Experiencing God

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome back to No Compromise Radio ministry. I am here in the studio, live in person, with Pastor Steve Tuesdayguy Cooley.

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here with you, Mike.

Steve, tell me a little bit about ways that people could follow the new Twitter account you've set up on Tuesdayguy.

Is that in fact true? Yes, the Tuesdayguy, that's me.

I think we should patent that, no, trademark that moniker. It's already done. There are t-shirts available.

It's already done. Book covers. Let's see, what do we have, too? The new iPhone app for the Tuesdayguy. Oh, that's excellent, yes.

But we do have some t-shirts left, actually, it's true. We're not selling things to make money. I think they cost this amount of money. If you want a No Compromise t-shirt, I think they're 10 bucks.

Email us your size and your address, and we'll tell you if you got a size, then send us the money. Care of Steve Cooley, and then we'll get it done.

Yeah, and we are designing our very own special line of Tuesdayguy gear.

So that'll be great. Yeah, that's, I think you only get extra larges for that one. XXL. Oh my goodness. Reminds me of the story with my friend, you know who he is, Christian Harris. He's probably your friend, too.

And he worked with a guy who was related to Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones guitarist. And so I was gonna try to figure out a way to get Christian, because Christian likes to listen to No Compromise.

Hi, Christian. And to get his friend the No Compromise t-shirt to give to Keith. Nice. And then to have Keith put the t-shirt on and then have a picture of Keith Richards.

With the No Compromise t-shirt on. You know, it would be great as if that was on the next Rolling Stone CD, right? That would be so great. I would so love that. How about if you wrote a song called No Compromise?

Oh, I can just see it. He's got the big skull ring on the front. It's some great riff. That would be the greatest. That's what we need. Actually, we're gonna change the intro and outro soon enough. That's on my list of things actually to do today with the new music and everything.

Wow. Yeah, so that'll probably be. What are you gonna use, Molly Hatchet? You know, some Southern rock thing. Okay, good. I surely won't use. I was thinking maybe Meatloaf. Hmm. You know, something like that.

Yeah. Something long hair, sweaty, something.

Yeah, No Compromise. I don't even wanna say any of the Meatloaf songs because they're all, you know, theologically.

Muy mal. Yeah. The second I said that, I thought, okay, here we go. This is gonna be bad. I'm not even falling for that trap. It's gonna be bad. All right, here's what we're gonna talk about today. We wanna talk about religious experience.

Experiential Christianity and the Search for Religious Experience

Now, Steve, I'm in a series on the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12. At Corinth, you had the group saying we have the spirit. Yes, we do. We've got spirit. How about you? That is, we speak in tongues.

We're the in crowd. If you don't do what we do, i .e. speaking in tongues, you must be a lesser Christian. You must not be as spiritual, or as we like to say in our Norwegian accent, spiritual.

Yeah, please don't interrupt me right now. I'm having a spiritual moment. That's why his eyes are closed. I looked over at him and his eyes were closed. I thought he was praying.

I just hit his arm. I'm meditating. Okay, good. So, what about you? Do you have all the spirit of God? Have you experienced everything you can when it comes to a religious experience? And so, we're gonna talk about that today.

And we'll start off by hearing from Steve, Tuesday guy. Steve, tell me some of your most dramatic spiritual experiences, maybe crying in the spirit, maybe vomiting in the spirit, maybe writhing in the spirit.

Tell me, you know, behind the scenes, behind closed doors.

There was a time 14 years ago when I was hijacked, and I don't know if it was.

That's good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Listen to the last two weeks ago shows, what you need to do.

You know, some of the most spiritual moments I've had, I get, well, I think the most excited I've ever been is when I realized, you know, who Jesus Christ was. That was the highlight of my spiritual life.

But, you know, I think it's great, too, when I see people come to faith. But all these kind of moments that people have, now, I will tell that this story will be a little bit different than maybe what you're expecting.

