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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.
My name is Mike Abendroth. Glad you are listening. When we started the show, oh, coming up five and a half, six years ago, I never would have thought that we would be in so many headphones, earbuds. Steve just emailed me a while ago, not Pastor Steve, but a different Steve, and he just found out about the show and was listening to five No Compromise Radio shows a day.
Now, I was caught up in just a few short months to listen to all 1 ,700 shows, and now he gets, I don't know. Steve Cooley should send him something for free. That's what he should do. So Steve, thanks for listening to those shows, but it's really been a blessing in every way, shape, and form.
Some days I think like it's Saturday night now at 5 .30 p .m. my time, and you gotta feed the masses, but it's been a delight, opened up all kinds of doors for speaking and books and other stuff. So I'm really glad.
If you like the show, as we've said before, I guess you can find a donate button on the bucket on the website, but if you tell your friends, that'd be better, because then maybe they find the donate section.
I saw someone the other day, they're needing like 100 ,000 for their website. Please give me money, the little bar graphs, you know, the thermometers at 60 ,000. It's a different world. I guess if you're a millionaire and you wanna really help No Compromise Radio, then you can write me, mass lottery.
I guess maybe we need somebody like that and to kind of put us on the big Kahuna shows. We would do that, but we're just, I'm content to be here in West Boylston, about 6 ,000 people live in this little town out in the middle of nowhere by Wista Mass.
We're kind of in the news these days because not that far away is the Quabbin Reservoir. Quabbin. And they're gonna make that rattlesnake island. Sounds like, you know, survivor island, kicking out island.
What was that island? Redemption Island. And they're gonna make a bunch, you know, put a bunch of snakes out there. Rattlesnakes, poisonous snakes. So anyway, what else can I tell you? Oh, this is interesting.
Harvest House published the book, Things to Go Bump in the Church, kind of scary doctrines for new believers. And Byron Yohn and Clint Archer are great writers. And even though I contributed to one third of the book, I really think it's a great book.
Sounds really stupid, but I'll say their chapters are great. The topics are great. It's right from the Bible, and it's written in a lighter style. It's definitely no-compromise style. Well, the publisher said, we're out of, we're not gonna carry the book anymore.
It's not selling like we want it to, and you wanna buy them. And so we bought all those books. So now we have stacks of them. We're talking stacks. I think the book is maybe 15 .99 list or something like that.
Amazon sells it for about 13. So that's like as cheap as you can get as Amazon. We're gonna sell them for less. They'll be on the website soon. But if you wanna buy five or 10 or 20 or something like that, email me.
Info, you know, Mike at info. Info at nocompromiseradio .com. And we'll work out something. It's gonna be under $10. And it is a great book. You know, I think the best thing you could do for the book, first read it, then it's a great book to give to new members.
That's a good way to use the book. So you're at a church, we like to give a book out when people become a member and that would be an excellent book to give. So we'll work out a deal. It's not on the website yet.
You're gonna just have to work through me. Mike at nocompromiseradio .com. Things that go bump in the church. I'm trying to finish this last book that I've got or one of these books that I've gotten. I don't really write much anymore.
I actually don't read much anymore. At night, I'm working on these other projects for speaking places and sermons and discipleship and stuff like that. But we're getting close to Evangelical White Lies coming out and I don't know, coming to a theater near you, maybe in the fall.
We're talking about purging. What about purging? Now for a while, I noticed they had, what do you call the Lady Macbeth? Lady Macbeth's deal. What's that called? Does anybody know the Lady Macbeth effect?
The Macbeth effect. I was totally captured by it and had to do it for my kids and in front of my kids. What happens is you prime the pump. So if you have a real pump, like we had in Nebraska, not at home, but at the cabin, you get a little water from the river, pour it in while somebody else is pumping and then you get the well water coming out.
You're set. You prime the pump. If you're Arminian or Pelagian, semi-Pelagian, and you do ultra calls and you think to yourself, if I have a few people go up who are already Christians, they'll see, you know what?
Kind of primed the pump. If you have some donuts that you're learning how to sell at a little convenience shop, if you don't have any blank spaces where people have taken donuts and you say, oh, other people like them, then you take a few out and set them in the back, even though there's room for them and you think, oh, when you walk in, people like those donuts.
Other people eat them. I will too. The Lady Macbeth effect is a priming effect. When you get someone to feel shame, they then spell a word associated with it. Now it comes from the Shakespeare play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth imagines bloodstains on her hands when?
After she had committed the murder. So what you do, it's kind of like a psychological test. See if my chair was not broken, this would work. Get that millionaire to send the money for the chairs in. You know what?
Forget the millionaires. If Taylor Swift can give $250 ,000 to whatever that name, whoever, what was it? Keisha? Kalisha? Cliche? We're going for billionaires. We need one billionaire who likes no compromise radio.
Just one. One and only one. One ping and one ping only. Maybe the best show of all time. You get a group of people and you ask them to think about something that they did in the past that was wrong, a bad deed, and you get them to mull it over.
And then you get them to fill in the blanks with like a word to fill in the blank. But they have the first letter, W. Then there's two letters skipped. Then they have the last letter, H. So W, blank, blank, H.
