Fruits of Repentance

No Compromised Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Gabendroth. Show number five today with Mario and company. Real time, this is May 22nd, 2026. This will probably be played sometime in July. Don't forget, we have videos on Wednesdays, the YouTube channel.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have other new material as I'm trying to get back to daily radio after the cancer bout from last year. I've been trying to encourage you from Mario's encouragement to me to write us, mike at nocompromisedradio .com.

So I'm starting every Wednesday show with an email, try to find some encouraging emails. I could probably find the discouraging emails, but today another encouraging email. Dear Mike, I'm a little nervous about writing, but I wanted to let you know that I'm thankful for your podcast and I do listen every day.

I'm a 64 year old grandmother, so I can relate to many of your references from your young life that may be lost on younger listeners. Kim will always say to me, you might wanna update your illustrations because you're illustrating people, from Leave it to Beaver and when TV was black and white only.

What am I supposed to do? I'm 66, I just am a person of my culture. She said, but I've also introduced my daughter-in-law to the podcast and she and my two granddaughters age 11 and 12 have become fans as well.

Hey, what do you know? Gentle and meek. That's a joke. We love your tender heart. Wait, wait, are you writing to the pactum? Abounding grace with Chris Gordon, what in the world? Toward discouraged believers and are all learning so much from you.

You have encouraged us and helped us grow in our understanding of scripture. Thank you for your teaching. P .S. Thank you for your Cancer's Not Your Shepherd book. I bought it to give to a friend with chronic health problems and read it before giving it to her.

I enjoyed it so much and think it would have been a huge help when my husband went through cancer treatments. 25 years he's been free from cancer. Thank you very much for that email. That was encouraging.

Positive K love email. We appreciate that. I do have a desire to encourage believers. And so when you say we're encouraged and we wanna grow in scripture, I mean, that's why we do the show. That's why we do these things to try to encourage people and grow in scripture.

Methuselah’s Lifespan and the Timing of the Flood

Well, today's kind of a potpourri of things because here's the honest truth. Mario said, let's do one more. Oh, I've got an appointment in 35 minutes. I said, I don't know what I'm gonna talk about. So we'll just talk about how great we are, number one.

Number two, we'll move toward something that I heard Adrian Rogers say, and I'm gonna throw it out as something probable, but something fantastic if true, and you can study it on your own. Methuselah.

We say you're as old as Methuselah. I'm 66. Today, I feel as old as Methuselah, but he lived to be 900 and how old? 969 years old. That's a long time. I always think, what if you hurt your back at age 29, like I hurt my back, and now you've got to live 940 more years with a bad back?

Yikes. Methuselah. What does his name mean? Well, some say it means a man of the dart, like a throwing a dart, a man of a spear, like a knife thrower type of thing. Others have said, especially lately in Jewish and Christian quarters, that it means when he dies, it will be sent, or his death shall bring something.

So when he dies, something's going to happen, in other words. So lexically, man of the spear or dart. Traditionally, when he dies, something's going to happen, or some of the ways that people understand the meaning of his name.

My name is Michael. My name means who is like God, that type of thing. So the etymology of the name. So Methu means death. Shalach means sending, according to some of these traditions. So here's what I thought was interesting with Adrian Rogers.

And by the way, I like listening to Adrian Rogers, so then I can tell people that I don't hate Arminians. Right? I love Southern Baptist. He's such a good orator. And many times I learn so much, but I listen to him every week, probably Adrian Rogers.

I'm glad he's a Calvinist now. He's in heaven now. But I really like to listen to him. He said, okay, Methuselah in Genesis 5, 27 lived 969 years. Okay. We just already talked about that. And he died the same year the flood came.

Okay. No big deal. On the surface. Methuselah was 187 years old when Lamech was born. Lamech was 182 when Noah was born. Noah was 600 when the flood came. Okay. 187 when Lamech was born. Lamech was 182 when Noah was born.

Noah was 600 when the flood came. So here's what Adrian Rogers says. And I saw some of this on the internet. 187 plus 182 plus 600. Any guesses? 969. Death of Methuselah happened the year of the flood.

