Rest-ology (Part 3)

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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. Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. That�s what we�re after, to talk about the one

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Lord Jesus who never compromised, and the cross where holiness and grace were never compromised.

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And then in light of that, I don�t want to compromise. I�m sure I do, but I don�t want to, and I don�t like it when other people do. So there.

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That�s the show. Get over it. It�s New England. It�s wicked. It�s wicked righteous. It�s wicked good.

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When I grew up in Nebraska, it was terrible good. If something was really good, excellently good, overwhelmingly good, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious magic potion good, we said it was terrible good.

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Terrible good. But here now in New England, it�s wicked good. But then I�ve been in Germany enough,

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I want to say wicked, wicked good. My favorite all -time

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German word is hallo, because I can walk the streets and I can figure out what to say, hallo,

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H -A -L -L -O, hallo. My second favorite

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German thing is Deuteronomy, Numbers, Leviticus, Exodus, Genesis, those five books of the

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Torah, Pentateuch, Pent, five. They're called Moses 1, Moses 2,

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Moses 3, Moses 4, and Moses 5. That will help you if you're thinking, who wrote

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Deuteronomy, J -P -E, well, it's not

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Q because that's for Mark. Where'd Mark come from? Q. People are so smart and they can be so stupid.

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That's what sin does to us, doesn't it? It makes wicked, smart people stupid.

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Well, welcome. I�m glad you tuned in before we get into our Bible topic today. At NoCoRadio is the

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Twitter feed, and I like to put pictures up there of the books that come into my study and things that I'm going to read.

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I mean, it's just, I've got about nine, 90 books in the queue for reading, but the one

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I posted the other day, these are the books that I just came in from Reformation Heritage Books.

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The Best Method of Preaching, von Mastrick, all that is in God, Dozel, The Spirit of the

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Age, Fesco, Knowing and Growing in Assurance of Faith, Beecke, Important Doctrines, John, and it looks like C -O -L -Q -U -H -O -U -N, but it's pronounced

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Kahoon, K -O -H -O -O -N. That's at least what I think Sinclair Ferguson says in his book,

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The Whole Christ, and then Saving Faith, John Kahoon as well. And I said on the tweet, get cracking, hashtag new arrivals.

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So, I don't know who this person is, maybe he would tell me if I asked, but there's a fake account, a parody account, a parody account called

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JoelNotJoel, and it's got a picture of Joel Osteen's face. And his actual handle is at JoelNotJoel, okay?

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So he responded to the books that I had just received, and he says, before you get cracking,

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NoCoRadio, hold my sippy cup and watch this, hashtag boast, hashtag sermon prep.

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And he has a stack of books stacked the same way I had mine stacked. And at the top is

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The Big Red Barn, Then Goodnight Gorilla, Patterns, The Little Engine That Could, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the

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Hat, The Night Before Christmas, Richard Scarry's ABC word book, and maybe the funniest one,

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Richard Scarry's, maybe it's funny because I've read this book to my kids, What Do People Do All Day?

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It's like a kid asking the question, Dad, what does everybody do all day?

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Do all day? Oh, man. So, that's

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NoCompromise Radio for you. We're on the cutting edge, right? The cutting edge of, you know, discussion online, or, you know, the

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Pope was trying to change the Lord's prayer, and I think he was trying to protect the Lord from, you know, God doesn't lead us into temptation, and the disciples' prayer, as it should be called.

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And I just thought, you know, here's the thing, what does

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Matthew chapter 4 say? The Spirit of God leads Jesus to be tempted. So, if you're going to try to protect

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Jesus, it's His words, and He doesn't really lead us into temptation in some sovereign way.

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You know, of course, we want to protect God from being stained with sin or having evil motives, enticing like Satan or something like that.

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I get all that, but I think he forgot Matthew chapter 4. I think

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Luke 4, as a matter of fact, I'm going to look it up right now, Matthew says, led. I think Luke 4 says that Jesus was impelled.

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That's what I'm thinking it says in chapter 4 verse 1. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, Luke 4 1, returned from the

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Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil. I think that's impelled.