And if they've been thinking about a bad thing they've done, they fill in the blank, wash. I guess if you're from the Midwest, we need another letter, wash. W, and they put in the A-S to make it wash.
If you give them the word S-H, blank, blank, E-R, they don't say shaker, they say shower. And then if you give them the word S, blank, blank, P, and they've been contemplating a bad thing they've done, a sinful thing that they've done, they are more likely to give the word S-O-A-P, soap, instead of stop.
Fascinating, it's called the Macbeth effect. What does that have to do with anything? It has to do with conscience, guilty conscience, bloodstains, and for us, we have committed sins against God, a thrice holy God, and we need to be washed.
We need to be showered. We need to be, what's the other word? Stopped or soaped. That's what we need. In Hebrews chapter one, verse three, in that long relative clause speaking about Jesus so that you'll listen to him, it says, having made purification of sins, he sat down.
Jesus purifies. We need that because we're sinful people. Ephesians chapter five, let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of God and Christ. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
We need to be cleansed. We are sinful people. Adam's first sin imputed to all of our accounts. Everybody's except Jesus. And then by consequence, we are sinful people. I don't know why there's a reticence, a skittishness about how bad sin is.
If you just stop and think about it, what can you prove, you know, theologically in life? Can you prove virgin birth? Well, I mean, I can prove it from the Bible and why it has to be a necessity, but there's essentially empirical evidence for the universality and sinfulness of sin.
I mean, it's before our face every single day. Now let's move from macro to micro. Let's move from others to ourselves. Have you ever sat there and said to yourself, I'm the most sinful person I've ever met?
You know, when Paul says, I'm the chief of sinners, he meant it. He meant it. And as you confess, that is, agree with your own sin before the Lord, I mean, we can hide in front of other people and we hide behind self-righteousness and faux-righteousness and sacramental righteousness and penitential righteousness, but we know before God we're dirty, we're filthy.
You read Ezekiel 16 or other passages about the filthiness of things and we need to be cleansed. I am sinful and therefore I had to be cleansed. And since it's only the initiating sovereign, distinguishing grace of God, if you believe in grace, you believe in sovereign grace.
If you believe in grace, you believe in distinguishing grace. The Arminian's going to gut grace. He'll say he believes it, but he doesn't really believe it. Grace to you in peace. He's got a different definition.
This is something that God does. He initiates it. He's the sovereign one over it. Don't let pride get in the way. Pride's going to make you remain an Arminian. This is grace. So for us to think, you know what?
I might as well not minimize my sin. I don't have to maximize it. I don't have to just roll around in Romans 7 and never move to chapter eight where there's no condemnation in Christ. I am now in Christ, union with Christ.
But the sinfulness of sin has to be reckoned with. So then we say sin, salvation, gladly praising God. Okay, let's use Heidelberg. Guilt, grace, gratitude, right? Right. Now, there are a few people in the theological world that are very impressive.
They are very, very impressive. But I usually don't quote them because I think they've got a quirk here or there that kind of bugged me. Northampton isn't that far away from me. I can get there in probably about an hour.
Yet Jonathan Edwards is not one of my favorite theologians. I would pick John Owen or someone over him. But Edwards had things to say that were right. He might have some funky things and some weird kind of justification stuff and philosophy run amok a few times.
There's a variety of things we could talk about. I mean, overall, he's better than Doug Padgett. No, he's better than a lot. Although I am skeptical if people say, the person that I like the most is Jonathan Edwards.
Study him all the time. I know. But Edwards is right here, so I'm gonna quote him. I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness and the badness of my heart than ever I had before my conversion.
It has often appeared to me that if God should mark iniquity against me, I should appear the very worst of all mankind. Of all that have been since the beginning of the world to this time, and that I should have by far the lowest place in hell.
My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable and swallowing up all thought and imagination. Like an infinite deluge are mountains over my head. I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be than by heaping infinite upon infinite and multiplying infinite by infinite.
Very often for these many years, these expressions are in my mind and in my mouth, infinite upon infinite, infinite upon infinite. When I look into my heart and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell.
Now that was Jonathan Edwards. I imagine in light of Psalm 51, that could have been David. It could have been us. What would our society say about such comments? I think Edwards could be over the top with self-introspection, but our society would say, he needs therapy.
He's got a bad self-image. Is that normal? Is that obsessive? Is that groveling around? Is that worm theology? I'll have to tell you that when you realize you're that bad, and we are that bad, then you appreciate purification all the more.
And the writer of Hebrews leads with that. Jesus is the one making purification. And I want you to notice, listeners, as we talk about biblical things, provocative things in that order. Remember, that's the tagline, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.
And we're here to talk to you about who Jesus is. I think I started the show more thinking, we're not gonna compromise, but we have to end up talking about the one who never compromised. I, sadly, never on the radio.
No, I compromise. I just don't want to. I'm sad when I do. I want to repent when I do, but I compromise. So I like talking about the one who never compromised. So he didn't have to purge his own sins.
He didn't have to bear his own sins. He bears someone else's sins. And he bears the bride's sins. He bears the elect's sins. In the covenant of redemption, the father gives him the elect to go rescue and die for.
