and Calvin just say that, the correctest, correctest interpretation? That's there.
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There you go. That men left nothing undone for the purpose of giving unbridled liberty to their sinful propensities.
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For having taken away all distinction between good and evil, they approved in themselves and in others those things which they knew displeased
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God and would be condemned by His righteous judgment. For it is the summit of all evils when the sinner is so void of shame that he is pleased with his own vices and will not bear them to be reproved, and also cherishes them in others by his consent and approbation.
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For he who is ashamed is as yet healable, but when such an impudence is contracted through a sinful habit, that vices and not virtues please us and are approved, there is no more any hope of reformation.
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Such then is the interpretation I give. For I see that the apostle meant here to condemn something more grievous and more wicked than the very doing of vices.
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What that is, I know not, except we refer to that which is the summit of all wickedness.
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That is, when wretched men, having cast away all shame, undertake the patronage of vices in opposition to the righteousness of God.
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The summit of all evils, he calls it, and the summit of all wickedness.
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K2, Everest, instead of doing those things that are described in Romans chapter 1, sexual impurity, sexual immorality, insolence, haughtiness, boasting, disobedient to parents, and the list goes on, what's worse than doing them?
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Clapping when people do them, when other people engage in such acts.
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God isn't clapping. When it comes to celebration of sin, you can't even really talk that way.
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I feel like I want to back up and rerecord what I just said. There's no celebration of sin in the
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God who is holy, holy, holy. Correct? Yeah, of course.
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Here's where I start getting the gut punch as I have to examine my own life. What about watching things on your computer, right,
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Hulu, Grackle, Netflix, what are the other ones, CBS .com,
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ABC, NBC, Fox, Spike, TNT, TBS.
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What about watching other people do things? Is that a celebration of it? Well, I was going to say, of course,
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I'm not a legalist, I don't want to be a legalist, and those are questions you're going to have to ask. But standing ovations for sin is the summit of all evil, the summit of all wickedness.
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When people cast away shame and they undertake, using Calvin's words, the patronage of vices in opposition to the righteousness of God.
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Very fascinating. Well, that's the first thing on my desk. What's the second thing on my desk?
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I'm sorry to say that sometimes I look at the Huffington Post religion section. The tirade for the trendy church.
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Now I think I made a comment about this earlier, but a guy got up one morning, his name was
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Jack Levinson, and he wrote a book, by the way, Fresh Air, the
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Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life. Interesting title. And he goes to visit a church service.
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The guy's a good writer. And Jack Levinson says,
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I got up early on Sunday morning and drive to the manufacturing district, which is totally desolate.
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I'm self -conscious because I'm visiting a hipster church, naked too because I've got no tats, not even a
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Bible verse across my ribs from grad school days. And at 59,
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I'm totally gray. My beard, even my chest hair, my ear hair isn't, but it's growing long because I'm old.
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My eyebrows too, they're going gray, legit not on fleek so I'm embarrassed to begin with.
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I parked my 2004 Honda Odyssey a ways away, obvs,
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O -B -V -S, and walked toward the front door of the warehouse building at the end of a deserted street.
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Totally trendy sign on the side of the building. They opened the door for me and say, with a smile, hi, welcome, and hand me a piece of paper.
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So far, so good, hashtag awesome. Inside is hip too. To the left, there's a white wall with a little rectangular tiles the size of small bricks at the back of a coffee bar,
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Java, yes. Now I'm right at home because I'm from Seattle, so I asked for decaf, but they literally don't even have it.
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That's right, I'm gray. I can't drink regular, but they're not old. They can drink regular, hashtag typical.
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I drink pouch poured hot chocolate, so I feel a little less welcome, but it's my fault, my body's fault.
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I can't turn up like I used to. I look around, there's a little alcove to the right where you walk into, turning the page, worship space.
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That's interesting, isn't it? It's that sacred space. This is the sanctuary.
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It has repurposed wood walls. In the middle is a wood cross made up of small square rusty nails.
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Now the backstory. I taught a class this week on the Holy Spirit.
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I wanted us to be somewhere Pentecostal or charismatic, somewhere growing on Sunday.
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There's just seven of us all together in the squad, two white guys in their 50s, two guys in their 20s, a young white guy and an
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Indian guy, a 40 -something redhead, two African American women, one in her 50s, one in her 60s.
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Why do you need to know that? Because the people at church we visited were mostly white, 96%, mostly young.
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So the seven of us come early because the website, which is totally hip, says worship begins at 10.
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It doesn't. It begins at 10 .20 because starting on the hour or half hour would be way too mainstream.
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So what to do? We stand in a small half moon in the little alcove, which most of the regulars have to pass through to get to their 10 .20
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service. In and out they go, out and in, passing our little multicultural half moon without a word.