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I think that's kind of pushed, but that's ESV, so I don't think they've got the impelled.

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Because Matthew 4, it's easy to remember the temptation account, Matthew 4,

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Luke 4, and that would be Mark 1, so it doesn't work out in every case.

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Where does it say impelled? And Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

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That's Matthew 4 1. Well, I think it's Luke, impelled. Look it up in the Greek, you'll find out soon enough.

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Anyway, email us, info at nocompromiseradio .com. You can go to the website, nocompromiseradio .com,

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1 ,800 shows, 1 ,900 shows, just type in, in the word search, what you're looking for, and that should pull it up.

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No problem. I'm looking forward to having my kids today get into town, and I'm going to say to them right now, since they're at LAX, I love you both.

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There you go. All right. So, what are we talking about today? We're talking about rest. Rest. Why are we talking about rest?

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Well, we could all use a good rest, but we're in the book of Hebrews here on Sunday mornings, bbcchurch .org.

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This may sound weird, but the first part won't sound weird. I'd encourage you to go to the website and listen to the sermons in Hebrews.

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I think about 40 sermons so far, and we're up into Hebrews chapter 4. And I don't say that my sermons are the best ever compared to other people, but my sermons on Hebrews are probably the best

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I've preached. After preaching for 20, I don't know, five years, I hope

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I'm a better preacher, can handle the text better, and a better homiletician than I used to be.

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And I've got a long way to go. Sometimes you just, you know, think you hit it out of the park homiletically, and then the next week you just cringe.

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But on both weeks, you just need to be faithful because it's God's Word that really is powerful, not my rhetorician.

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Although I do, as you know, think that if something is worth saying, it's worth saying well. And if the material is excellent, it should be presented excellently.

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Correct? Correct. On rest, we're talking about rest. And when you look at Hebrews chapter 4, you've got a lot of rest there, and different kinds of rest.

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And we've talked about this some, Sabbath rest of God and creation. The rest of the

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Israelites temporally that they were looking forward to to get in the promised land, but they, of course, sinned and didn't go in, except the young ones.

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Spiritual rest, that is, no more working for salvation, but God has done it, and you can rest because of the finished work of Christ Jesus.

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And that's what we're talking about in the early parts of Hebrews 4, entering that rest.

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It made me think of a song written by Elisha Hoffman. What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms.

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What a blessedness, what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms. Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms, leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.

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Now, it doesn't use the word rest, but that is a good picture of rest, leaning on the everlasting arms.

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And in the book of Hebrews, we are talking about rest, but it made me think of, in my mind, the most well -known verse on rest in the

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Bible. And we talked about that a little bit last week with Restology 1 and 2.

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Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you what? Rest. And we were talking about how in context that verse is even made all the more wonderful because you see the lead -up with what's going on with Jesus and the teachers and those who are listening to Him and what

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He's going to say. Remember, He talked about the children and the games and how fickle they were, and they didn't want to play funeral, and they didn't want to play a wedding, they didn't want to take any part of, you know, the games that were popular of the day, and He tied that into John the

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Baptist and himself. And John the Baptist was like the funeral dirge, and he didn't come eating all kinds of foods, he was more ascetic and was out in the wilderness, and people thought, you know, how do we explain that?

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He's demon -possessed. And for Jesus, it was like the wedding game where He ate with sinners and tax collectors, and now they're saying, you know,

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He's a glutton and a drunkard and a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

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Yet Jesus says, yet wisdom is justified by her what? Deeds. And you can just see how irritated these people must have been, and when they say, well, you know what, you know a man by the company he keeps, then

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Jesus responds with, wisdom's justified by her deeds. You'll see the life of John, the life of Jesus, you'll see the fruit of the ministry of both, and wisdom will show us who's really right, and you can criticize all you want, you can say we won't go the asceticism game, we won't go the friend of sinners game, we'd like to control

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Israel and back off, basically. What's going to happen to those kind of people?

