Send Lawyers, Beer, and Money

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 to No Compromise Radio ministry. Pastor Steve Cooley here at the helm.

You're Steve Cooley? He said, I'm Steve Cooley. You know, some days I wish

I was Steve Cooley. I could think about, you know, grandchildren hopping on my lap. That'd be good for you.

Other days, I don't really want to because then I couldn't eat anything before three in the afternoon and still sleep at night.

Yeah, would not fit in with your picante diet. Steve, if you add your age and my age, we've got quite a bit of mileage on us.

About, what, 42 years between the two of us. And people are listening and going, yeah, they act like they have a total age of 42 years.

Now, yeah, I know, most Tuesdays. Now, if you go to the bbcchurch .org website, you can pull up the

IBS classes, Institute for Biblical Studies. I'm teaching hermeneutics right now.

And Steve, we were just talking about your class that's coming up in the spring of 2014. I like the idea.

Maybe we can have call -ins and people writing in with titles for provocative attendance.

Yeah, I was thinking, calling it Raising Your Antenna. We're going to look at some current issues and, of course, if I call it that, current issues and evangelicalism, everybody goes.

Now, see, that used to be a very snappy title. Like Current Issues and Evangelicalism, Current Trends, Current Downgrade Controversy, et cetera.

Finger on the Pulse. Yeah, Finger on the Pulse. So if you've got a good idea for Steve's IBS class title that would bring in a lot of people because we're all about numbers, we'll send you an old shirt, an old

NOCO shirt. Class growth, that's what I'm going to call it. Someone said on Facebook, I wore the

Wretched Radio t -shirt and they said they'd pay me $10 for that shirt. Really? I'm thinking about sending it to them.

Huh, wow. If you're listening, you need to write me at info at No Compromised Radio. I'll send you the shirt for $10 plus $4 .99

shipping and handling. What about signing it too? That could be another, actually that'll probably take away from the value.

I said on Wretched Radio last week, I said I got this shirt from a friend who gave me a bunch of old clothes in a big old garbage bag and at the bottom,

I kid you not, and there was a Wretched Radio shirt. You know, it's highly valuable. It's a collector's item.

Yeah. Steve, I'm going to read you something and you can maybe talk about it a little bit.

Okay, go ahead. All right, I want you, I'm going to ask you to - Do we need a message moment before you read it?

Super close to it. I'm going to ask you to tell me who you think wrote this. Okay. All right.

Beloved. Tim Way. Jude. I'm convinced one of our severest needs is pure rest.

Not only sleep, but refreshment and recreation. Recently, God spoke to me about capturing what he and I are calling

Sabbath moments. You should see Steve's eyes. A Sabbath moment.

Like many of yours, my schedule right now is particularly tough and I see no time in the near future for a number of days off.

God spoke to my heart one Saturday morning while I was preparing for Sunday school. My child, in between more intense rests,

I want to teach you to take Sabbath moments. Okay, now I'm going to take a shot at this. Well, first, female.

Yes. See? True? True. Okay. How about Beth Moore?

You are exactly right. Steve's got his arms up. Victory.

So, you know, basically what happened was God confirmed his desire for me to drive all the way to the other side of Houston to the medical center to visit a patient with brain cancer.

So see the emotional tug here. How can you argue with any of that? I fought traffic across Houston, visit my friend.

And unless God performs a miracle, the mom will go home to be with the Lord. I got in my car and prayed.

I pulled out of the parking garage, fighting with tears. The few blocks later, as if on autopilot,

I turned my steering wheel straight into the parking lot of the Houston Zoo. Christ seemed to say, let's go play.

I'm almost done. I don't know, I want to burst into Carrie Underwood here. And that we did.

I hadn't been to the zoo for years. I heard about all the improvements, but never expected the ultimate, Starbucks coffee.

Can you imagine watching a baby koala take a nap in a tree on a rare cold day in Houston with a

Starbucks grande cappuccino in your hand? Now that's a Sabbath moment. God and I had a blast.