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In and out, out and in, not a word, not one. 30 minutes of silence, 1 ,800 seconds ticked by without a hello.
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I know a lot of people are angry at the Suit and Tie Sunday Best Church, and a lot of churches with speakers sporting tattoo sleeves are giving them a home where they don't have to get bored or angry or petulant.
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The main speaker, the pastor, I guess, talked about dry church. The church I'm attending is not dry, of course.
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They're wet. They don't have crinkly skin, our decrepit traditions of old people in obsolete churches.
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They're angry at dry church. You're bored by dry church. You're sick of dry church. I get it.
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But are you much different from dry church or any better, really? When seven people, people who look a lot different from most of you, stand and half moon you in the alcove, why don't you stop to say hello?
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You don't shake our hands. You don't smile. You don't tell us your name.
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And admit it. You know we're not one of yours. A 66 -year -old
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African American woman? No way. An Indian? I didn't see one, except for my student. And there are seven of us standing at the entrance to the worship room, which has more repurposed wood and a skylight and stark concrete warehouse walls and a drummer in a glass box.
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I'm angry. I'm bored by hipster inhospitality. I'm irked by bohemian indifference.
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I'm annoyed by trendy aloofness. No, that's not right. I'm sad, disappointed that a church which on its website claims that thousands have been touched by its members couldn't greet strangers in their midst.
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Their website even makes a lot of going in to worship and out to serve. So in and out they go.
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Out and in they come. Not one word of welcome. No, not one. Now, except for one line, that's the whole article.
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Hipster church. Before I immediately say, I get it, I understand, I can see how that happens,
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I say to myself, am I nice to people who attend the worship service? I mean, probably the first thing you could do as we preach a little bit here, in light of our standing in Christ, why don't you get to church early?
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Now it behooves the people to start on time. We try to start on time. But if you get to church early, then you can have time to talk to people and you go out of your way.
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We here at the church try to tell the folks, listen, the elders love to talk to one another. We're friends.
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The elders have much in common. We need to talk about certain things. But short of an emergency or short of any prayer time or something, the elders aren't going to talk to one another on Sunday.
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Why? Because we're talking to other people. We talk to visitors. We talk to grandmas.
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We talk to young teenage men and everyone in between.
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I try to go out of my way to say hello. Now there are some people, and I can tell, this is probably not good for me to admit, but I will.
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There are certain people at the church, and I think they're at your church as well. You know if you talk to them, it's going to be a black hole every time and you're never going to get out.
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It's going to be hard for you to extract yourself from that conversation. Now, some conversations, you need to just listen for a long time.
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Maybe don't do anything else besides listen and it's okay. It's okay for them to talk and to share and to relate and to do what they do.
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But on Sundays, my conversations with people, I hope are pleasant. I hope are engaging.
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I hope are, dare I say it, genuine and authentic. But I have to talk to a lot of different people, and I've told the people at the church, if you'd like to talk with me about an emergency, please let me know after I get done greeting people on the way out of the church and take care of anything, you know, maybe my wife needs or children need,
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I'll be glad to sit down and talk with you. And I think to myself, even though I'm exhausted, even though I've got done preaching, even though I've, you know, discipleship and prayer time and all that, because we're here to serve.
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You come to church to serve other people because you're serving the Lord. Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, show us a servant, right?
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He could be served, but he came to serve and to give his life for ransom for many, Mark 10, 45.
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So in good days, spirit -led days, I will go out of my way to be nice to people and engage them.
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And even on days that I just know better, maybe it's just all the flesh, so I'm sure it doesn't count for eternity, but I still know how to be nice to people.
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But there are some people you know when you meet, every single time you talk to them, they talk too long, don't give you a breath, don't have any consideration that you've got to talk to visitors.
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And I try to tell our folks, I'm going to say hi to the visitors, especially on Sunday, because you guys know me and I preach fairly forcefully, at least in my mind
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I do. So I want to be nice outside the pulpit. What's worse than a forceful preacher? I'm kind of a jerk outside the pulpit.
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I try to be kind outside the pulpit, therefore. Anywho, best thing you could do is to get to church early so you can talk and serve.
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Of course, say hi to your friends, of course, catch up on things. But if catching up on things with your friends is talking about quilting and ESPN and how do you seven put a hole or something, then you should do something else.
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Go and minister. Lord, who could I serve? And part of that is just trusting the sovereignty of God and when you walk around, you're going to meet people and ask them about themselves and maybe how you could pray for them.
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There's a variety of things you could do. We don't want to be the kind of people that the only words visitors hear is, you're in my seat.