When I first got saved, I went into work, and I was just like super happy. And somebody says, well, what happened to you? And I said, well, I became a Christian. And they looked at me, and they said,.

Not a born-again Christian. Steve is cheering up a little bit right now, true. Okay, keep going.

And what happened? Well, eventually that person got saved, but. Not a born-again Christian. Well, what we want to do. Because their impression of a born-again Christian was somebody who flopped around on the floors.

And all that kind of stuff. Oh, a little gold filling in the teeth and stuff like that. Yeah, all that kind of nonsense. All these silver and white fillings I had, they could have been gold. Maybe they still might be, if I have enough faith.

Here's my goal today. When Steve and I get together on Tuesday Guy Shows, we like to teach a truth. It's kind of like a parable, where we talk a lot, but there's one main point.

Yeah, and so it's up to you to kind of dig through.

It's a postmodern thing, if it's up to you. In fact, what about that?

What if we have a contest? Can you name the point in today's show? Yeah, we would just talk, and then you've got to figure it out. You make the call. Like back on the. And you know what? That would be about the level of hermeneutics most Christians use, right?

Well, that's true. This is what I thought the sermon was about. That's right. Yeah, so here's what we're really after, though. We'll telegraph this ahead of time. Like you telegraph a basketball pass.

I don't personally telegraph. Like Metta World Peace did the other night.

Or like Kobe Bryant did a couple times, you know. I'm like, didn't you learn in high school to fake one way? Oh, that's right, you skipped high school to go straight to the pros at a junior high. Oh yeah, so did Andrew Bynum.

Yeah, like eighth grade to the pros. See?

Many people today think that they have not experienced all the fullness of God. That is, they have friends and relatives and other people who seem to be very emotional, very charismatic, very, it's a small C, very, I don't know, they've had these experiences, these pietistic, wonderful experiences of devotion and allegiance to God and all these other things.

And yet other people like us, we say to ourselves, have we ever had those feelings? What is a spiritual feeling? What is it an experience that is commensurate with scripture? So that's what we're gonna talk about today in our own funny, No Compromise Tuesday guy way.

Providence, Revival, and the Critique of Revivalistic Experience

Okay, let's make it so. Let me give you one of my spiritual experiences, Steve.

Okay, is it flopping around on the floor?

No, I actually have never flopped around on the floor. I try to do some of those inverted bolo sit-ups or something, that probably could have looked like it.

Hmm, any laughing in the spirit? Right now. Roaring in the spirit? Vomiting in the spirit? No, no. Those are all phenomena that are actually referred to by charismatics.

Actually, one of the things that I experienced was just a couple of weeks ago, I like to take my dog for a walk in the orchard, the apple orchard. Actually, I was taking my dog for a walk last night and the owner of the apple orchard came up.

I know the owner and I asked him if I could walk on his property years ago. He said, yes, just don't eat the apples. But then his wife drove up last night and I had the two little kids with me and she drove up.

It's basically like, why are you on my property? And I had to tell her I was having an experiential experience get off my cloud. So here was my experience. I threw a stick into the lake in the apple orchard.

Doesn't that sound kind of romantic for the people who are living in Phoenix or something like that right now? It sounds kind of like Old Testament. It sounds like little women kind of deal, right? Well, I was thinking, you know.

Except it's little men. It could be ax heads or it could be. Oh, very good.

That's true. I threw an ax head into the lake and then I walked on top of the lake to pluck it out. But anyway, I threw the stick in. It's a long story. We've got to get back to the show. This is obviously bombing.

I threw it in the river, the lake, the stream, the pond, the inlet. Gully. The peninsula. You can't throw it into a peninsula. The jetty. And she swam to get it. And I was watching her swim. And I just thought, now this is the honest truth.

I just thought, Lord, you are amazing. That here in this beautiful setting of fruit trees and a lake. And I could see over the hill, rolling hills. And I just thought you make a dog. So once they're not a puppy anymore, they know how to swim.