I have to tell you that with a couple of edits, that could be a very nice commercial for the zoo or for Starbucks, either one.

Now, do you like the zoo? Yes. Certainly you do. You like Starbucks? Especially with the grandkids, you know. Absolutely.

Yes, I do. I really do. Visiting patients, you know, that are sick in the hospital. All that's fine. Put them all together.

That's a great day. But then what about the God spoke to me in the Sabbath moments and having a blast and play dates with God?

I'm not really sure what a Sabbath moment is. You know, is that like a say la moment? Say la.

That's when Israel transgressed on the Sabbath and some people got killed. I think that's my

Sabbath moment. Do we actually want to be under the law again? I don't.

You know, for those who do, if you want to be under the law again, just write to Pastor Mike. Info at NoCompromiseForYou .com

and say, I'd like to be under the law. Under the law again. If we are under the law and there's no punishment, would that make the law a suggestion?

Well, that's a different show, I think. All right, next, since we are talking about ladies in ministry, we can agree to disagree on women's ordination.

Hermeneutics, November 12th, Christianity Today, written by Tish Harrison Warren, guest writer.

And the subtitle is Bridging the Battle Lines of Female Clergy Debate. And Pastor Steve Cooley sent this to me.

Yeah, did you say Rick Warren? Oh, Tish Warren, okay, sorry. Tish Harrison Warren.

Tish Harrison Warren, okay. Yes, now not everyone that has their maiden name in the authorial writing.

That could be a middle name. That could be, yeah, I know. Maybe they wanted to name the, maybe they wanted a boy and they were gonna name it

Harrison Tish. Like Harrison Ford. Yeah, I see, I see, yes. Okay, so now we're gonna agree to disagree on women's ordination.

Well, you know, it's really a rough issue and a lot of people really wrestle with it because it is so difficult to understand exactly what

Paul's getting at in 1 Timothy 2. What did he have in mind when he said I wouldn't have a woman teach or exercise authority?

Why would that stop a woman from being ordained? Tish Harrison Warren is a transitional deacon in the

Anglican Church in North America. What does that mean? I think that means she helps people transition out of churches.

I have absolutely no idea. What is a transitional deacon? Do we have a deacon in charge of transitions?

And she was featured on the White Horse Inn. Really? I know,

I don't know doing what. You know what, when I think of a transitional deacon, maybe she listens to the sermons and says, oh, that was a nice transition.

You know, when you go from one point to another, you know. Yeah, for years I wrote in my sermons S -E -G -W -A -Y,

Segway, but it kept having a little red line underneath it, so I changed the spelling. It's a Segway.

Have you ever ridden a Segway, by the way? No, I have not. You know me, I'm like Mr. Non -adventure,

I don't do this. If you had one for free, would you ride it around Venice Beach and pop a few wheelies? You can't pop a wheelie in a

Segway. You could. So she says here, there's like three bold paragraph titles.

One is, objection to women's ordination is not equivalent to sexism. I like that one. Two. That's good.

We must offer hospitality to those with whom we disagree. Okay. Okay, three, our mutual goal is serving

Christ and his bride. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, this is just, look,

I mean, you could call this the frog in the kettle of water. I mean, the goal here is to get you to just not make such a big deal out of women getting ordained to a gospel ministry.

I mean, after all, there are good arguments on both sides. Oh, well, you know what?

I think that's maybe why we should remove the contents clause. Yeah, she doesn't want people kicked out of her denomination just because they disagree with the denomination over women's ordination.

You totally nailed it. It says here, as a Protestant and as part of a recently splintered communion.

Is that part of a church split there, I guess? It's a big piece of wood that's been splintered. Who is the guy that walking tall?

Oh, Buford Pusser. Can you imagine a guy, we need the evangelical equivalent of walking tall, that big old stick, whacking people that deny substitutionary atonement, whacking people that deny imputation of Christ's righteousness, whack.