When he dies, it will be sent. When he dies, judgment will be sent. If that's true, I'm a numerologist, I guess. I was like, wow. I said to my friend, Steve Meister, have you ever heard anything like this?

He said, no, it sounds pretty corny. I think my word was corny. His word was, I don't know, monosyllabic. Of course, God's patience before judgment. That's true, whether this means it or not. And the timing is interesting.

The suffering of God during that time period, the certainty of God's judgment. Anyway, I want you to study that. 187 plus 182 plus 600 equals 969 years. Very fascinating. So that's it. That's the show today.

Repentance as a Gift and the Fruit of Faith

That's all I got. No, I want to talk a little bit more about repentance and the fruit of repentance, since that's been the show the last two Wednesdays. This whole show isn't going to be on repentance, but I want to talk about some of the fruits of repentance.

And here's why. Because as I was talking about it last week, and I ended the show at 28 minutes, not 30 minutes, because I could not find these notes. This is transparency radio. People sometimes say, well, you know, you're not very transparent.

Really? Now I may be tender and I may be meek, but I found my stuff on bearing fruits of repentance. So we've been looking the last few Wednesdays about repentance. What's a definition? It's a change of mind.

It will lead a change of intention and will and sorrow for sin, turning from sin, et cetera. It's mandatory. It's a command. Unless you repent, you'll perish. It's a gift, 2 Timothy 2, verse 25, that God may grant them repentance.

Acts 5, it's something that's granted, given by God. It's something that happens with belief in time. It's the same thing. This side of the coin, repent. You think rightly about your sin. This side of the coin, faith.

You think rightly about the Savior. They happen in time. We preach repentance. We preach faith. We say one, we mean both. We say repent, we mean believe. We say believe, we mean repent. You can say repent and believe.

You can just say repent. You can just say believe. It's fine. We talked about how repentance is not meritorious. You don't repent in order to be saved. You repent when you're saved. That is to say, it's the fruit of the union of Christ.

It's a fruit of even faith. And we talked about logic and nature and everything else. And then we started talking about, before I couldn't find my notes, fruits of repentance. And so today on the show, I want to talk a little bit more about fruit.

John the Baptist’s Call for Fruits of Repentance

Luke 3, 8, John the Baptist said, bear fruits in keeping with repentance. So John the Baptist comes along, and we could talk about Ezekiel or others in the Old Testament preaching repentance. But he knows, you know, that if there's repentance, there's going to be fruit.

When I say repent, it's not simply a change of mind. It's going to have fruits of repentance. There's observable fruit, sometimes not observable because it's in your heart, right? There can be attitude fruit and action fruit.

But John the Baptist says, bear fruits in keeping with repentance. Fruit is expected from repentance. And by the way, when there's no fruit, there's no root. There's no repentance. You can say with Jesus, well, unless there's repentance, you'll likewise perish.

He's not saying you're saved by repentance. You're saved because you repent. No, the meritorious cause of salvation is the triune God, of course. And when you're united with Jesus and you have the spirit of God, you exercise faith, you exercise repentance, et cetera.

Repentance Demonstrated Through Changed Conduct

Paul said in Acts 26, 20, they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance. And so even if you were to say to me, there's repentance as a change of mind and fruits of repentance are the actual actions and hatred of sin and turning from sin and turning to God and all that stuff.

Even if you were to say that, here he says, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance. Repentance should have fruit. There should be fruit that goes along with repentance. Matthew 7, Jesus said, you will know them by their fruits.

And so it is important to have fruits keeping with repentance. What are some of those in particular? This is what I was trying to find last time, but it works out well for this show. How about when we discuss the definition of repentance, hating sin?

Hating Sin as a Fruit of Repentance

Not just because it's consequential in my life and it's hurting me, but what about toward God? So when David kills Uriah, he sleeps with Bathsheba, he lies to Israel. I mean, it's just a total mess. David said, and this is fruit of true repentance.

Was David a repenting man? Not initially, but Nathan shows up and points to him and says, you're the man. David said, here's fruits of repentance, despising sin. Against you, God, and you only have I sinned.