It's just innate. It's imprinting. It's just behavior that you make dogs to swim just to please you. And then to please me. And I just really, Steve, I felt just a great sense of joy and internal joy because I thought God is so wise and good to give me the simple pleasures of just a dog that can swim.

And then I have three dachshunds. Yeah, what do they do? They don't really do well in the water. I mean, we've never actually tried, but they're not supposed to be very good swimmers. I mean, those tiny little legs and the long bodies, that's not really.

Yeah, but they could easily swim through a life ring. Maybe. All right, so here's what brought this up. I'm reading a book called Reforming.

Oh, that's the wrong book. Recovering the Reformed Confession.

Recovering from the Recovery Movement. Okay.

12 Steps to Recovery from Recovery.

12 Steps to Recovery from Surprising Narrative.

12 Steps to Recovery from Recovery. I like it. I think Ron Rhodes did that though. Recovering from the Recovery Movement. I think so.

He stole my idea before I had it. I know, but that's okay. You can pretend like you came up with it. Okay, good. Yes. Thanks. Recovering the Reformed Confession, Our Theology, Piety, and Practice by R. Scott Clark.

PNR. What's PNR stand for? Presbyterian and Reformed. Yes, okay, good. And here's what he does. He basically takes to task, takes to, well, how do you say that? The woodshed. To the woodshed, yes, that's right.

Oh, if you ask your Siri how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood, how does she respond? I don't know, I've never asked her. I think she says, is that African wood or European wood?

There would be a difference. And here's what R. Scott Clark basically says. That Edwards, followed by Lloyd-Jones, interpreted by J .I. Packer, give a false view of experiential Christianity. And if you follow those guys, you're going down the wrong path when it comes to this particular topic.

They were right about the deity of Christ, et cetera, but they are too experiential in their experiences.

So the knowing God by J .I. Packer, that kind of thing? No, that would be good.

Oh, that would be a good one. But just more specifically, Steve, how J .I. Packer and Lloyd-Jones look at revival. What is really revival? And how does that manifest itself in a person? So it starts with Edwards, and then it moves on to Lloyd-Jones.

Let's start with Edwards. Here's what he says in a footnote that is R. Scott Clark. R. Scott Clark. Edwards argued that if the queen of Sheba, who lived before the incarnation, fainted, how much more appropriate is it for Christians to faint at the direct experience of the risen Christ?

Edwards also appealed to the example of the Philippian jailer who fell down before Paul. Now, can't you see, Steve, again, we love Jonathan Edwards in whole, the main stuff, but can't you see why the Charismatics glom on to Edwards?

Oh, absolutely.

He's their favorite theologian. Absolutely, I can see it right away because this is exactly what they do. They look at a narrative bit of scripture and make it kind of normative. In other words, that's what all Christians should be doing.

If the Christians spoken tongues, known language, which is known languages, but if they spoken tongues on the day of Pentecost, then all Christians should do that. And you take one incident, of course, I wonder what that means about Ananias and Sapphira.

I wonder if they preach that. That's called the burning of their bosom. And if you hold back anything from God, he'll strike you dead.

Commencement sermon, Jonathan Edwards, Yale College, 1741, the distinguishing marks of a work of the spirit of God. So what did he say? He basically tried to say exactly what you were saying, Steve, that you need to try to find scriptural justification for subjective revivalistic experiences.

That's a bad hermeneutic.

Here's what Scott Clark goes on to say. Edwards' subjectivism is apparent in his appeal to the Song of Songs, otherwise known as the Song of Solomon, two, five, and eight, the key phrase being, I am sick of love.

Now, that's a little more King James. I'm sick of love. I am sick because I'm in love.

Yeah, I think a newer translation would be, I'm addicted to love. Yes, that's exactly right.