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That would be bad. We don't want to be the kind of church where, oh, the songs are
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Christ -centered and biblical, the preaching is Christ -centered and biblical, the parking lots are wrecked and the people are mean.
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I think on average, our church here in New England, I think we're nicer than the culture and shouldn't that be the case?
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I don't mean sickeningly sweet, fake external nice. I almost said like a southern state.
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I didn't want to say the state. Sometimes people say, well, New England is tough, tough work for the gospel.
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It's the power of God for salvation for all who believe and actually it's almost nicer because people here tell you, oh,
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I'm not a Christian or I'm a Catholic, whatever they say. In the south, aren't everyone
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Christian? Isn't everyone a Christian? Aren't they all practically professing
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Christians? I've told the story many times. If you pray before your meal here in New England, they might ask you, did you lose your contact?
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All five of you at the same time. In the south, when I am with a group of Christians and we pray before the meal, you can tell the waiter or waitress has been trained and they just stand over there kind of hovering, waiting for you to be done, hoping it's not a preach prayer.
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Anyway, let's just, this coming Sunday, whatever church you attend to go worship
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Jesus Christ, if you think, how can I go serve other people? How would I like to be treated?
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If I go into a church, would I like to be greeted? Would I like to be acknowledged?
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Would I like to be asked, oh, can I help you in any way? I've devised a system at the church where I can sit in my study at my desk on Sunday or any other day and look out the window and see the parking lot and if there's not turkeys in the parking lot, there are cars, and if I see someone walking across the church parking lot and I notice that they're a visitor,
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I know right when to stand up. So I get to the front door, when they get to the front door, and I open up the front door and say, welcome, welcome to Bethlehem Bible Church.
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How'd you hear about the church? Oh, I see you've got little kids and let me take you down to the nursery if you'd like.
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If you want to have the kids sit with you during the service, that's fine too, whatever you prefer. Oh, the bathrooms are here.
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These 20 different books that are up front, when you first walk in, that's just kind of a taste of what the bookstore is like.
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The bookstore is right down over here and there's a visitor center in the same room. If after the service you've got some questions about the church or what we believe or who
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Jesus is, you can always come here. Or you just want to get to know people at the church, there's some folks at the visitor center. They'd love to help you in any way.
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I think that's a good way to go about it. Looking as a, okay,
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I hate to say this too, be very intentional. I didn't get much cleared off my destiny now, did
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I? I did not. I was also going to read something from David Dixon, and he wrote something about the covenant of redemption.
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That's what I was going to read, but I never got there. Hmm. Okay, let's just read a little bit.
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As to the expressions, importing a formal covenant, 1st Ephesians 1 .7, it is called a redemption or a buying of the elect out of sin and misery by blood, showing that no remission of sin could be granted by justice without shedding of blood and Christ undertook to pay the price and hath paid it.
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Again, the inheritance which the elect have promised unto them is called a purchase, importing that the disponer of the inheritance to the elect must have had a sufficient price for it and that the
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Redeemer hath accepted the condition and laid down the price craved for it, Ephesians 1 .14.
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And so brought back lost heaven and forfeited blessedness to so many sinners who otherwise for sin might justly have been excluded and debarred there from forever.
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A third expression is holding forth, Acts 20 .28, wherein God disponer and God Redeemer are agreed that the elect shall go free for God the
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Redeemer's obedience unto death, who hath now bought them with his blood.
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A fourth expression is in plainer terms set down by Paul, 1st Corinthians 6 .20. Ye are bought with a price.
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God the disponer selleth and God the Redeemer buyeth the elect to be his conquest, both body and spirit.
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And Peter more particularly expresseth the price of redemption agreed upon, to be not gold or silver, but the blood of the mediator
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Christ, the innocent Lamb of God, slain in typical prefigurations from the beginning of the world and slain in real performance in the fullness of time, 1st
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Peter 1 .18 -21. A fifth expression is that of our Lord Jesus in the institution of the sacrament of a supper,
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Matthew 26 .28, this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
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Here is an agreement between the Redeemer and God the disponer, that these may which are the elect shall have remission of sins for the
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Redeemer's ransom of blood paid for them. The purchase of this ransom of blood he maketh over in the covenant of grace and reconciliation in him, and sealeth the bargain with them by the sacrament of his supper.
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John, excuse me, David Dixon. I just learned a couple words
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I never thought I'd ever know. Boy, that's amazing. Good stuff, you have to think about it.
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But that's one of the reasons why I like to read the old divines. My name is Mike Gabenroth, this is
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No Compromise Radio. If you like the show, please tell your friends, nocompromiseradio .com.
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Or you can also find us on iTunes, Facebook, at nocoradio for Twitter.
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See you soon. 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 bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.