And if you said to yourself, you know what? Am I a repentant person? This is important because I'm gonna perish without repentance. Do I have fruits of repentance? Do you realize that all sin is against God and that makes it even all the worse?

It's not just a sin against my wife, although it is a sin when I'm not sacrificial toward her, but it's a sin against God. So one of the fruits is just despising sin, knowing against it's a thrice holy God, the God that loves you, the God that had Jesus die for you, the God that raised the son on the third day and gave you the Holy Spirit.

And so we realize, you know what? Sin is that awful. When you understand the awfulness of sin and the object against that one, and the object you sin against, that's fruit of repentance. How about running from sin?

Mortification: Putting Sin to Death

How about actually saying no to sin? How about not sinning that particular sin anymore or sinning with less frequency, sinning with quicker confession? That's called fruit of repentance. Isaiah 55 verse seven, let the wicked forsake his way.

And again, we're not talking about perfection. Striving is fruit. A direction of attitude is fruit. One of the ways you can think about it is, okay, before you were saved, what'd you think about sin? What'd you think about Jesus?

What'd you think about loving other people? And for me, love was basically, how do I get things from other people? And so I'll show them this, I'll do that for them. Then they'll respond this way. Here you think, okay, now what really is sin?

And I realized what sin is and I want to run from it. What does the Bible say this forsaking of sin is called? It's often called mortification. Mortification of sin, that is putting it to death, muerte, mortuary.

We want to say no to sin and kill it and say, we just, you know, I have to assassinate sin. I just can't do it anymore. I want to put it to death, Colossians 3, 5. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, for instance, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

I want to just put that to death. I want to just say no to that. I mean, for many of us, what is our view of sexual sin before we were saved and after? And before I was saved, sexual sin was, I mean, I just remember one time when my dad, I went out on a date and my dad said, keep your nose clean.

I don't know, does that mean don't do cocaine? Does that mean don't get her pregnant? Does that mean don't catch something? I mean, I have no idea what he's talking about and it was all couched in that.

Now, when I think about that and how do I talk about to my son before he was married? No, we think differently about this. We think about purity. We think about chastity and we think about God's covenant and where we can have those relationships, et cetera.

Vivification: Turning From Idols to God

Biblical repentance is not simply saying no to sin mortification. In addition, as we say on the show a lot, it's living to righteousness. So we say no to sin and yes to righteousness. Death to sin, mortification, live to righteousness.

Viva la France, viva, to live for, to strive for. So it's vivification, mortification, vivification. That's what we talk about. You turn to God from idols. First Thessalonians chapter one, verse nine.

It's a desire to say no to sin and I want communion with God. No to this particular action and attitude and desire and yes for this relationship to God. Well, today we're talking about repentance and fruits.

Rejecting Self-Righteousness

How about this? This is a big one. Mario's gonna go, yep, this is true. A repentant heart says no to self-righteousness. That's a fruit of repentance. Standing before God based on our own righteousness, our own rightness, doing right, is something we all did before we were Christians.

I do good things. I've done more good than bad. I'm a good neighbor. I pay my taxes. Well, most of them. I'm not gonna steal my neighbor's mower. Matter of fact, I'll actually loan him my mower. I do good things, altruistic, help grandmas, et cetera and that's why God will accept me.

Self-righteousness. I'm not unrighteous, although maybe I do some unrighteous things and fornicate and adulterer and all these, but I have my own righteousness. It will stand the test of judgment. Then once you get saved and the veil goes off your eyes and all of a sudden you can see, you're realizing I can't believe it.

Left to myself, if I would have had to stand before God and he were to say to you, why should I let you in? And I would have said, because I'm a good person. It's like, thankfully I'm saved from that delusion, saved from hell too, because those delusions and those hells go together and like, oh, what in the world?

Now I realize, you know what? Like that man in Luke 18 in the parable, Lord have mercy on me, a sinner. The Pharisee's like, I pay tithes, I do this, I do that, I'm not like them, unjust and all. No, no, now repentance takes self-righteousness and slits its throat.