Whacking people who want to ordain. She says, I recognize that there are legitimate reasons for division and even at times for denominations to fracture, but women's ordination need not be a communion breaker.

There's frankly more ambiguity in the scriptures about the role of women in the church and about ordination itself than most other doctrinal issues.

Believers earnestly wrestling with the same biblical text can differ on this issue. Well, now

I would say this, there's not really a whole lot about ordination. I will give her that.

I mean, I would certainly, I would not want to splinter a denomination over that, but women in ministry, you'd have a hard way to go.

I mean, what do they do typically if they want to put women in ministry, they go to Acts, it's

Ananias and Sapphira. Oh, wait, that's the wrong example, Steve. Let's talk about this from a no -compromise perspective of people attending churches and should they continue going to churches.

Steve, if they're listeners and they attend a church and there's a pastor or an elder who's a woman there, could you attend that church,

Pastor Steve? And would you tell other people to continue to attend that church if there's a woman elder or pastor?

We won't go into the deacons issue because deacons, deaconess is 1 Timothy 3, but what about elder or pastor?

Would you continue to attend? I'm nodding my head and the answer is no. So walk us through,

I attend a church and there's a woman pastor. You know, lots of times, Steve, the wife is the pastorette.

You know, the preachers of LA, it's the pastor's wife, you know, and they're right up there.

So what do we do? What do we tell people? Well, here's what I would do. Let's say I was a new believer because, you know, believe it or not, this is gonna sound funny, but once upon a time,

I was a new believer and I went to churches and maybe sometimes I didn't agree or I didn't even know enough to disagree.

But if I was at a church that had women pastors, what would I do? Well, or women elders,

I would look at 1 Timothy 3. I mean, going past 1 Timothy 2, but look at 1

Timothy 3 and I would see a verse that says something like, verse two, an overseer must be above reproach the husband of one wife.

And I'd go, hmm. And I'd noticed that all the pronouns were male.

He must manage his own household well, his children, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

He must not be a reason. And I would go, hmm, that kind of sounds like it should be a man, you know?

And I, so I would struggle and, you know, and then all you have to do is just back up to 1

Timothy 2 and you read, let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over men. Rather, she is to remain quiet. And you say, well, maybe that only had to do with the church at Corinth and, you know, or.

Ephesus. Ephesus, sorry. And then, and then you look at verse 13, for Adam was formed first, then

Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

So when Paul ties it into the fall, you have some issues. You can't just say, well, it was just,

I mean, I read when I was teaching through 1 Timothy, I read some feminist commentators who said, you know, it's likely that there were women at the church at Ephesus and that's why, who were teaching false doctrine.

And that's why the first thing he says is, you know, you need to stop these people from teaching false doctrine. And, you know, then, so what he's really saying in 1

Timothy chapter two, as a matter of fact, just to emphasize, let me just say, you shouldn't even allow those women to exercise authority.

Really? Is that what he's saying? Because he ties it right into the fall. Tish Harrison Warren says, it is a shame that fewer and fewer communities can be found where women's ordination isn't a line in the sand, dividing the faithful from the errant.

And so what we're trying to say is this. I think this is one of those things, these areas,

Steve, that makes me, it makes it easy for me to diagnose a church and what trajectory they're on.

Well, maybe they're called the trajectory. That's a cool name for churches now. But if I look at a church and so I think, okay,

I don't have a doctrinal statement from them. It's just this amorphous, you know, God is love and Jesus is

God. He's coming back sometime, you know, get ready. How do I analyze the church? Well, it doesn't take me any time at all when

I see women pastor, women elder, I realize that they're theologically liberal, no matter what else they say.

I say to myself, I couldn't be going to that kind of church because if you can take these verses and just turn them wrong side up, you can do anything you want and the atonement's next.

Well, you know, it's debatable. There are good scholars on both sides of the issue.

Well, there might be scholars on both sides of the issue. I don't know how good they are. I mean, it's pretty simple. I would not have a woman to exercise authority or teach a man and, you know, that's directly related to the fact that Eve fell first.