Edwards, quote, sweetly conversing with Christ and wrapped and swallowed up in God. Now, see, here's why I'm bringing this up today, Steve. Maybe some of you experience God in this way and in other ways we'll talk about in just a minute, but what about the people who don't?

If you're not careful, you'll look for this and you'll look for it and maybe you won't find it and then you're gonna be depressed that you don't experience God like Edwards did or like they did in the days of these revivals.

How can I experience God today? Is it enough just to say, God has increased my thankfulness for the person and work of Christ. God has increased my allegiance to him in light of what he's done. God has given me a joy knowing that I'm saved and a delight from eternity past.

Isn't there something more than that? That's the question of the hour, of the half hour, of 24 minutes.

And it really is amazing that people want more than that. I mean, what does there have to be other than that? What does there have to be other than forgiveness of sins, the promise of heaven, all the things that you don't deserve.

And then we think, well, wait a minute, there's gotta be another experience now. And it really is kind of shocking to me to think that Jonathan Edwards, as great a theologian as he was, would say that because the hermeneutics of that would lead to all sorts of problems.

Scott Clarke said, word and spirit piety is replaced by event and excitement pietism, whether attributed to the direct action of the spirit in the 17th century, excuse me, 18th century or in the new measures of the 19th.

Now here's an interesting quote, Steve. Even in its best and most admirable form, the revivalistic program is still misguided because as Packer, Lloyd-Jones and Murray define revival, Ian Murray, it is fundamentally the quest for a particular religious experience, the immediate encounter with God.

Yeah, and so I guess basically what he's trying to do is blow up the whole myth of revival. There is no such thing, revival. If you see a lot of people getting saved, is that really a revival? And I think that's how people tend to think of it.

And here's the question. I remember once a relative of mine, I won't identify him, but from a different part of the country and basically was saying that their church went around and preached the gospel to a lot of people and a lot of people got saved.

He says, but the funny thing is we never saw any change. They never went to church, life went on just as it was. But I think he would have called it a revival. Right. And you know what, Steve,.

With the first great awakening and the second great awakening, I'm not saying those things weren't revival where there was an extraordinary amount of the spirits converting grace applied to people in numbers.

But what the book is saying with R. Scott Clark in his recovering the reformed confession is when you go to the desire of, I want to have a spiritual experience. Here's what he says. What the neo revivalist have in mind seems more on the order of a second blessing for a Christian, a move to a higher and more intense spiritual experience of the presence of God.

And so I don't know about you, Steve, but I just sit there and watch that video of MacArthur and Piper as they talk about things in life. For instance, and John says, MacArthur, I've never been depressed and Piper's, I get depressed all the time.

And they talk that way and they're so different and MacArthur's never heard God talk to him, never had one of these prototypical evangelical charismatic experiences and Piper has, and I'm just more in line with MacArthur and I've never had these experiences.

And so should I even want that? Is there something outside of the word of God and progressive sanctification through the word and through the spirit as the Westminster divines would talk about in other confessions?

Am I missing out on something? Well, I think you're really onto something there though, too, because if you've been depressed before, maybe it's because you're living for the next mountain peak. You know, you're looking forward to that next thrill kind of thing.

I remember many years ago serving as a counselor at a harvest crusade in Los Angeles and the guys who came forward that I was supposed to counsel, you know, welcome into the family of God. Actually, I was supposed to evangelize them but they were already Christians.

They agreed with everything I said and they said, yeah, we're already Christians but we just kind of wanted to come forward and you know, they just wanted the experience. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm so glad I came out here this evening for that and you know, most of the people in the crowd were already Christians.

Well, what were they doing there? I think they were there for the experience and it all becomes about experience, experience, experience.

R. Scott Clark said, Edward's language supports the thesis that revival is really a code for a heightened subjective experience of the divine presence rather than a turn to the objective promises of God and a restoration or reformation of the divinely established means of grace.