It comes up behind him and just like, you know, you see all the basketball players now and athletes and stuff. It's like, you know what? I just cut their throat. Repentance granted by God as a gift, stemming from faith through union with Christ, the meritorious cause of Jesus saving says to self-righteousness, I'm done with that.

I know I cannot stand before God based on my own righteousness. God be merciful to me, literally the sinner. It says a sinner in the ESV, I believe, but it says the sinner literally. I don't care about anybody else.

I'm standing before you, God, and I know I'm the sinner. Would you be merciful to me? Well, what else does a repentant heart do? Repentant heart confesses sin. Do you confess sin? I bet you do. There are certain people in evangelical spheres, weird evangelical spheres that says, you don't need to confess your sins.

Confession, Obedience, and Reconciliation

Why? Because Jesus justified you and all your sins are credited to his account and he paid for all those sins and therefore you don't have to confess sins anymore. They're all paid for. Well, they all are paid for, but we have parental sins and judicial sins, a relationship before the judge, yes, paid, but before the father, we still sin and so we want to confess our sins, 1 John, and that's a fruit of repentance where we acknowledge that.

We confess our sins. We admit our sins. We say, God, you're right. A confession means to agree with God, yes, I've sinned. Well, what else does a repentant heart look like? It has a desire to obey, a striving to obey, a heartfelt yearning to say, I'd like to obey God.

John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. He didn't say, do you know what? I'll love you if you keep my commandments. Did he? If you love me, you will keep my commandments. God has loved us.

God has sent his son for us. God has paid for all our sins and not in a legalistic way, but out of obedience, out of gratitude, out of a thankful, obedient heart, we want to obey him. And so you say, that's my desire.

I can see yesterday I didn't do some of that, but that's my desire today and I want to think rightly today. How about this? Remember with Zacchaeus, God saves Zacchaeus and what did Zacchaeus do? What a brilliant example of he wanted to make things right.

Repentant hearts want to make things right. And we do something against another brother and we're like, that thing's left undone, I got to get that thing right. With our spouse, there's trouble with our spouse and we've got a disagreement or argument or a verbal fight and we want to make things right.

Zacchaeus said, with restitution and reconciliation, trying to repair damage, if I have defrauded anyone, I restore it fourfold. I just want to make things right. I have a yearning to do the right thing.

That's all from God, that's a fruit of repentance. How about this? Here's fruit of repentance, forgiveness, to forgive other people. My grandparents in many ways were wonderful people that took care of us, paid bills on time, were church people in the liberal Lutheran church.

Forgiveness and the Patience of God

But interesting, as they got older, I realized they didn't really have any friends. Their only friends were us, the family, the grandchildren, their son and their daughter-in-law. I don't know if they really liked my mom that much, but they were bitter people because they couldn't forgive.

They wouldn't forgive. I could see no fruit of repentance, which includes the desire for forgiveness. And then Kim's grandmother, Grandma Evie, her name was Evelyn. And by the way, I have a new granddaughter and her name is Evelyn Love Abendroth, Luke and Hannah's daughter.

Eleazar now has a sister and her name is Evie, based on this grandma, Evelyn. And this grandma, Kim's grandma, this Christian lady, you know how many friends she had at 90, 95? A slew of friends, a whole skedaddle of friends, a whole bevy of friends, a whole gaggle of friends, whatever term we want to use.

And you know what, a lot of people burned Grandma Evie, but she was a forgiving person. And so here we have bitter, isolated, we won't forgive people, living a horrible, lonely old life. And we have a person that by God's grace was a forgiving person and she had all kinds of friends.

And I thought to myself, Lord, I want to be like Grandma Evie. I don't want to be the kind of person, I'm 66 now, if you cross me one time, we're done. And then one person after the next, after the next, I'm just done with, because I don't want to put up with fools.

And then I realized, wait a second, how patient God has been with me, how patient they are with me. I mean, when I first got here, if you were to say to me, is this an act of God's grace to be the pastor and this, that, and the other?