Well, yeah, but, you know, that could go either. It's a coin flip, you know. Tish says, our mutual love for the church compels us to seek to grow together into Him who is our head, even if our growth is painful, messy, halting, and incomplete.

And what I would say is this, I'm not after how large our church needs to be, how large our denomination needs to be, the theological imprint or footprint that we have for denominations so we can affect culture, affect other people, so we can say no to abortion.

Yes to feeding the poor people. I'm all after faithfulness. That's what we're after. Can we be faithful to the scripture?

And my question for you, Steve, is, and I know you know the answer, how can a church be faithful to scriptures and then do something that's so blatantly antithetical to what the

Bible says? If you want to call yourself, you know, Tishians and say, you know what, we just pick and choose the

Bible and we're called Tishians. Well, how can you say you love the church, which she says she does there?

I love the church, but I don't want to obey the Lord of the church and what he says about the church. Oh, okay.

Now her sentiment there is, is she, she, here's the thing. She wants both sides to kind of like the other side, but then eventually, where's that going to lead people like us who say, it's pretty obvious.

You can have an eight -year -old read the Bible and say, who should be pastors? What do they say? Daddies. Yeah, as they look to the mother for approval.

Anyway, so much for that. We're on to the next story. It's Christian news story, Steve. And it's interesting.

This is the subtitle in the November 3rd article written by Heather Clark. Heather. Yeah. Hi, Heather.

Bibles and booze, congregation across America attempting to attract new members with beer.

Well, you know what? You will attract a certain sort of crowd. It's like, you know, if you throw horse manure out in the summer, you'll get flies.

I mean, it's. And you know, here's the thing. You all can't see

Pastor Steve, but he has only the Bible in front of him. And so, and some water. And he just comes up with these things.

Well, I mean, come on. If you go to a bar, if you go anywhere and you offer free beer, you can get people to come in.

I mean, that's not a big, I mean, why not dope? Where do you draw the line?

Hey, it's legal, right? Colorado. First Christian Church of Portland, Oregon hosts a monthly beer and hymns night in the church building.

You sing hymns, talk and drink beer. Be thou my friend. Oh, man.

I wish I could see. Beer -based gatherings are held in the church buildings and others are held at the local pub.

One of the locations highlighted in the report is in Fort Worth, Texas, where Church in a Pub sponsored by Pastor Phil Hines of Calvary Lutheran Church is held at the local bar.

I want to be clear. I do not personally believe that drinking beer is a sin, but drinking beer is not, it's not worshipful.

I don't get it. You know, let's hoist a mug in the honor of the Lord. No. You know,

I mean, does the regulative principle have any meaning whatsoever for these people?

Apparently not. This is maybe the ultimate example of whatever works. We'll pack them in using whatever.

Yeah, I wrote on the top of this, when Jesus isn't in an off department. Right, I think that's exactly correct.

So it says here, according to the Wall Street Journal, covering a similar story with this new trend, there's a pastor named

Mike, excuse me, Matt Bestaie. Yeah, make sure I get his name right. I know, who started

Valley Church in Michigan. And then it says, my name is Darren, the music director announced to those present, and I like me a 30 pack of Bush Light.

The group has a motto, what would Jesus brew? What would

Jesus brew? I don't know, but maybe we've got it on tap. Just, that's just so lame.

You know, what is the focus of your church? Well, you know, our beer of the month club, I mean, when

I was growing up, this is kind of funny. When I was growing up, I remember, you know, I was in the Mormon church and we had something, when

I was maybe 14, we had a youth leader and he said, this is bring a bud month. Well, this gives a whole new, whole new phrase to that or meaning to that phrase, bring a bud.

Bring a bud, that's exactly right. Bring a six pack and a bud. And you know, the thing is, if you're gonna drink beer, you know, it should not be

Bush. It should not be Budweiser, it should be something good. Coors.