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And that's where we move ourselves into the next segment here, the next section of Scripture. For people that won't repent, who won't believe, who won't listen to God's prophets and preachers, who won't listen to the

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Son, who won't listen to John the Baptist, what's going to happen to those people who will not believe in salvation by grace alone, through faith alone?

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What's going to happen? There's dirges, there's weddings, but when there's unbelief here, is

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Jesus going to say, well, no big deal, universalism, Unitarian Church, it's not that big a deal, all welcome here.

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Write that down, all. Verse 20 of Matthew 11, and he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done because they did not repent.

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Woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, then they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

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But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you, and you,

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Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? They thought so. You will be brought down to Hades. If the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

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But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.

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Now where did Jesus do a lot of his miracles? Now we're in the book of Matthew, and so when you go to Matthew chapter 8, and he's talking about the faith of the centurion, it says in chapter 8, verse 5, when he had entered

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Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.

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Lots of things happened in Capernaum. Some of the things we don't know about, but here we know about the centurion's servant.

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We know that he cured Peter's mother -in -law. Jesus cured Peter's mother -in -law of a fever,

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Matthew 8, cast out demons, Matthew 8, healed a paralytic in Capernaum, Matthew 9, raises a dead girl to life in Capernaum, Matthew 9, gives sight to two blind men,

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Matthew 9, casts out a demon of a mute person, Matthew 9. Those are pretty weighty.

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Those aren't leg lengthenings. Those aren't, you know, filling your dentures with denture cream, gold bond filling.

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I mean, there's judgment going to be really given to these cities because it's not like they were left in the dark.

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It's not like they were just going on hearsay. They had these things done in the actual cities, and yet they rejected

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Jesus, and they're not going to repent. And if you go to the Gentile cities like Tyre and Sidon, they were notorious for doing evil, but they're going to be better off on Judgment Day because, well, it's obvious,

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Jesus was there in Capernaum in these cities doing all these miracles, and they still wouldn't believe. They didn't like the message of John, they didn't like the associations of Jesus, and they're not going to believe.

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Unbelief is a moral problem, and Jesus denounces these cities because why?

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They did not repent. They would not change their mind. They wouldn't believe. And he says, woe to you.

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The Good News Bible translates that, how terrible it will be. I usually don't read the Good News Bible, but it's in one of the commentary notes.

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It will be terrible. What a fate for that city. How awful it would be to be in that city, raining down a judgment from God.

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The Bethsaida comment there, where it says, woe to you, Bethsaida, Chorazin and Bethsaida.

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You know what, there are some people from Bethsaida who do listen, who do believe, who do repent.

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That's fascinating. Philip, Andrew, Peter came from that town. John 1 .44,

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Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Luke says that 5 ,000 people were fed,

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Luke 9, in that place, Bethsaida. That's interesting.

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So woe, when these works of power are performed, woe. You know, you think these heathen cities, like Tyre and Sidon, north of Israel along the coast, had their problems?

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Well, they do. But they, if they would have had Jesus there, Jesus, the omniscient one, knows this for a fact, those kind of miracles done up there,

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Tyre and Sidon, the population would have put on coarse, dark clothing, sackcloth, in sorrow and repentance.

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So Jesus says, more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you because you've seen it.

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You've seen me. And it doesn't say they're off the hook, but it'll be more bearable for them.

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The judgment won't be as bad. I find it fascinating that Jesus would know what would happen there, and I find it fascinating too from this text that Jesus must have done a lot of other things that aren't recorded in these different cities.

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But what was recorded is enough even for us to know, and if we didn't even have those other things recorded, we could just take

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Jesus' word for it. More bearable than the Tyrians and the

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Sidonians. I've never said Tyrians in my life. I've said Sidonians, I think.

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Jesus knows. And Jesus, I mean, we could give an application today of this.

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People today know the gospel. They've heard the gospel. They've got Bibles. They've got electronic

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Bibles. They've got a one of verses memorized. What's that? Why is this...

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Now all of a sudden, I'm typing things here, and I don't want to, thanks to Siri.