And so Clark says, here's what Edwards does. He sees things happening in providence of God that is people responding during the awakening and then he tries to codify that with scripture. And so I think of Phil Johnson where people can wrongly interpret the providence of God and here Edwards wanting that uber, super spiritual experience tries to find that in history and then goes back to scripture to try to validate his extraordinary providence of God.

So providence ends up not being enough. We've got to see the super providence of God.

The Means of Grace and Ordinary Christian Joy

Yeah, it really is putting the cart before the horse. I mean, you've got the, what should be leading the train in the back. The Bible should always be the source and not the authentication. It should come before the fact, not after the fact.

And I do think though this need for experience probably drives a lot of the consumerism, a lot of the things that we see in the church today. People want that higher high, that better feeling and not recognizing the fact that the way to get that is not by an event, it's by a deeper knowledge and understanding of the word of God.

Yeah, see that's what Clark is going to be saying the whole time. Going back to the typical means of grace and as he talks about the word of God, isn't it sufficient? Don't we have everything we need there?

Is there something more? Is there something that we're lacking? Steve, back to your comment on consumerism, even the excellent title, if you want to sell books, this is an excellent title. Trying to get into publishing a little bit myself, I know how important titles are or how bad they could be if they're poor.

Experiencing God. Well, don't we want to all experience God?

That's great and it's much better than your alternative title, which was becoming a spiritual Engelbert Humperdinck, which I didn't really think that was going to fly off the shelves.

That is so bad. How about this? This is from one of the catechism, question 114 in Heidelberg. Catechism, talking about is a Christian able to keep the law of God perfectly? No, but even the holiest men while in this life have only a small beginning of this obedience.

Now let's put that up against my life. And I would say, amen. I confirm that with a hearty affirmation.

Yeah, with a hearty amen, which you already said. Yeah, I was looking for a different word there.

So some kind of synonym. I was trying to get the word verity in. That's what I was after, but I couldn't quite do it. Probably where we get the word verdad. And veritas. And so I say to myself, I want all of God.

How do I experience all of God? I think if I'm in, I think if I have one of these emotional experiences by the lake, or sometimes I felt certain things in the pulpit before, I think Lloyd-Jones would probably talk about that as unction.

I think whatever I experienced, I'm glad for, but if you're in search for it and that's your next big fix, and you're not living the day-to-day life of a Christian through the ordinary means, in an ordinary fashion, with an ordinary wife and an ordinary job, and experiencing who God is as your creator, redeemer, friend, and savior,.

You're going to be disappointed. That's right. And I mean, just even what you're saying, is there any such thing as an ordinary job, an ordinary wife, an ordinary house, an ordinary kids? And the answer is no.

Just getting back to what you were saying about your dogs, I've had, about your dog, sometimes I've just looked at my dogs and just thought what, honestly, what marvelous creatures they are. Who but God would think, I'm going to design an animal that is going to want to be around people, and want to obey them.

Loyal and faithful. Everything that a cat is not.

Oh, sorry. Steve, here's one of my all-time Christian experimental experiences, except it's just the ordinary things in life. It's just the ordinary day-to-day stuff. Ecclesiastes 9 .9. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life, and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no work, our thought, our knowledge, our wisdom, and sheol in which you are going. And I'm not joking. That's not a wisecrack. Just enjoying your wife, and kids, and life, and a nice meal, and you go, this is an experience from God.

And I mean, I was interacting with somebody here recently who just kind of said, I don't like my job, basically. And I'm like, well, that's not really the point. The point is, you have a job. Are you talking in third person right now?

Yes. Okay. You have a job, and you're able to support your family, and what a blessing that is. And people need to be focused on, there is no such thing as ordinary. Everything that we have is a blessing from the Lord.

Especially this side of hell.

Yeah, and salvation is everything, and then anything on top of that is just gravy. I mean, what more could we ask?

Christ Jesus is everything you need.

Amen. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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