Rocky Mountain, fresh. I quit drinking 25 years ago, just because I was such a drunk and, you know, drug addict.

And so my views on alcohol have changed. I'm no longer fundamentalist when

I think about that, but I just prefer not to drink alcoholic beer. And so I was at my neighbor's house and he's the guy that said, you know, when

I need my soul saved, Mike, I'll let you know. In other words, don't bug me right now about it. And so we were working in his yard and doing some stuff.

And so he brought me out a Budweiser. I thought that was nice of him to bring me a Budweiser. It made me think, you know,

I'm a guy's guys, bring me a Budweiser. And I said, thanks a lot, I really appreciate it. But I quit drinking, you know, it's not a sin to drink, but I just quit drinking.

But in my mind, Steve, I said, if I'm gonna break a 25 year beer fast, it's not gonna be with a

Budweiser. No way, no way. All right, let's go to the next story. For the false promise of the prosperity gospel, why

I called out Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer. Huffington Post Religion, you sent this to me.

Yes, I did. Yes, so what is happening in evangelicalism? Well, I mean,

I think some people are starting to wake up to the fact that the biggest faces of Christianity, you know, when you're talking about Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer, they're probably two of the biggest names in Christianity.

They're false teachers, you know, and more and more people are, I mean, this was out of the

Huffington Post, you know, and the guy just tears them apart, especially he starts with,

I think Joyce Meyer, I think is the one he goes after first. Yeah, his name is Rick Henderson, pastor who blogs at churchismessy .com.

And he calls these two guys out. It says at the very beginning, I've been preaching for 20 years. Yesterday I did something that I've never done before in a sermon.

I publicly called out false teachers and named them by name. I was a little shocked that you could be preaching for 20 years and never,

I mean, Titus 1 .9 says, exhort and sound doctrine and refute those who contradict.

Well, how do you refute somebody who contradicts if you've never called them out by name? Well, there's a trend in evangelicalism.

I think it was Lou Giglio, they had to go back to his sermons in 20 years to finally find a mention of him saying homosexuality's sin.

So same thing here, you've got to go back 20 years to find out some of these current event issues. Well, you know.

This goes back to the radar. Let's check the archives. Let's go back to this radar thing again, right? That's the

IBS class. Raise the antenna. Raise the antenna. I was thinking radar.

Wasn't there a guy in MASH named radar? Yes, there was. Yeah, okay. Yeah, he's a meme on Facebook right now, so, but I digress.

Well, he even says here for Joyce Meyer, quoting her about Jesus stop being the son of God on the cross, he could have helped himself up until the point where he said,

I commend my spirit into your hands. And at that point, he couldn't do nothing for himself anymore.

He had become sin. He was no longer the son of God. He was sin. Well, it does say that he became sin for us.

It doesn't say that, oh, by the way, he stopped being the son of God. What did he resign?

And then, you know, got reinstated later. I mean, this sounds like a bad business story or something, you know.

I quit being the coach and then they rehired me. Don't you, do you know something? The minute that blood sacrifice was accepted,

Jesus was the first human being that was ever born again. Now, that was real.

It happened when he was in hell. That's terrible, because let me just explain this.

Jesus didn't need to be born again. When he says to Nicodemus, you must be born again, he's speaking to a sinful man.

He wasn't speaking to himself. He didn't say, Nicodemus, you, like me, like everyone else, has to be born again.

It's true for others, other mere mortals. It's not true for the son of God. Perfect from the moment he was conceived until the moment he died.

This is Mike Abendroth with Steve Cooley, No Compromise Radio. You can write Steve at Tuesdayguy at nocompromiseradio .com.

Do you ever get any emails? Yes, I do. I usually ignore them. Oh, sorry. Yeah, it's so flooded.

I just can't even deal with it. Maybe we'll hire somebody. I need an assistant. Yeah, that would be great. I think we've got a pretty big budget here at No Compromise Radio.

Huge, unlimited budget. And you can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. 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.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.