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I guess I could put it this way. On Judgment Day, if you won't believe that Jesus is the

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Messiah here on earth, on Judgment Day, it'll have been better for you if you would have attended no church than a

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Bible teaching church. It'd be better for you if you attended a liberal Methodist church than a

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Bible teaching church. Because if you're given much, you're going to be required much.

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You grow up in a family where mom and dad are Christians, and they preach the gospel to you, and you won't believe. It's going to be more bearable for your pagan friends that didn't know anything about it than for you.

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I mean, both will be judged. If you will not bow your knee and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, there will be judgment for you.

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It's more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you. That evil, wicked city, Sodom, wow.

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Remember, sun had risen on the earth, and the Lord reigned on Sodom and Gomorrah, sulfur and fire from the

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Lord out of the smoke from the land went up like the smoke.

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Jesus ties His ministry to John the Baptist, and John the Baptist comes, they don't want to hear

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John the Baptist. Jesus comes, they don't want to hear Jesus. If you're not going to listen to those prophets, well, there's going to be judgment rained down on you, condemned people, verses 20 through 24.

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That's what's going on there. And everything, remember what we're doing here in this show, is we're leading up to the rest passage.

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Don't just go to Matthew 11, verses 28 to 30, and say, these are my pet verses. You can say they're your pet verses, it's fine, you can have whatever favorite verse you want.

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It's, you know, it's all about you. I understand that. No, it's fine to have favorite verses, but the verses have a context.

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I'm just telling you, if you know the context, you'll like your verses more. You'll like your verses better, you'll like your verses more better.

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You better, you bet, come on. Verses 25 to 30 talk about the people that accept the message of John and Jesus.

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The ones that don't, they reject, they stiff arm, they run away from, they demean, they are the ones judged.

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But how do we explain the ones that are accepted? How do we explain people who get saved?

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How do we explain those that believe? Do they just on their own repent and believe?

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I mean, left to ourselves, wouldn't we all be like those at Capernaum, in Chorazin, Bethsaida, saying no?

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How does anyone get saved? And this section describes that.

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And then, of course, then at the end, there's the response. God is sovereign and we're responsible, that God is sovereign, we have a duty.

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God is sovereign and He doesn't repent and believe for us, we respond with repentance and faith, of course.

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Both are included, but there's the sovereign side first that so many people skip over, found in verses 25, 26, and 27.

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Without this type of prayer, without this type of snapshot that we get to see in interaction between the

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Father and the Son, we're all doomed like Sodom. We're all doomed like those in Sodom.

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Hell, we need this prayer. If you ask yourself this question, how is anyone not like the citizens of Sodom or Bethsaida or Chorazin that Jesus has just condemned?

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Well, there's going to be a prayer that is very special to all believers if they'll read it and think about it.

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And out of this prayer comes the gracious invitation and the extension to come unto me,

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Jesus would say. The revelation of the Father is going to be needed for anyone to come to faith.

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At that time, Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

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Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my

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Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the

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Son chooses to reveal Him. How is anyone not like the citizens of Sodom?

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Because of the revelation of the Father. That's amazing.

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The personal or specific revelation, one commentary says, by God to an individual as a result of which that person turns from sin and trusts in Christ Jesus.

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I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. What a great snapshot. We get to see, we get to hear.

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You can see the words on the page, but we get to hear if you're just listening to it on radio. The Son, I thank you,

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Father, Lord of heaven and earth. It's wonderful to be known as Father, but He's still the

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Lord of heaven and earth. Both good for us to remember, both things good for us to remember.

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This paragraph is going to be talking about God the Father and God the Son, and you're going to see their equality, and you're going to see, as people say, they're on equal footing.

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Of course, Jesus, eternal

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Son, the Father, of course, has no time that He started the

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Spirit as well. We get a little snapshot into this. It's fascinating.

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Why am I stalling? Because we're out of time. So next time on NOCO Radio, we're going to see what this prayer is and how essential it is to salvation.

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This is the work of God, Triune God, to save anyone. If not for the

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Triune God and His salvation, we would all be undone. We'd be like Sodom or worse. So in the meantime, make sure you're believing on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, the risen Savior, who's a representative and substitute. This is

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NO Compromise Radio. NO Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth 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.