Yes, I knew that and it was very true. But there was probably something in me as a 36-year-old man thinking, I've come to this place with my education and my theological acumen and my theological degrees.

And you should be pretty thankful that I'm here. And you don't know who you got, right? Church of a hundred people in a town of 7 ,000 people. I'm gonna move from California. This isn't my land. This isn't my people, this is New England.

And so here I am. Aren't you thankful? What an idiot I am and what I was. I think about the patience of Bethlehem Bible Church, putting up with my preaching and just letting me hone my skills and sitting underneath some of those blistering sermons.

And I just think, Lord, thank you for the patience of Bethlehem Bible Church. And she, the church has grown, I have grown, and we're different than we were and all that. But even that, when you look at it, you look back and you think, how did I act in front of people?

What did I think deep down in my heart? And how do I think about that now? I think that's repentance. I don't wanna be that guy anymore. I don't wanna be that kind of prideful, arrogant person. I wanna be someone that is moldable in the hand of God and realize I'm just a creature.

I'm a frail creature, a sinful creature, a finite creature. And for some reason, God can use people like me to preach the truth. I guess he can use a donkey too. And people's lives can be changed. And I look back at it now, and this place is what it is today, not because of Mike Ebendroth.

That's for certain, in spite of me. I've said to many people, how do you change a church, right? 30 years ago, 29 years ago to be exact, this place was Arminian. It's Calvinistic now. This place was egalitarian.

It's complimentary now. This place was congregational. It's elder-led now. This place was charismatic, conservatively. It's not now. And the list just goes on and on and on. Did I say Arminian, Calvinistic?

Did I say it's more covenantal now than it is dispensational, et cetera, et cetera? How did that all happen? How could I do that? A kid from Nebraska, I didn't do anything, right? It's Martin Luther. How do you start the reformation?

The Word of God Changes the Church

I preached the word of God. If you're a Presbyterian, I'll tell you this part. You can ignore this if you're a Baptist. I preached the word of God. I went and had a beer with Philip in Amsdorf and I went to bed and the word of God did its work.

So if you're a Baptist, I preached the word of God. I went to bed. And the word does its work. It's powerful. It does its work in those who believe. There's a story that I believe it's a true story. A man named Luke Short hears the word of God preached in England by John Flavel.

He is 103 years old, sitting on the beaches of Connecticut here in New England. And he remembers the sermon from 1 Corinthians 16, verse 22, if my recollection is right. Unless you love the Lord Jesus, you're anathema.

And when he's 103 years old, he believes on the beach in Connecticut. And now I think about these children that come for a Juana and they'd memorize the Bible verses and they run off into the world and they're not saved.

And then haunting them in a good way, the spirit of God bringing up those verses about who Jesus is, Christ dying for the ungodly, drunkards and fornicators will not inherit the kingdom. Whatever they might be, it's the word of God that's powerful.

What if I had to be powerful? I mean, you see these arms now? Like what in the world? If only they'd give me testosterone supplement. By the way, it's so easy to see guys now my age and I go, you're on T.

I can just see it a mile away. I know I'm envious, but that's all right. So you can write me, Mike, at nocompromiseradio .com. One of the things about repentance, it also perseveres, right? It doesn't persevere perfectly from the human perspective, but you can go through all kinds of different trials.

What about my business? What about my cancer? What about this? What about that? And God just brings you through and you think, you know what? It is a perseverance in repentance that is the fruit of God's work in our lives.

And we see that and we think, okay, I wish I could go back and relive some of those things. I wouldn't have done it that way, but I see God's faithful in spite of. And by the way, that's also fruit of repentance.

If you wish you could go back and live a more godly life or a more righteous life. So my name is Mike Abendroth. He who has forgiven little loves little. So since you've been loved a lot, you can go love other people and forgive them for Christ's sake.

We've got Tuesdays and Thursdays, audio back on now, Spotify and iTunes. The website should be populated again. Got some help on the website. I've got some help turning our books into Kindle and other ways.

So if you wanna help, hit like, hit subscribe. If you wanna donate, that'd be great too. God bless you. See you soon.