And that's exactly what Jesus did. And he purified them. He purified the bride. And that's why we like to talk about who Jesus is on the show and not politics. I'm frankly, you know, I will vote, but the intensity of the pro-Trump people matches the intensity of the anti-Trump people.
And if it's the hill .com, a political slate, real clear politics, Brett Barth, fine. But I'm trying to practice what I preach. And that is I'd prefer the evangelical leaders to focus on what God is doing.
And you know, there's an occasional thing that they've got to say here or there. I'm not saying they don't have the liberty to talk about it, but I'm just not. I'm just going to keep focusing on something like this.
This is much more interesting to me, much more. And as Ronald Reagan was not the Messiah, and as President Obama isn't the opposite, the Lord still upholds all things. What about purging in light of first Adam, second Adam kind of talk, first Adam, last Adam, if you will.
Purification is what the second Adam had to do to undo the work of the first Adam. It's what the last Adam had to do to undo the work of the first Adam. If you think generally about these seven descriptions of Christ's person and work in the relative clause phrase in Hebrews chapter one, it doesn't take you long to think, okay, wait a second, whom he appointed heir of all things, that's the Lord Jesus.
And here, the first Adam, he was given heir of all these things on the earth and subdue the world and take it over. And he was an heir to the earth, but broke it. Then it says here that God created the world.
Now, Adam didn't do that, but again, he was supposed to be having dominion over the world. Jesus is the radiance of God's glory. Now, Adam wasn't that, but he was made in the image and likeness of God.
Then he wrecked that. I mean, there's still a remnant, but it's marred, exact in front of his nature, see what I just said before, upholds the universe by the word of his power. And instead of upholding the universe, which Adam could never do and never did, but he sure wrecked it.
He wrecked the world. I mean, he didn't destroy it like it was unredeemable, certainly unredeemable by human hands, but he's a wrecking ball. His ball and chain wreck, wreck, wreck, wreck. And then it says Jesus makes purification for sins he sat down.
Adam couldn't do that. Even early on, remember God's the one that kills the animal and cloaks Adam with the animal skin. What Adam tried to do, he tried to fig leave it, his own personal covering as he knew he needed to have sins purged.
Purifying is what the last Adam must do because the first Adam, he didn't do it. The first Adam, he was supposed to perfectly obey God, right? Theologians call this the covenant of works or the covenant of life, God and Adam.
Adam, the federal head representing mankind. And if you just obey to use Westminster perfectly and perpetually, you are going to pass the test. And so there's a covenant made and God imposed the terms of the covenant and the test centered around one tree, didn't it?
The tree of knowledge of good and evil. In the day that you eat it, you shall surely die, Genesis 2 .17. You want life in the garden, obey. If you break the covenant, there's going to be death and people will call it the covenant of works for a variety of reasons.
And if Adam's own works are good, he stands. If they're bad, he falls. Westminster Confession, chapter seven, paragraph two. The covenant of works described this way. Of God's covenant with man, it's the first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam and in him to his posterity upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.
This is the relationship that God has with the first Adam. And we know what happened. We know what his works were like. Jay Packer, the story that forms this backbone of the Bible has to do with man's covenant relationship with God first ruined and then restored.
The original covenantal arrangement, usually called the covenant of works, was one whereby God undertook to prolong and augment for all subsequent humanity, the happy state in which he had made the first human pair.
Provided that the man observed as part of the humble obedience that was then natural to him, one prohibition specified in the narrative as not eating a forbidden fruit. The devil presented as a serpent, seduced Adam and Eve into disobeying so that they fell under the penal sanctions of the covenant of works.
So there's these binding sets of commandments given by God and life was promised to Adam if he obeyed and he does not. I mean, can you imagine, you may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, eat at all.
If he would have obeyed, he leads the human race into life. He disobeys, he leads the human race into death. Hosea 6, 7, they like Adam have transgressed the covenant. And that is why we needed Jesus, the last Adam to come and to undo that, to cleanse us, to use the language of Hebrews, making purification for sins.
And if you wanna talk the same language, covenant of grace, you get eternal life for all the people who have faith in Christ Jesus, because Christ is the representative of the covenant, fulfills the covenant of work certainly.
And then he dies as a penalty for those who've disobeyed the covenant. Jesus is the head of his people, the elect Westminster Confession, man by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant of works, the Lord was pleased to make a second commonly called covenant of grace, whereby he freely offered on the sinner's life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto life, his spirit, his Holy Spirit to make them willing and able to believe.
At the apex of this covenant, Jesus comes and dies for the elect. Jesus, the last Adam undoes what the first Adam did, well, notice how fast time goes by. I mean, we are zooming here 24 minutes in. My name is Mike Abendroth, and this is No Compromise Radio.
You can write us info at nocompromiseradio .com, go to our website. We've been having trouble with the website. Too many people have been downloading things. That's a good thing. So we're trying to up the memory and update all that other stuff, increase it.
And we are here at Bethlehem Bible Church, bbcchurch .org. If you want some more sermons, you can go there. Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. We will see you tomorrow with a rerun, Fred.
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 bbcchurch .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.